3 New Ways to Create Jira Issues in Slack

Today in the Jira Cloud for Slack integration, we’ve launched the ability for you to create Jira issues directly from Slack. Without leaving the context of the conversation, you can quickly create a Jira issue in a few ways: from a Slack message, by mentioning the Jira bot, or by using the /jira command. Let’s take a peek at how these new commands can help you collaborate better and get work done faster with the power of Jira in Slack.

1. Message Actions

Here at Atlassian, most product teams have their own designated “help” channels in Slack (in our case, #help-jira-slack). We direct our support teams to these help channels in the event that there’s a tricky support ticket or a customer-identified product bug. Prior to today’s release, if the request needed to be added to our Jira backlog this required a few steps:

1. Open a web browser, navigate to Jira, find the right project
2. Copy the Slack message and use it to fill out the create issue form
3. Jump back into Slack and confirm receipt with the support team

Today, we’ve simplified this process by launching the ability to create a Jira issue from a Slack message.

We’ve added a new message action in the Jira for Slack app called “Create issue from.” This message action appears on every message in Slack, and enables you to create a Jira issue that is prepopulated with a description using details from the message. Over time, this form will get smarter at identifying and filling out the correct description for your ticket.

Creating a Jira issue from a message

Once you’re happy with the summary and description, you can quickly select a project and issue type, and then create your Jira issue within seconds.

In the Jira issue, you will get a direct link back to where the conversation about the ticket started in Slack. This allows you to get the full context on what sparked the ticket creation, as well as any conversations that happened after.

2. Bot Mentions + Quick Syntax

Whenever a new feature is about to be released for us, we spend plenty of time blitz testing to make sure functionality is working in even the most bizarre circumstances. Before, our Blitz tests were a bit of a painful process. It required someone to manually go back through the Slack channel and triage each issue that was brought up during the test. Now that we’ve launched the ability to create an issue via Bot Mentions, our blitz tests look a lot like this in Slack:

Miro: @Jira create bug Create Issue not working in unique project BEER in pi-devs site
Ryan: @Jira create task Create feature flags for releasing without transition, assign, comment
Viach: @Jira create bug When I put a long description for an issue — a button with not rounded corners is rendered.

Using the syntax @jira create [type] [summary] you can quickly create tickets as you triage bugs and tasks. As a product manager, this is my personal favorite way to triage things. Someone might reach out to me with an issue they’ve found via Slack, or an in-person conversation may happen, and I can quickly jump from pasting ASCII art into the team channel to creating Jira issues directly from Slack.

Creating a Jira issue from a mention

This workflow accomplishes several things:

1. The entire team sees that the ticket was created.
2. I created a ticket without context switching. Instead of jumping into my Jira project, I just wrote a couple of lines in the tool I spend the most time in — Slack.
3. The ticket is now in the backlog, a place where I know it will eventually get picked up and worked on. Nothing falls through the cracks!

3. /jira create

Have you ever been in a direct message with an Engineer, PM, or Designer that’s absolutely certain they’ve found a bug in your code? As much as you might hate to admit it, sometimes they did find a bug — and with the new /jira create slash command, you can now quickly create Jira tickets right from that DM. This works great for quickly throwing the bug report into the backlog while also letting the other person in the DM know you’ve acknowledged and created an issue for the bug report.

Creating an issue from a slash command

While /jira create is supported in both DMs and Group DMs in Slack, it will also work in any public or private channel, regardless of if the Jira bot is in the channel.

Have thoughts on this awesome new functionality? Let us know! You can give feedback in the Slack integration by typing /jira feedback. Trust us — we’ll see it! Your feedback is sent directly into our team channel in Slack for us to discuss, analyze, and reach out if necessary 🙂

More new awesome stuff for the Jira for Slack app coming soon!