Jira Cloud

This topic explains how LaunchDarkly’s Jira Cloud integration allows you to link your feature flags to Jira issues.

Overview

This topic explains how LaunchDarkly’s Jira Cloud integration allows you to link your feature flags to your team’s Jira issues. When you connect a feature flag to a Jira issue, LaunchDarkly automatically adds a Jira flag link to the flag.

If you have an existing integration between LaunchDarkly and Jira that you set up before March 2026, you must migrate your integration from Jira Connect to Jira Forge. To learn how, read Migrating to Jira Forge.

The LaunchDarkly Jira integration is only for Jira Cloud product offerings. It does not work in Jira Data Center or Jira Server.

When a feature flag is turned on or off or has its targeting rules updated, its associated Jira issue pages display the flag’s current status.

Prerequisites

To complete this procedure, you must have the following prerequisites:

• A personal or service API access token. To learn more, read API access tokens .

Set up the Jira integration

To set up the Jira integration, you must complete the following steps:

1. Give your API access token the required permissions:
   • You can create a role with webhook and flag link permissions, then add the role to a personal or service access token, or
   • you can add the Writer base role to your personal access token.
2. Configure the LaunchDarkly integration in Jira with the API access token.

This allows LaunchDarkly to communicate with Jira any time you change a flag.

Give your API access token the required permissions

You can create a role with appropriate permissions, then add the role to a personal or service access token, or you can add the Writer base role to your personal access token.

Create a role and add it to an API access token

Expand Create a role and add it to an API access token

Service tokens and creating your own roles are only available to customers on select plans. To learn more, read about our pricing. To upgrade your plan, contact Sales.

To create a role for the API access token:

1. Click the gear icon in the left sidenav to view Organization settings. The General settings page appears.

2. Click Roles.

3. Click New role. The “New role” page appears.

4. Enter a human-readable Name for the role.

5. Enter a Key for the role.

6. (Optional) Enter a Description to explain what the role does.

7. In the “Edit policy” section, click View JSON to open the advanced editor.

8. Enter this policy in the “Editor” field:

Jira policy

      [
        {
          "effect": "allow",
          "actions": ["createWebhook", "deleteWebhook"],
          "resources": ["webhook/*"]
        },
        {
          "effect": "allow",
          "actions": ["createFlagLink", "updateFlagLink", "deleteFlagLink"],
          "resources": ["proj/*:env/*:flag/*"]
        },
        {
          "effect": "allow",
          "actions": ["viewProject"],
          "resources": ["proj/*"]
        }
      ]

10. Click Create role.

The custom role is now configured.

Here is an image of a role configured to grant access to webhooks and flag links:

This means that the Jira integration will only be able to do the following:

• Create webhooks: this is needed because the Jira integration creates a webhook to push change events from LaunchDarkly to Jira
• Delete webhooks: this is used when the Jira integration is uninstalled
• Create/Update/Delete flag links: the Jira integration can update the links section of the feature flag to provide a helpful link back to the Jira issue

The Jira integration cannot perform any other actions, including toggling flags. If a member of your organization wants to toggle a flag from Jira, they have to click the URL for the flag in Jira and toggle the flag from the LaunchDarkly UI. At this point they will only be able to perform actions permitted by their role.

To learn more about role policies, read Creating roles and policies.

Next, add the role to the API token to grant the Jira integration additional permissions.

To add the role to the API token:

1. Click the gear icon in the left sidenav to view Organization settings. The General settings page appears.

2. Click Authorization.

3. Find the API access token you want to add permissions to and select “Edit token” from its overflow menu. The “Edit” dialog appears.

4. In the Role menu, select “Custom.”

5. Check the checkbox next to the role you just created.

6. Click Save token.

The role is applied to the API token.

Add the Writer role to your personal access token

Expand Add the Writer role to your personal access token

To add the Writer base role to a personal access token:

1. Click the gear icon in the left sidenav to view Organization settings. The General settings page appears.

2. Click Authorization.

3. Find the personal access token you want to add permissions to and select “Edit token” from its overflow menu. The “Edit” dialog appears.

4. In the Role menu, select “Writer.”

5. Click Save token.

Your personal token now has the Writer base role.

Configure the Launch

Darkly integration in JiraUse your access token to configure the Jira integration for your LaunchDarkly account.

1. Navigate to your Jira instance’s app management page, and click the Configuration button for the LaunchDarkly app. The “Configure LaunchDarkly Integration” screen appears.
2. Set your API access token.
3. Select which environments the app will track for each of your LaunchDarkly projects. By default, the app will track your critical environments.

If selected environments are reconfigured after issues have already been associated with flags, the existing connections display the environments they were historically connected to until the next time that flag is updated.

New flag connections display the flag configuration for the updated environment.

After you have set up the LaunchDarkly for Jira app, a “Releases” panel appears when you view issues on your Jira board.

The Jira issue view, which contains the release panel, is a per-user setting. If it is off, the release panel does not appear. To learn more, read Jira’s documentation.

Now that the Jira app is configured, you can connect feature flags to Jira issues. If no flags are associated with an existing Jira issue, you can add one with a button. If you already have one or more flags associated with a Jira issue, the rollout status of each connected feature flag on each Jira issue appears.

Create a new feature flag from a Jira issue

To create a new flag with Jira issues:

1. Navigate to your Jira issue’s feature flag panel.
2. In the “Details” section, click Add feature flag.

3. Select “Create feature flag.” The LaunchDarkly “Create a feature flag” panel appears with the Jira issue pre-populated.
4. Finish configuring your flag and click Save flag.When you toggle the flag on or off or make any targeting rule changes, those changes will appear in your Jira issue.

Connect an existing feature flag to a Jira issue from Launch

DarklyIf you have already created a feature flag for your Jira issue, you can add a Jira issue to your existing flag by creating a custom property for your flag.

To create a custom property:

1. Navigate to the Flags list and open the flag you wish to add a custom property to.
2. Click the three-dot overflow menu in the right sidebar.
3. Select Add custom property.
4. Select “Jira issues” as the Type.
5. Enter a list of Jira issue keys in the Values field. You can list multiple issues if applicable.
6. Click Save.

View a flag’s status in a Jira issue

To view a flag’s status in a Jira issue:

1. Navigate to your Jira issue’s feature flag panel.
2. In the “Details” section, click on the name of the feature flag. A dialog with a Feature flags tab appears:

Using JQL to search for Jira issues with feature flags

You can use JQL to query for Jira issues that are connected to feature flags. To learn more about JQL, read Atlassian’s documentation.

Remove a feature flag from a Jira issue

To remove a flag from a Jira issue:

1. Navigate to the Flags list and open the flag you wish to remove an issue from.
2. In the “Jira issues” section of the right sidebar, click the x on the Jira issue custom property you want to remove.
3. Click Save.

Your Jira issue must exist before you associate it with your feature flag. If you accidentally added a Jira issue to your flag, delete the custom property, and try connecting your Jira issue again.