Jira Cloud Connection

The Jira Cloud connection integrates your Atlassian Jira instance with OpsTower, giving agents the ability to search issues using JQL, view detailed issue information, browse projects and sprints, and create new issues. This makes OpsTower a viable ops layer for teams using Jira alongside or instead of Linear.

Prerequisites

You need a Jira Cloud account (not Jira Server or Data Center). The connection uses OAuth 2.0, so you authorize OpsTower to access your Jira instance directly from the UI.

Setup in OpsTower

1. Go to Connections > Tickets > Add Connection.
2. Select Jira.
3. Click Connect to Jira.
4. A popup opens to Atlassian’s authorization page. Sign in and grant access.
5. OpsTower automatically discovers your Jira Cloud site and stores the connection.
6. Optionally add Ticketing Instructions to guide how agents create and label issues.

What Agents Can Do

Once connected, agents have access to ten tools:

• Search Issues — search using JQL (Jira Query Language) with full field filtering
• Get Issue Detail — view complete issue details including description (ADF-to-text), comments, and metadata
• List Projects — discover all accessible projects and their keys
• List Boards — find Scrum and Kanban boards (Jira Software projects)
• List Sprints — view active, future, and completed sprints for a board
• Get Sprint Issues — list all issues in a sprint with status breakdown
• List Statuses — discover valid workflow statuses for a project
• List Users — find assignable users and their account IDs
• List Labels — browse available labels for JQL filtering
• Create Issue — create new issues with project, type, priority, description, assignee, labels, and optional sprint assignment

JQL Examples

Agents use JQL to search Jira issues. Here are common patterns:

• project = ENG ORDER BY updated DESC — recent issues in a project
• assignee = currentUser() AND sprint in openSprints() — your current sprint work
• priority = High AND created >= -7d AND status != Done — recent high-priority issues
• issuetype = Bug AND status != Done ORDER BY priority ASC — open bugs by priority

Ticketing Instructions

You can provide optional instructions that guide how agents create and manage issues. For example:

Always use project ENG for engineering bugs. Set priority to High for production issues. Add the label “ops-created” to all auto-created tickets.

These are injected into the agent’s system prompt as preferences, but agents will still confirm details with you before creating issues.

Use Cases

• “What tickets are assigned to me in the current sprint?”
• “Show me all open P1 bugs in the PLATFORM project”
• “Create a Jira ticket for the login error we found in Sentry”
• “Which sprint is currently active for the backend team?”
• “What’s the status breakdown of issues in the ENG project?”

Troubleshooting

• OAuth popup blocked — allow popups for the OpsTower domain and try again
• No Jira sites found — ensure your Atlassian account has access to at least one Jira Cloud site
• Boards/sprints not available — boards and sprints require Jira Software projects (not Jira Work Management or Service Management)
• Token expired — click “Reconnect to Jira” to refresh the OAuth tokens