Integrate Back with Jira
Jan Ustohal avatar
Written by Jan Ustohal
Updated over a week ago

To make it easier to collaborate with teams not using Back while providing a single point of contact for your employees, Back has introduced a two-way synchronization with Jira Software and Jira Service Management.

Main use cases

  • Using the Back bot in Slack, MS Teams, and Google Chat as the single interface for employees.

  • Collaborating on projects with teams using Jira.

  • Collaborating on specific requests with teams using Jira.

How does the integration work

Once a specific request in Back is linked to Jira (either manually or automatically), an issue is created and key information is synchronized between the request and the issue, until the request is unlinked again.

At the time of of linking the team in Back is used to determine the Jira project, while the category is used to determine the Request / Issue type. The requester will be used to set the reporter, and if there is already an assignee in Back, they will be set as the assignee in Jira as well.

Complete mapping:

Back

Jira Software (SW)
Jira Service Management (SM)

Synchronization direction

Request

Issue

Back → Jira

Status

Issue status

Back ← Jira

Assignee

Assignee

Back ← Jira

Requester

Reporter

Back ← Jira

Category

Request type (SM) / Issue type (SW)

Back ← Jira

Reply
Form reply

Reply to customer (SM)
Comment (SW)

Back ↔ Jira

Internal note

Internal note (SM)
Comment (SW)

Back ↔ Jira

Priority
Project

Due date

Approvals

SLA

N/A

Not synchronized

💁🏻‍♀️ Status, Assignee, Category, and Request are synchronized Back → Jira when linking, but cannot be adjusted from Back afterward.

Features currently not supported in the synchronization:

  • Required fields on issues are not supported, apart from summary and description – trying to link a request with an issue type with more required fields will fail.

  • Advanced formatting from Jira is not translated in employee notifications.

  • Issues and requests created directly in Jira are not synchronized with Back.


How to set up the integration (Cloud)

To start the integration you need to manually add the Back app into your Jira instance:

  1. Go to the Apps settings in Jira (⚙️ → Apps)

  2. In the Manage apps section select Upload app and use https://api.back.ee/api/jira/descriptor as the URL

  3. Press Upload

This will fetch the needed information about the Back app from our servers and set up the app for you in Jira.

How to set up the integration (On-premise)

For on-premise integrations, the only setup you need to do is to create a "service user" for Back that will be used to execute the synchronization from Back to Jira.

Additionally, once configured on our side we'll also give you a webhook URL to add to your project so that Back can receive updates and data from Jira.


Configuring the integration

In order to set up the 2-way synchronization we'll need additional details to enable the integration on our side:

  • Jira Project ID (e.g. 100019) or symbol (ABC) that should be linked to Back

    • Each project can be linked to exactly one team in Back

  • List of all statuses in the project to map to statuses in Back

  • List of all request types (for Jira SM)/issue types (for Jira Software) to map to categories in Back.


Connecting requests to Back

Once the integration is set up on both sides you will see a Jira icon in the top left corner of the request detail:

Once linked, you will be able to go directly to the linked issue and all information listed above will be automatically synchronized.

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