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Connect with Jira Cloud

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The Jira integration enables SEI 2.0 to ingest issue management data from Atlassian Jira. This data can be used to track operational performance and correlate incidents and changes with DORA metrics in SEI 2.0 dashboards.

Prerequisites​

Before you can configure the Jira integration, ensure you have the following requirements:

  • Create a classic API token without scopes for a Jira Cloud user account.

    Use a Jira user account

    The user creating the token must have the Browse Projects, View Aggregated Data, Browse Users, and User Picker permissions for all projects that you want SEI 2.0 to track and search issues within relevant projects.

    Use a Jira user account with a classic API token without scopes. Scoped API tokens are not supported.

    Service accounts cannot be used to authenticate the SEI Jira integration. The API token must be generated from a standard Jira user account with the required permissions.

  • Make sure to copy the token somewhere that you can retrieve it when you configure the integration.

    Allowlist Configuration

    If you have enabled an allow list in your Atlassian account, certain Harness IP addresses must be added to it in order to allow communication between the Harness Platform and Atlassian. If the necessary IPs are not whitelisted, the integration may fail to authenticate or sync data properly.

    To ensure your integration can work correctly, refer to the list of Harness Platform IPs that may need to be whitelisted in your firewall.

Setup​

To configure the Jira integration:

  1. From the SEI navigation menu, click Account Management.

  2. From the Integrations page, navigate to the Available Integrations tab.

  3. Locate the Jira integration tile under Issue Management and click Add Integration.

  4. Select an installation option: Jira Software Cloud or Jira Software Data Center.

  5. If you select Jira Software Cloud, you can click Using Jira API Token (recommended) or Using Jira Connect App (deprecated).

    Using Jira API Token

    Harness recommends using token-based authentication to integrate Jira Cloud with SEI 2.0. The Jira Connect App–based integration has been deprecated and should only be used for existing setups.

Reauthenticate Jira Cloud Using a Token-based Integration

The Using Jira Connect App method is no longer supported. You can re-authenticate the Jira Cloud integration by using a classic unscoped API token. Scoped API tokens are not supported.

The token must be created for a Jira user account. The user account must have the Browse Projects, View Aggregated Data, Browse Users, and User Picker permissions to be able to read/search issues and access all Jira projects you want SEI 2.0 to track. Service accounts are not supported.

To set up the integration using a Jira API token:

  1. Add a name for the integration.

  2. Optionally, add a description and tags for the integration.

  3. Click Next.

  4. Provide your Jira Cloud credentials in the Configure Jira Authentication section:

    • Add the URL of your Jira instance, for example: "https://organization.atlassian.net".
    • Enter the email address associated with your Atlassian user account.
    • Provide the API token generated for that account.

  5. Click Validate Credentials. Then, click Next.

  6. Optionally, select Jira projects by clicking Use the project selector or entering a JQL query to filter issues for ingestion. For example, to ingest only bugs and stories from a project:

    project = ENG AND issuetype in (Bug, Story)

    Then, click Validate JQL.

    You can also click Validate and Create Integration to skip filtering and ingest all accessible projects.

  7. Click Done.

Once enabled, Jira data is ingested into SEI 2.0.

Edit configuration​

Navigate to the Configuration tab to click Edit Configuration.

In the Advanced Configurations section, you can control what Jira data is ingested into Harness SEI 2.0 by either excluding sensitive fields or defining a JQL filter.

Exclude sensitive fields​

You can exclude specific Jira issue fields from ingestion:

  • Summary
  • Description
  • Comments
tip

Use this option to prevent sensitive or unnecessary text fields from being ingested while still capturing issue metadata and activity signals.

Filter issues using JQL​

Alternatively, you can define a JQL query to control which Jira issues are ingested. Only issues matching the query will be included in SEI 2.0.

Use JQL filtering to limit ingestion to active projects, specific teams, or relevant issue types to reduce noise in downstream analytics. For example:

project in (PLAT, DEVOPS, SRE)
AND updated >= -90d
AND issuetype in (Bug, Story, Task)

Custom fields​

The Custom Fields tab allows you to map additional Jira fields to SEI. You can use custom fields to include organization-specific metadata (such as priority, assignment group, or custom attributes) in your SEI dashboards and reports.

You can map custom fields by defining filter sets for incident and change request identification on the Incident Management tab in Team Settings.

Once configured, these fields are included in data ingestion and become available for filtering and analysis in SEI 2.0.

Hygiene rules​

The Issue Hygiene Report widget uses data from Jira to calculate hygiene scores.

These scores represent hygiene misses in a designated time frame. A hygiene miss means that a ticket in your issue management system was missing an important field, failed to change status while sprint was active, or was assigned to an inactive user.

What constitutes a miss depends on your hygiene categories. There are several built-in hygiene categories, and you can add custom hygiene categories by configuring Custom Hygiene Misses in your issue management integration.

To add custom hygiene categories:

  1. In your Harness Project, select the SEI Module, and go to your Account.

  2. Select Integrations under Data Settings.

  3. Find your Jira integration and edit it.

  4. Select Add Hygiene Miss Criteria and configure the new hygiene category:

    Epic Link
    • Name: Enter a name for the category. This name appears on the Issue Hygiene Report widget along with the category's score.
    • Field: Select the Jira field that provides data for this category.
    • Operator: Specify the operator, such as Missing or Greater Than, that determines if there was a hygiene miss for this category.

    The Operator represents an undesired state for the specified Field. For example, if your desired state is for the specified Field to be populated, then your undesired state is that the field is empty. Therefore, you would set the Operator to Missing.

    Epic Link

  5. To get scores for custom hygiene categories, you must modify the category Weights in your Issue Hygiene Report widgets. Custom categories don't have an initial weight, so you must modify all instances of the widget to include your custom categories in the hygiene score calculations. For detail instructions, go to Configure the Issue Hygiene Report.

Integration monitoring​

To monitor the status of the Jira integration, navigate to the Monitoring tab. This page provides visibility into data ingestion, availability, and overall integration health.

The following health indicators are displayed: Healthy, Unhealthy, Pending, or No Data. These indicators help ensure data freshness and identify issues impacting Jira-based reporting in SEI 2.0.

You can use the time range selector to switch between Last 7 Days and Last 30 Days. Changing the time range updates both the New Projects Onboarded and Tickets sections, along with their associated charts.

New Projects Onboarded​

The New Projects Onboarded section shows the number of Jira projects discovered and ingested during the selected time range.

  • Onboarded in Last 30 Days: The number of Jira projects onboarded during the selected time range.
  • Total Onboarded: The cumulative number of Jira projects onboarded since the integration was configured.
tip

Use this view to confirm that Jira projects are being successfully discovered and synced in Harness SEI.

Tickets​

The Tickets section shows Jira issue ingestion activity during the selected time range.

  • Ingested in Last 30 Days: The number of Jira issues ingested during the selected time range.
  • Total Ingested: The cumulative number of Jira issues ingested since the integration was configured.
tip

Use this view to confirm that Jira issue data is being continuously ingested into Harness SEI.

Data Availability​

The Data Availability timeline visualizes the health of data ingestion during the selected time range. Each segment reflects the integration status at a given point in time:

  • Healthy: Data was successfully ingested
  • Unhealthy: Ingestion failed or encountered errors
  • Pending: Ingestion is in progress
  • No Data: No data was received for the time window
tip

Use this view to identify ingestion gaps, delays, or outages that may impact DORA Insights reporting.

Troubleshooting​

What happens to Jira tickets that are deleted after being synced to Harness SEI?

If you delete a Jira ticket, it will still appear in Harness SEI and continue to count toward metrics until you request that it be manually hidden or removed. To remove or hide deleted tickets, contact Harness Support.