API token authentication failing

[Fariah Thomas]

I am trying to connect to Jira in Workato, via an API token. I keep getting the error message "connection failed," please advice. 

[Tomislav Tobijas · Accepted solution]

Hi @Fariah Thomas ,

On top of what Alexander said, can you maybe share if we're talking about Jira on-prem (DC) or cloud? Also, does this have anything to do with Confluence? I'm asking as the question landed in Confluence forum collection.

Apart from that, are you using a specific connector or some custom solution to connect these two tools/apps?

If you can also share a use case or details of your requirement, I guess that would be useful for troubleshooting.

Cheers,
Tobi

[Alexander Nilsson · Accepted solution]

Hello Fariah,

thanks for your question.

"connection failed" with a Jira API token is almost always one of three things on the Jira side.

First, the username field. For Jira Cloud the basic auth credential pair is your Atlassian account email address plus the API token, not your Jira username, not your display name, not the site URL. So in the Workato connector, the username field needs the same email you use to log in to id.atlassian.com, and the password field gets the API token value. The auth format is documented here:

https://developer.atlassian.com/cloud/jira/platform/basic-auth-for-rest-apis/

Second, the token itself. Atlassian started expiring legacy API tokens this year. Tokens created before December 15, 2024 are being expired between March 14 and May 12, 2026, so any token from last year or earlier is either already dead or about to be in the next few days. Easiest test is to generate a fresh token at https://id.atlassian.com/manage-profile/security/api-tokens and retry the connection with that one. The expiration policy is covered here:

https://support.atlassian.com/atlassian-account/docs/manage-api-tokens-for-your-atlassian-account/

Third, the host. Workato wants the Jira host as https://your-site.atlassian.net with no trailing slash and no path, so double-check there is for example no /jira appended.

If a fresh token plus the email address still fails, grab the exact error response Workato shows when the connection test runs (status code, response body) and post that, it will narrow down whether the request is being rejected at auth or at the host level.

Looking forward to your answer.

Greetings,

Alex

[Fariah Thomas]

Hello Alex and Tobi, 

I appreciate the suggestions, removing the trailing slash and path after .net worked, connection with Jira has been successfully setup. 

FYI*** my connection type (Jira) - Cloud. 

Thank you

Fariah