Automating Jira tasks via RSS/API from a sports website

[Liam]

Hi team! I'm trying to set up a workflow for our content managers. We have a sports analytics site site url deleted and I want to trigger a Jira task automatically every time a new match preview or betting odds update is published.

Should I use the standard Jira Automation with webhooks, or is there a better marketplace app for connecting external sports data feeds to Jira? Any advice on the best architecture for this would be appreciated.

[Evgenii]

Hi, @Liam 

If I understand the situation correctly, you want to monitor an external website — which you don't own — to detect new news and create issues accordingly.

Based on my experience, here are two possible approaches:

1. Jira Automation
   Set up a rule that triggers periodically (e.g., every N minutes) to check the external site for updates. If new news is found, it creates corresponding issues in Jira.
   Running it every 10 minutes results in 144 executions per day — manageable within most automation limits. If less frequent checks are acceptable, you can run it every 30 minutes or hourly to further reduce usage.
2. External Tools (e.g., n8n or Zapier)
   Use integration platforms like n8n or Zapier to build a workflow that monitors the site and performs actions in Jira.
   I haven’t used Zapier much, but n8n is quite flexible and user-friendly for such tasks. However, this requires hosting an external service and some technical setup.

In both cases, key challenges remain:

• How to extract data from the external site (e.g., via RSS, scraping, or public API).
• How to identify what constitutes a "new" item to avoid duplicates.

A common solution is to use a unique attribute of each news item (like a title-hash or URL) as an identifier, store it in a hidden custom field within the Jira issue, and check against it before creating a new entry.

[Evgenii]

As an example, I made something similar in N8N, but output was to Telegram, but nothing blocks me from changing output and sending data to Jira, creating issues.
Workflow runs once in an hour and gathers last hour posts.

If there is no RSS, or news API, you'll need to use scraper nodes, which will parse HTML,  to get data.

[Liam]

Hi! Thank you so much for taking the time to share this N8N workflow. 

Since we manage a high volume of content across various disciplines. Your suggestion about using scraper nodes or RSS to batch updates once an hour is exactly the kind of optimization we need to avoid the 'rule usage drain' Tobi mentioned earlier.

I'll definitely present this N8N approach to our development team as a more flexible alternative to standard Jira rules. Thanks for the brilliant advice!

[Tomislav Tobijas]

Hi @Liam ,

Well, I'd say it depends on the source site and if you can trigger automation rules based on monitored events.
In general, this could be built if you use Incoming webhook trigger, but just beware of your rule usage (if you're on cloud), as I guess these could trigger a lot of rules and therefore drain your remaining executions quite fast. ⚠️

Cheers,
Tobi

[Liam]

Hi Tobi, that's a very good point about the rule usage! Since site publishes multiple match updates daily, would you recommend using an external integration tool like Zapier to handle the heavy lifting, or is stay-within-Jira automation still the best way to go? Thanks again!

[Tomislav Tobijas]

@Evgenii already jumped in with a really nice sketch 👌, so I'd guess that's the answer @Liam 

I usually try to polish everything by using native features, but yeah, if the limitations are there and you think you might hit the threshold, things like N8N and Zapier could definitely work :)