Linking GitHub Bugs to Jira Issues Without Integration

[Aakanksha Gupta]

Hi all,

My team has a requirement to link bugs tracked in GitHub (over 15,000 unique issues) to our Jira tickets. However, we do not have an integration between Jira and GitHub at this time.

We initially considered creating a custom field in Jira with a dropdown containing all 15,000 GitHub bug identifiers, but this approach is not scalable due to performance and usability concerns.

My questions:

1. What are the recommended ways to reference a large number of external GitHub issues from Jira, given the lack of integration?
2. Are there Jira field types or patterns that work better for this use case (e.g., free-text fields for URLs, automation, labels)?
3. How have other teams handled similar requirements to maintain traceability between Jira and GitHub without integrations or massive dropdowns?

Any tips, best practices, or lessons learned would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

[Aron Gombas _Midori_]

If the two systems are not integrated, have you considered using the standard "plain" web links from the Jira work item to the GitHub bug?

Web links are not very smart, but they allow using any URL, including GitHub bug URLs.

[Marc -Devoteam-]

Hi @Aakanksha Gupta 

Best practice I can give you, integrate.

You can create a free text field or a URL field to place information.

Then I would suggest URL field, to provide the url to the Git issue, maybe even with a screen on the Done transition with this field set as mandatory or a validator in the workflow to make sure the field is provided.

You could also look at API options, to fill a text field with the Git issue ID, but then you would need to know the related jira owrk item where to set this field.