Emily Jin Atlassian Team

@James.Reid Thank you for your feedback and for sharing your thoughts with us! We currently do not have plans to expand in that direction. However, we are continually monitoring feedback to help us prioritize future updates.

@Paul Berryman Yes, that is correct - this feature only works with explicit links. Now, when you paste a URL to a supported Jira Align work item in an Atlassian Cloud product, it will render as a Smart Link rather than remain as a plaintext URL. 

@Bryan Smith Yes, that's correct! This feature was launched in v.11.11.