Linking an existing branch in Bitbucket to a Jira issue?

Question

Hi, Have been using JIRA/Confluence Cloud and Mercurial on separate server  We have just moved to Bitbucket Cloud and linked to JIRA that is working ok. Within an a JIRA issue, there is an option to create a "Branch" in Bitbucket. This appears to work fine for new branches moving forward and that it displays the link to the branch from within the JIRA issue. How can you link an existing JIRA issue to an existing branch in Bitbucket so that within the JIRA issue it displays the link. Within the issue it only has the option to create a new branch, not link to an existing Branch. Have search forums and have not come across an answer for this. If this has been answered somewhere, can you show me the answer? Thanks in advance

Andy Heinzer · Answer

Hi everyone, This thread has been highly viewed over the years in Community. In an effort to try to help improve the user expectation around this topic, I want to post an updated response here. As others have already explained in this thread, the way this particular integration feature is designed within Jira and Bitbucket, the branch name has to contain the issue key in order for that Jira issue to display it. This is simple enough to do when creating new branch from Jira's development panel. This is because Jira will automatically add that issue key to that branch name at the time of creation. However we acknowledge this is not always as easy to manage for existing branches. There are more details about this over in Reference issues in your development work.  This is a known limitation of displaying branches.  It is only expected to display this branch at the time that branch is created. Some users find that just creating a new pull request or commit message that contains the issue key can be one helpful way to link those development changes to a Jira issue. But clearly the original question is seeking a solution for an existing branch. Renaming a branch could help here, however others have noted that this is not always possible, say as in situations where there are outstanding open pull requests on that branch. For those users that would still want this ability I would recommend watching / voting on the feature request of JSWCLOUD-18105 - Allow linking a BitBucket branch with a Jira ticket without having to include the ticket key in the branch name. In the meantime, the expectation of this feature always appears to have been in regard to the Jira issue existing first, and then creating a new branch that includes that key in its name at the time of creation.  Sorry I do not have a better way to do this today, but if this is important to you, please watch that ticket for updates to this. Andy

Jobin Kuruvilla [Adaptavist] · Answer

JIRA uses a simple technique to link issues and branches - You need to have the issue key in the branch name.When you create a new branch, JIRA automatically adds the issue key in the branch name. Even if you create branches outside of JIRA with the issue key in it, they will appear in JIRA. But that also means that you cannot add existing branches unless you rename them to include the issue key.

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Linking an existing branch in Bitbucket to a Jira issue?

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Linking an existing branch in Bitbucket to a Jira issue?

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