This guide explains how to connect Jira Cloud to an OpenHands Enterprise
Replicated installation. The integration lets users start OpenHands from Jira
issues by commenting with @openhands or by adding the openhands label.
OpenHands replies on the issue with a link to the conversation and posts the
result back when it finishes.
Jira Cloud users are linked to OpenHands accounts by email match: no
Atlassian OAuth app is required, and users need no per-user setup beyond
making their email visible (see User requirements).
Users are enrolled automatically the first time they trigger OpenHands.
Prerequisites
- Jira Cloud site administrator access, to invite the service account and
register a webhook.
- An OpenHands Enterprise organization admin or owner account, to
configure the integration inside OpenHands.
- Network access from Jira Cloud to the OpenHands app URL over HTTPS with a
publicly trusted certificate (for webhook delivery), and from OpenHands to
api.atlassian.com (for Jira API calls).
Create a service account
Create a dedicated Atlassian account for OpenHands, for example
openhands-bot@company.com. OpenHands uses this account to read issues and
post comments, and its replies appear under this account’s name.
- Invite the account to your Jira site and grant it access to every project
where OpenHands should read and comment.
- Log in as the service account and create an API token at
id.atlassian.com → Security → API tokens. Save the token somewhere
safe. You will need it for the next configuration step below.
Mentions and labels made by the service account itself are ignored to
prevent the agent from triggering itself. Always test from a regular user
account, not the service account.
Enable the integration in the Admin Console
- In the OpenHands Enterprise Admin Console, open Config and check
Enable Jira Cloud Integration under Jira Cloud Integration.
- Save and deploy the new version, and wait for the rollout to finish.
After the deploy, a Jira card appears under Settings → Integrations
in the OpenHands app.
As an organization admin or owner, open Settings → Integrations → Jira
in OpenHands and select Configure:
- Workspace: the full site hostname, for example
yourcompany.atlassian.net. Webhook events are matched against this
hostname, so the bare site name is not sufficient.
- Service account email: the service account’s email address.
- Service account API token: the token created above. The credentials are
validated against Jira when you save, so a typo fails immediately.
- Webhook secret: choose a strong secret. You will paste the same secret
into Jira in the next step.
Save, then copy the events URL shown below the webhook secret field. It
has the form:
Register the webhook in Jira
In Jira, open Settings (gear icon) → System → WebHooks and create a
webhook:
- URL: the events URL copied above.
- Secret: the same webhook secret entered in OpenHands. Jira uses it to
sign deliveries, and OpenHands rejects unsigned or mis-signed events.
- Events: check Issue → updated and Comment → created. These are
the only two events OpenHands processes.
- Optionally scope the webhook with a JQL filter (for example
project = ENG).
- Leave the request body included (do not check “Exclude body”).
User requirements
Each user who wants to trigger OpenHands from Jira must satisfy two
conditions:
- Matching email: the user’s Atlassian account email must exactly match
their OpenHands login email.
- Visible email: in the user’s Atlassian account settings
(id.atlassian.com → Profile and visibility → Contact → Email address),
visibility must be set to Anyone. Jira omits the email from webhook
payloads otherwise, and OpenHands cannot match the user without it.
Atlassian can take 15 minutes or more to propagate an email-visibility
change into webhook payloads. If OpenHands replies that it could not
determine your email address right after you changed the setting, wait and
try again before assuming the setting is wrong.
No further setup is needed: the first successful mention enrolls the user
automatically.
Start OpenHands from an issue
- Comment
@openhands followed by instructions on any issue in a project the
webhook covers, or add the openhands label to the issue. Both the typed
literal text and the mention selected from Jira’s autocomplete picker work.
- To have OpenHands work in a repository, include the repository URL (for
example
https://gitlab.com/group/project or
https://github.com/org/repo) in the issue description or the comment. The
triggering user must have that Git provider connected in OpenHands, and
exactly one repository should be mentioned. Without a repository, OpenHands
still answers on the issue but works without a workspace.
OpenHands reacts with a comment linking to the conversation, and the service
account posts the result back to the issue when the run completes.
Troubleshooting
- OpenHands replies “Could not determine your Jira email address”: the
email-visibility requirement above is not met, or the change has not
propagated yet. Verify the exact setting and retry after 15 minutes.
- A mention does nothing, with no reply at all: check that the comment
was not made by the service account (those are ignored), that the user’s
Atlassian email matches their OpenHands email, and that the webhook covers
the issue’s project. Jira Cloud does not show a delivery log for system
webhooks, so check the OpenHands logs (the
openhands-integrations
workload) or collect a support bundle.
- Logs show
403 Unidentified workspace: the Workspace field in the
OpenHands configuration does not equal the site hostname in the webhook
payload. Re-open the configuration and set it to
yourcompany.atlassian.net.
- OpenHands replies that multiple repositories were found: mention
exactly one repository in the issue and comment text.