Pull from Jira

How to authenticate

Jira offers two authentication methods to connect with Parabola. Choose the method that best fits your organization's security requirements.

Option 1: Basic Authentication (Recommended for simplicity)

1. Log in to your Atlassian account at https://id.atlassian.com/manage-profile/security
2. Navigate to Security → API tokens
3. Click Create API token and give it a descriptive name
4. Copy the generated token and store it securely (you'll only see it once)
5. In Parabola, add a Pull from Jira step
6. Click Authenticate and select Basic Auth
7. Enter your Atlassian account email address as the username
8. Paste your API token as the password

Option 2: OAuth 2.0 (For enhanced security)

1. Go to the Atlassian Developer Console at https://developer.atlassian.com/console/myapps/
2. Create a new OAuth 2.0 integration or select an existing one
3. Note your Client ID and Client Secret
4. Set the callback URL to: https://parabola.io/api/steps/generic_api/callback
5. Configure the required OAuth scopes for your use case (e.g., read:jira-work,read:jira-user)
6. In Parabola, add a Pull from Jira step
7. Click Authenticate and select OAuth 2.0
8. Enter your Client ID and Client Secret
9. Complete the OAuth authorization flow when prompted

Available data

Using the Jira integration in Parabola, you can bring in:

• Issues: Comprehensive issue details including summary, description, status, priority, assignee, reporter, dates, custom fields, comments, attachments, and work logs
• Issue search results: Flexible JQL-based queries to retrieve filtered sets of issues with customizable field selection and pagination
• Issue transitions: Available workflow transitions for issues and their associated screens and fields
• Projects: Project metadata including name, key, lead, description, issue types, components, versions, and project categories
• Project versions: Release versions with details on release dates, descriptions, archived status, and issue counts by status
• Users: User account information including display names, email addresses (subject to privacy settings), account IDs, active status, and avatar URLs
• Fields: System and custom field definitions with their schemas, allowed values, and configuration details

Common use cases

• Sprint and release reporting: Track issue completion rates, velocity metrics, and release progress by pulling issues filtered by sprint, version, or time period into automated dashboards
• Cross-system issue reconciliation: Combine Jira issue data with external systems like Zendesk, Salesforce, or internal databases to match customer tickets with engineering work and create unified views
• Team capacity and workload analysis: Pull assignee and issue status data to calculate team utilization, identify bottlenecks, and balance workload distribution across team members
• SLA compliance monitoring: Track time-to-resolution metrics by combining issue creation dates, status transitions, and resolution timestamps to ensure service level agreements are met
• Automated status updates: Query Jira for issues meeting specific criteria (e.g., stale tickets, overdue items) and trigger notifications via Slack or email to keep stakeholders informed
• Historical trend analysis: Extract issue data over time to analyze patterns in bug rates, feature delivery velocity, or support ticket volume for continuous improvement

Tips for using Parabola with Jira

• Use JQL for precise filtering: Leverage Jira Query Language in the search endpoint to filter issues precisely (e.g., project = PROJ AND status = "In Progress" AND updated >= -7d) rather than pulling all data and filtering afterward
• Schedule flows to run automatically: Set your Parabola flow to refresh on a daily or hourly schedule to keep dashboards current without manual intervention
• Start with essential fields: When pulling issues, request only the fields you need (e.g., fields=summary,status,assignee,updated) to improve performance and reduce processing time
• Combine multiple endpoints: Use separate steps to pull issues, then enrich them with user details or project information by joining on account IDs or project keys
• Leverage pagination: For large datasets, the Jira API returns results in pages—Parabola handles this automatically, but be mindful of API rate limits for very large queries
• Add alerts for anomalies: Set up Parabola alerts via Slack or email when your flow detects critical conditions, such as a spike in critical bugs or issues breaching SLA thresholds