Jira to Jira integration allows you to sync work types, comments, and fields between separate instances. Learn use cases, integration approaches, and best practices.
Most organizations have multiple Jira instances, with different departments spinning up their own instances for autonomy. If you’re an MSP, you’re juggling separate environments for each client. Whatever the path, the result is the same: teams working in different Jira instances need to collaborate, and manual ticket copying becomes a time sink nobody signed up for. Jira to Jira integration fixes this by automatically syncing work items, comments, and custom fields between separate instances in real-time.
No more copying and pasting. No more errors from manual data entry. Teams stay aligned without being forced onto a single platform they may not want or need. Whether you’re connecting Cloud to Data Center, linking development with support, or managing multiple client environments as an MSP, the right integration keeps teams working in their preferred tools while breaking down data silos.
This guide walks through when integration makes sense for your situation, the different approaches available from simple templates to flexible scripting, and the practices that help your integration scale without creating new headaches.
Jira to Jira integration creates automated, bidirectional synchronization between separate Jira instances. Instead of manually copying tickets, updating statuses, or forwarding comments between systems, integration handles this automatically.
This matters most when teams need to collaborate across organizational boundaries while maintaining autonomy over their own Jira configurations, workflows, and access controls. Developers keep their complex sprint workflows, support maintains their service desk setup, and leadership gets unified visibility across everything.
Most organizations end up with multiple Jira instances through natural growth rather than poor planning:
Rather than forcing consolidation that disrupts productivity, integration lets these instances coexist while enabling seamless collaboration when teams need it.
In this guide, you’ll discover:
Jira to Jira integration allows you to automatically sync work items, comments, and fields between instances, but the real question is when this investment actually makes sense for your organization.
Mergers and acquisitions
When your company acquires another business, you often inherit their Jira instance along with years of historical data and customized workflows. Both teams know their systems inside out, and forcing everyone onto a single instance would be disruptive and expensive. To avoid that, teams from both ends can integrate their system to preserve both teams’ workflows instead of forcing an immediate migration. The result is that leadership gets unified visibility across both organizations while individual teams continue working in their familiar environments.
Clients and managed service providers
MSPs supporting multiple clients face a unique challenge. Each client has their own Jira instance, but when Client A reports a bug that affects Client B, your internal team needs visibility across all environments. Integrating both systems solves this by letting you maintain a central hub instance for your operations team. Client tasks, sprints, etc., sync one-way into the hub with sensitive details filtered out, giving your team unified visibility without exposing anyone’s data. When your team updates status or adds resolution notes, relevant information will sync back to the appropriate client instance. This includes work summaries, status updates, and resolution notes, while client-specific details, pricing information, and internal communications stay completely isolated.
Development and support teams
Here is a common scenario: the customer support team uses Jira Service Management in one instance while developers work in their own Jira Software instance with complex workflows. Support needs to escalate bugs to development, but developers don’t want their workflow cluttered with every support ticket that comes in. To address this issue, admins on both sides can use filters to escalate only relevant work between instances. Developers see sanitized technical information without the full customer conversation history, letting them focus on fixing bugs rather than wading through support discussions.
Also, when developers eventually update the status of fixes, support teams see progress in their own instance, while customer communications and internal support notes stay firmly in the service management instance.
Cross-department projects
Large enterprises often find themselves with multiple Jira instances across different departments. IT, marketing, HR, and operations each run their own instance with department- specific workflows and admin requirements. But the problem is that having individual instances for every team often leads to the formation of siloes. When you sync the Jira instance, all departments maintain control of their configurations while giving project managers visibility.
For instance, when you launch a new product requiring coordination between marketing, IT, and devs, each department tracks progress locally on their own platform. They get updates about project milestones, dependencies, and high-level status updates.
Partner and vendor collaboration
Similar to the MSP use case, working with external partners or vendors who have their own Jira instances creates another integration opportunity. You need to share project information, but neither party wants to grant the other access to their internal systems. For instance, a manufacturing company contracting with a software vendor can sync requirements, feature status, and bug reports. The vendor doesn’t see the manufacturer’s cost data and internal discussions, and the manufacturer doesn’t see the vendor’s resource planning and profitability calculations.
Migration between Jira Data Center and Jira Cloud
With Atlassian announcing the end-of-life for Jira Data Center, scheduled for March 28 2029, organizations moving from Jira Data Center to Cloud face a critical challenge during the migration period. Some teams might be ready to move to Jira Cloud immediately, while others need months to prepare their workflows, test integrations, or address regulatory concerns. To get the ball rolling in time, you can integrate the Data Center and Cloud instances for teams to start the migration process gradually without facing disruptions. Once migration completes, you can decommission the integration, but during that critical migration window.
This phased approach reduces risk significantly because you’re not forcing every team to migrate simultaneously based on an arbitrary deadline.
Native integration solutions
Atlassian provides built-in capabilities that work within certain constraints. For teams using both Jira Software and Jira Service Management on the same site, native linking and shared workflows enable collaboration without third-party tools. You can link work across projects, share custom fields, and create automation rules that work across both products. Tools like the Jira Cloud Migration Assistant (JCMA) help move data from one instance to another, assess compatibility issues, and preserve relationships during the transfer. They work well for one-time migrations where you’re consolidating instances or moving to a different hosting environment.
The key limitation is that these are migration tools, not integration tools. They move data once but don’t maintain ongoing synchronization between instances.
Jira automation
Jira’s native automation engine offers possibilities for basic cross-instance communication. You can set up automation rules that trigger webhooks when work items change, sending data to external systems or other Jira instances via their REST API. This approach keeps everything within Atlassian’s ecosystem without adding third-party tools. The reality is that automation- based integration has significant limitations for serious cross-instance sync. Automation rules can send data one way, but orchestrating bidirectional sync requires building mirror rules on both sides that must avoid creating infinite loops.
Template-based tools
Tools like Zapier, Make, Unito, and similar platforms offer pre-built integrations with template- based field mappings. These platforms connect to both Jira instances through their APIs and provide a user interface for configuring which data syncs. Template-based platforms provide pre-configured field mappings for common scenarios. When you connect two Jira instances, the tool automatically maps standard fields like summary, description, priority, and status.
If your Jira instances use standard fields with similar configurations and you don’t need complex transformation logic, these tools work well and get you up and running quickly. They’re also cost-effective for small teams or simple integrations because pricing typically scales with usage volume. However, template-based tools struggle with advanced sync scenarios that can handle conditional logic like syncing different fields based on work type or project.
Script-based tools
Script-based tools like Exalate take a different approach by giving you full programmatic control over the integration while still providing a platform that handles the infrastructure concerns.
Exalateʼs Script mode gives you full access to write custom Groovy code for complex requirements. It also comes with AI assistance to help you generate scripts based on natural language descriptions of your use cases.
Exalate makes it possible to sync different fields based on work type, project, or any other criteria. You can sync high-priority bugs or route work to different projects based on their labels. You get the flexibility of custom code without building the entire platform yourself.However, working with Exalate requires a deep understanding of the Groovy syntax and the platform’s scripting model. But with AI Assist, anyone on your team can write and maintain these scripts.
Script-based solutions make sense for MSPs managing multiple client instances with varying configurations, as well as organizations where integration requirements change frequently.
Custom integration tools
Organizations with development resources can build custom integrations using Jira’s REST API. This approach gives you complete control over exactly what syncs, when it syncs, and how data transforms between instances. You can implement any business logic you need, integrate with other systems beyond Jira, and avoid ongoing licensing costs for third-party tools. The API provides full access to comments, attachments, custom fields, workflows, and virtually everything else in Jira.
However, building a robust integration is more complex than it initially appears. You need to do the following:
Even the most basic proof-of-concept integration might take a developer a few days to build, but a production-ready solution that handles edge cases, errors, and scaling often takes weeks or months. Apart from that, you also inherit the ongoing maintenance burden, which means that whenever Atlassian updates their AP or your workflows change, your team will need to hop on the fix ASAP. For most organizations, the total cost of building and maintaining custom integration exceeds the cost of commercial tools, especially when you factor in the opportunity cost of developer time.
There are several deployment models of Jira, and you need to know which you have before you start. You have Jira Cloud and Jira Server, along with Jira Data Center, which is essentially a scaled-up version of Jira Server for Enterprise organizations. The Professional plan for Exalateʼs Jira app starts at $6 per month for each system. To find out about the cost of the Enterprise plan, read more about Exalate pricing here.
Letʼs get down to setting up the Jira to Jira integration, step by step.
Step 1: Install Exalate on Jira
*Jira Cloud version
In the marketplace search field, search for “Exalate Connector for Jira, Work Sync & Two-way Integration”. Click “Try it free” on the next page. Follow the steps to complete the installation. Next, you need to repeat the same process on your other instance.
Step 2: Connect your Jira instances
Go to “Connections”, then click the green “Initiate connection” button. On the next screen, enter the URL of the other instance. You will be redirected to a screen that will allow you to choose between 3 configuration modes: Basic, Visual, or Script Mode.
Continue with the Advanced Script Mode
If you want to customize your Jira sync how you want, then the Script mode is your way to go. To start with, after selecting “Script Mode”, you will see a screen that will allow you to enter the details of the connection.
Once you enter the details and click “Next”, you have to choose a project at the Jira instance to initiate the connection. Select one from the drop-down list and click the “Initiate” button.
Lastly, the system will generate an invitation code, which you need to copy and paste into the other Jira instance. Click the “Copy invitation code” button. Paste this somewhere safe, such as a text file, and save it for later.
Paste the invitation code into the field provided, then click “Next”.
When accepting the connection invitation, you choose the project on this side that you want to synchronize with the other side.
Now youʼve connected both Jira instances, letʼs look at some of the things you can do with the connection.
Step 3: Configure your connection to determine what information gets shared
As mentioned, Exalate will use common defaults when creating your connection. You can edit these at any time. For this, click the “Configure sync” button immediately after establishing the connection. You can even find your connection in the list, move the mouse over it, and click the “Edit connection” icon that appears. Click on the “Rules” tab in the connection screen.
Exalateʼs Script mode also comes with AI Assist, which appears as a chat window in both your incoming and outgoing sync rules tabs. Just tell AI Assist what you need, and it will generate the scripts for you.
Hereʼs an example of how it works:
If you want to map and sync work types between the two Jira instances, you could enter something like this in the AI chat.
Your scripts will be ready in some time.
Red highlights show lines that will be removed, while green ones mark new additions. You can accept or reject what AI generates. Once itʼs all set, donʼt forget to publish your changes.
Note: The generated scripts are based on your input, your current configurations, and Exalateʼs scripting API. Keep in mind that AI Assist isnʼt perfect, so itʼs essential to be clear and specific with your instructions.
Step 4: Set up automated synchronization triggers
Triggers define the synchronization conditions. Exalate triggers are written in a different language depending on the platform. Jira uses its own query language, JQL.
If you click the “Triggers” tab in the edit connection screen, you can access the automated synchronization triggers. You can also find a summary of all of your active triggers by clicking “Triggers” in the left-hand menu.
You can edit or delete these triggers by clicking the respective icons in the list, under the “Action” heading. If you click the three dots, you also get the option to “Bulk Exalate” and “Unbulk Exalate”.
Step 5: Start synchronizing tasks
Now your connection is ready, you can start creating tasks, and if they match the criteria, they will be shared between platforms. Exalate checks for new tasks every few minutes, so please wait for a little while if you donʼt see them transferred immediately.
Start tracking all your nodes, connections, and errors. Exalate has a dedicated monitoring dashboard where you can keep an eye on all the active and inactive connections on your node over a specific period (monthly or annually).
Field mapping inconsistencies
When field names or values don’t match, sync breaks or data gets lost. For instance, the statuses on one Jira instance might have different values from the ones on another Jira instance.
Quick fix: Use integration tools that support field transformation by default. Script-based solutions let you map mismatched fields with custom logic. Template-based tools often have mapping tables where you can manually link equivalent values. If a field truly doesn’t exist on the other side, create a custom field or sync the information as part of the description instead.
High Volume of work items
You connect two instances and suddenly every support ticket floods your development backlog. Developers can’t find actual work items among routine requests that don’t need their attention.
Quick fix: Use selective sync with JQL filters or labels. For instance, you can only sync tasks tagged “escalate” or with priority “High” and above. Most tools let you define these filters during setup, preventing clutter before it starts.
Infinite sync loops
An update on Instance A triggers a sync to Instance B, which triggers a sync back to Instance A, creating an infinite loop. You end up with duplicate comments or constant status changes bouncing between instances.
Quick fix: Quality integration tools have built-in loop prevention, which keeps track of the origin of updates in order to avoid creating an infinite loop. If you’re building custom integration or using basic tools, implement a sync marker—add a hidden field or tag that identifies sync- generated updates.
Unintended comment synchronization
Internal notes meant for your team’s eyes only sync to external partners or clients. Or every comment clutters both instances when only critical updates matter.
Quick fix: Exalate lets you sync only public comments while keeping internal notes private. You can filter by author—only sync comments from specific users. Use keyword filtering to sync comments containing certain phrases like “UPDATE:” or “CUSTOMER:” while ignoring routine discussion.
Attachment sync failures
Files attached to work items in one instance don’t appear on the other side, or they fail to sync without clear error messages. Teams miss critical logs, screenshots, or documentation.
Quick fix: Check file size limits because many platforms have maximum attachment sizes. Large files may need to be stored elsewhere and linked instead. Verify your integration tool actually supports attachment sync, as some basic tools don’t. Enable attachment sync explicitly in your configuration, as it’s often disabled by default for performance reasons.
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What are ITSM processes? ITIL version 4 recently went from recommending ITSM “processes” to introducing 34 ITSM “practices”. Their reasoning for this updated terminology is that “elements such as culture, technology, information and data management can be considered to get a holistic view of ways of working”. This more comprehensive approach better reflects the realities of modern organizations.
Here, we will not concern ourselves with nuanced differences in the use of practice or process terminology. What’s important and true, no matter what framework your team follows, is that modern IT service teams use organizational resources and follow repeatable procedures to deliver consistent and efficient service. In fact, leveraging practice or process is what distinguishes ITSM from IT.
Change management ensures standard procedures are used for efficient and prompt handling of all changes to IT infrastructure, whether it’s rolling out new services, managing existing ones, or resolving problems in the code. Effective change management provides context and transparency to avoid bottlenecks, while minimizing risk. Don’t feel overwhelmed by these and the even longer list of ITIL practices.
Problem management is the process of identifying and managing the causes of incidents on an IT service. Problem management isn’t just about finding and fixing incidents, but identifying and understanding the underlying causes of an incident as well as identifying the best method to eliminate the root causes.
Incident management is the process to respond to an unplanned event or service interruption and restore the service to its operational state. Considering all the software services organizations rely on today, there are more potential failure points than ever, so this process must be ready to quickly respond to and resolve issues.
IT asset management (also known as ITAM) is the process of ensuring an organization’s assets are accounted for, deployed, maintained, upgraded, and disposed of when the time comes. Put simply, it’s making sure that the valuable items, tangible and intangible, in your organization are tracked and being used.
Is the process of creating, sharing, using, and managing the knowledge and information of an organization. It refers to a multidisciplinary approach to achieving organizational objectives by making the best use of knowledge.
Is a repeatable procedure for handling the wide variety of customer service requests, like requests for access to applications, software enhancements, and hardware updates. The service request workstream often involves recurring requests, and benefits greatly from enabling customers with knowledge and automating certain tasks.
It’s simply not enough to have an ITSM solution – you need one that actually accelerates how your teams work.
Atlassian’s ITSM solution unlocks IT at high- velocity by streamlining workflows across development and operations at scale. Meaning what was once many siloed teams with different ways of working, are now integrated and much more collaborative than ever before.
ITSM benefits your IT team, and service management principles can improve your entire organization. ITSM leads to efficiency and productivity gains. A structured approach to service management also brings IT into alignment with business goals, standardizing the delivery of services based on budgets, resources, and results. It reduces costs and risks, and ultimately improves the customer experience.
