Picture this: A critical alert appears in Slack at 2 A.M. The on-call engineer takes the time to determine if the issue is important enough. Without quick categorization, triaging can take time. The process of manual triaging and Jira creation is delayed, which creates a lag in informing stakeholders about essential status updates. Even when made, Jira and Slack are not synchronized, leading to delayed updates in Jira and to stakeholders. The result: slower resolution and a lack of real-time updates, impacting customer communication.

‍

Incident Management With Slack and Jira Using ClearFeed

ClearFeed connects Slack and Jira—without adding new channels or clutter. Here’s what it can do:

• Watch your existing Slack channels
• Turn messages into Jira issues, either manually or with automation
• Utilize AI to filter out the noise and highlight key messages. You control the AI with custom prompts
• Keep Slack and Jira in sync—comments, statuses, and messages stay updated both ways
• Show Jira progress directly in Slack
• Let users share private comments or choose what updates get posted back to Jira

In this post, we’ll guide you through the setup process.

‍

First Things First

This document assumes you have already signed up for ClearFeed. If not, head over to web.clearfeed.app and create a new account. Select Internal or External Helpdesk as your use case (depending on whether you are working with internal users or customers on Slack), connect to Slack, and skip adding any integrations (for simplicity).

‍

Setting Up a Basic Slack -> Jira Escalation Flow

To get started, we will establish a basic end-to-end integration, following the steps below:

Step 1: Connect Jira to ClearFeed

From the ClearFeed web app, go to Settings → Integrations. Find Jira and click Connect and go through the authorization process. This allows ClearFeed to create Jiras and post comments to them. At this point ClearFeed only supports Jira Cloud (and not Jira Server)

Step 2: Add Slack Channels to a Collection

To enable Jira ticket filing from a Slack Channel - it has to be added to a "Collection" in ClearFeed. From the ClearFeed Web Application - Go to the Inbox and select a Slack Collection. Click on the three dots (More Options) to add a new Slack channel.

‍

Step 3: Enable Jira Ticketing on the Collection

Go to the Slack Collection and select Settings from the right-hand navigation bar. Scroll down to 'Ticketing' and select 'Jira' from the dropdown as the platform.

In the Advanced Jira Settings, configure Project and Issue Types.

Step 4: (Optional) Whitelist Bots

By default, ClearFeed ignores Bot messages. If you want to create Jira tickets from Bot messages, those have to be explicitly whitelisted. From the ClearFeed web application, Go to Settings → Additional Settings and select one of the options below.

‍

Step 5: Test Jira Creation Out

In Slack, go to the request channel. You can create a Jira ticket by manually reacting to a message with the ticket emoji. Alternatively, if auto-ticketing is enabled, new messages generate tickets based on the defaults.

In Jira, verify that the issue appears in the correct project with the correct details.

Step 6: Private Comments and Jira Filing From Triage Channels

Each Collection of Slack Channels in in ClearFeed has a associated Triage Channel in Slack by default. This triage channel is where you can get a private view of the requests on the Slack channel and have advanced management capabilities on them. The name of the Triage channel is available from the Inbox > Click on Collection > Settings (top right) > Triage.

Two key capabilities in the Triage channel:

• Leave private comments (as shown in the Screenshot below)
• Create Jiras privately and link them to the Slack thread.

To file a Jira issue from a Slack message, click on More Actions and select File a JIRA issue. Next, to collaborate with your internal team and keep the discussion private, use a 🔒 emoji with your Slack message to reply.

‍

Automated Slack to Jira Filing With AI Categorization

Manual Jira filing is excellent, but there are two issues:

• Slack channels can be noisy, and escalation engineers may seek a way to filter out this noise.
• Automatic Jira ticket filing may be beneficial for a subset of messages (in addition to manual filing).

How to solve these problems? ClearFeed now offers two powerful mechanisms to allow engineers to focus on essential issues.

AI Filtering

With AI Filtering, users can configure ClearFeed to detect which messages qualify as requests and post them in the Triage channel. Messages that don’t meet the criteria are excluded and do not generate tickets.

By default, ClearFeed automatically filters out certain types of messages—such as greetings, acknowledgments, appreciation, and problem resolutions. Users can extend this filtering to include additional categories if needed. For details, refer to the AI-Filtering documentation.

Filing Jiras Automatically for Severe Incidents

Alternatively, users can leverage AI to identify key messages and automatically file Jira tickets from them. This works by:

• Setting up an automation that triggers on new messages
• Classifying each message using a configurable prompt
• Automatically filing a Jira ticket if the message meets the user’s criteria

For detailed steps, see the documentation.

‍

Automated Triage and Auto-Resolution using AI Agents

When humans report problems, the first level triage is often executing a runbook. Besides categorizing Slack messages, ClearFeed's AI Agents can also be used to automatically respond with answers from Confluence, Notion, Google Drive and more. AI Agents can plug into Jira and search for similar issues reported recently and relay them back to the user.

‍

Turn Slack Messages Into a Streamlined Jira Workflow With ClearFeed

Managing incidents across Slack and Jira is a common problem for Engineering and DevOps teams. The volume of alerts is often high, and identifying important alerts and problem reports, as well as taking prompt action, is essential for maintaining service uptime. 

ClearFeed offers a straightforward approach to managing incidents across Slack and Jira, providing automatic Jira filing, incident tracking in Slack, private collaboration, seamless syncing of Slack and Jira updates, and the utilization of AI to classify essential alerts and messages, flagging them for service teams. The use of AI Agents plugged into common knowledge sources and tools promises further automation of first level triaging and response.

Get started with a free trial for 14 days or book a personalized demo to see how we can help you streamline your Jira-Slack workflows.