Overview of integrations between cloud and self-managed products

Application links exist in all Atlassian products that have the plugin system, which is a framework that lets you install and use plugins (apps). These products are:

• Cloud: Jira, Confluence

• Server: Jira, Confluence, Bitbucket, Bamboo, Fisheye, Crucible, Crowd

You can link all of these products together, but some of the integrations won’t provide any functionalities (e.g. Confluence Cloud to Confluence Server) unless you use custom or Marketplace apps that provide extra extensions.

There’s a fixed set of features made by Atlassian specifically for application links. Some examples are Jira issue links, Confluence macros that let you display issues on pages, or development panel that lets you see dev info from Bitbucket in Jira. We've described all these features and their behavior (especially changed from Server-Server integrations) on these pages.

The application links mechanism used in cloud and Data Center or Server is essentially the same, as it’s the same bundled plugin (although in different versions), so you could theoretically expect the same features as you already know from integrating just our self-managed products. However, because of differences in Atlassian cloud products, some of the features won’t be available and that’s not strictly related to application links. An example of that is Jira gadgets – although they could work, we’ve deprecated registering external gadgets in Jira Cloud, so you won’t be able to add Jira Server gadgets to Jira Cloud (but it works the other way round).

Application links connect your products directly, so they need to be able to reach each other. Since Atlassian cloud products use different set of IPs, you’ll need to allowlist all of these IPs in your network to allow incoming communication.

This can be solved by using application tunnels. It's a feature that lets you forward application links from Cloud to Server in a secure way, without opening your network for any incoming connections.

As for outgoing communication, your self-managed products will need to be able to reach your cloud products, although you most likely already have that enabled in your network.

To learn about the requirements for direct links, see Create application links.

To learn how to use application tunnels to avoid these requirements, see Connect to self-managed products with app tunnels.

These pages are here to summarize what’s available when integrating cloud and self-managed products. If you’d like to learn more about application links, like OAuth communication used, troubleshooting information, version mapping, and other technical details, see the Application links documentation.

It really depends on whether an in-product integration has been created between the products you’re using. These integrations have been created by different products at different times to meet their specific needs, and there isn’t a common ground like the plugin system for application links.

For a list of available in-product integrations between cloud and Data Center or Server, see Configure in-product integrations.

In-product integrations always use outgoing communication from your network. It’s reaching either cloud products directly or some APIs exposed on the cloud side.

No incoming connections are required, so if you can’t use application links because of network restrictions, you can use just in-product integrations if they provide the features you’re interested in.