Summary

This article discusses how Jira Labels sync with Jira Align as Tags, including covering limitations that can cause issues

As  Jira Labels are synced as Tags in Jira Align, the rest of this article uses 'labels' to mean Jira Labels and 'tags' to mean Jira Align Tags

Environment

Jira Align

Solution

The following points cover the operation of the Label ↔ Tag sync

• Jira Labels are synced birectionally to Tags in Jira Align. This behavior has no optional configuration settings and is always enabled.

• Certain Jira fields (in Jira Issues) automatically become Tags in the details of the associated Jira Align Work Items. These fields include:
  • Jira Key (Tag always created on first sync of Jira Issue)
  • Release Version (Tag created if/when a Release Version is linked to the Jira Issue)
  • Sprint Name (Tag created if/when a Sprint is linked to the Jira Issue)
• Automatically created Tags are not seen in Jira as Labels, they are only seen in Jira Align
• Automatically created Tags use the value of the field prefixed by j: as shown in the below example for a Jira Key.
  For sprints and releases the value is the name of the sprint or release. If the name contains a space, then a space is used in the resulting Tag.
  
     
• Labels cannot contain spaces, Tags can contain spaces
• Tags created manually in Jira Align will create Labels.
  • If a manually created Tag contains a space, then the Label will show the space replaced by the underscore "_" character and during the next sync from Jira to Jira Align, the Tag in Jira Align will be adjusted to show the underscore character
• Labels created manually in Jira don’t receive the j: prefix when they become a Tag
• Do not manually create either Tags or Labels that begin with j:  - they will not sync correctly 
• Avoid text conflicts between a manually created TAG or Label and an Automatically created Tag
  • Such conflicts can result in the Label or Tag being removed during later sync operations
  • If a manually created Label uses the exact same text (either with or without the j: prefix) as an automatically created Tag then it will not be created as a Tag in Jira Align and the next sync from Jira Align to Jira will remove that label from the issue in Jira
  • Jira Align blocks the manual creation of a Tag with the same name as an existing tag, however if a manually created Tag uses the exact same text, as an automatically created Tag, but without the j: prefix, then it will initially create the Label in Jira, but subsequent sync operations from Jira to Jira Align and then from Jira Align back to Jira will remove the Tag and Label from both sides.