Integrate with GitHub Issues

If you use GitHub Issues to track feature development, you’ll appreciate being able to push prioritized features straight from Productboard. Your engineering team can continue managing their development pipeline in GitHub while product managers enjoy the flexibility of Productboard for understanding user needs, prioritizing what to build next, and rallying everyone around the roadmap.

In this article:

• Summary of benefits
• Setting up your GitHub integration
• Verify Productboard has access to your GitHub account
• Pushing features and subfeatures to GitHub
• Navigating between Productboard and GitHub
• Multiple Repositories
• Troubleshooting GitHub
• Current limitations

Summary of benefits

• Automatically sync the following fields between Github and Productboard and have them update in real time:
  • Name
  • Description
  • Feature tag/label
  • Status (open/closed)

Setting up your GitHub integration

To set up the GitHub integration, users must have the admin role in Productboard and repository admin role in GitHub.

1. Click your workspace name in the top right, select Integrations, then select the [+] icon beside GitHub.
2. Select authorize.
3. Use the dropdown to select the correct repository associated with your GitHub account.
4. Decide whether feature tags in Productboard should sync with GitHub labels.

Verify Productboard has access to your GitHub account

1. Under Personal Settings > Applications > Authorized OAuth Apps: ensure that Productboard is listed.
2. Under Organization Settings > Third-party access: ensure that Productboard is listed.

Pushing features and subfeatures to GitHub

When a feature or subfeature is ready for development, push it into GitHub in one of several ways:

• Select the feature or subfeature's name to open its details in the side pane. Besides GitHub select Push.
• Add the special GitHub task column to your board (using the column configuration bar at right). Select the Push button that appears alongside the feature/subfeature in question.

All features and subfeatures pushed to GitHub become issues.

It's possible to push subfeatures into GitHub without pushing their parent feature.

Navigating between Productboard and GitHub

When features/subfeatures are pushed to GitHub, the Productboard URL will automatically be added to the issue.

In Productboard, you can click the task status of a feature that has been pushed to GitHub to navigate to that issue.

Multiple Repositories

If you have multiple GitHub repositories, you can create multiple integrations.

For each integration, a new task column will automatically be created. Rename the field/column associated with each GitHub integration so you can keep them all straight!

Troubleshooting GitHub

When I push a feature from Productboard to GitHub, nothing happens... but it works for my colleague. What's going on here?

A: The user who sets up the integration in Productboard has to be a GitHub repository owner or organization admin.

Current limitations

• It is not yet possible to import GitHub issues into Productboard as features using this integration. However, it is possible to use Zapier to import new issues from GitHub.
• It is not yet possible to link Productboard features with existing GitHub issues. Links can only be made by pushing features from Productboard to GitHub.