Integrating Distributed Cloud Services with Your Ticket Tracking System

Published April 28, 2025 | Last modified April 25, 2025

Objective

If you are creating solutions based on F5® Distributed Cloud Services APIs, you need the ability to report and track issues found with your implementation. Distributed Cloud Console (Console) provides reporting and tracking capabilities using your ticket tracking system (currently, Jira is supported), for instance with discovered security events and vulnerabilities related to APIs. In order to take advantage of these capabilities, the first step is to integrate with your ticket tracking system.

This guide provides instructions on how to integrate an F5® Distributed Cloud Services site with a product management tool.

Prerequisites

The following prerequisites apply:

A Distributed Cloud Services Account. If you do not have an account, see Getting Started with Console.
An existing ticket tracking system supported by Distributed Cloud Services.

Integrate with Your Ticket Tracking System

Step 1: Log into Console and add a ticket tracking system.

Log into Console.
Click Shared Configuration.

Figure: Console Homepage

Click Manage > Ticket Tracking System.

Figure: Ticked Tracking System

Click Add Ticket Tracking System.

Step 2: Configure metadata and ticket tracking system access.

In the Name field, enter a name for the ticket tracking system.
Optionally, select a label and enter a description.

Figure: Ticket Tracking System Form

Select a ticket tracking system from the Provider drop-down menu. Currently, Jira is the only supported option.
Enter your Jira API token in the API Token field. If you need help with creating a Jira API token, you can find instructions at Jira Support.

Note: The Jira API token and username you enter will be used for all tickets created in the Console. This means all tickets created will appear to have been created by the owner of the token. Therefore it would be better to use an API token from a 'neutral' account dedicated for this purpose, rather than a specific user account.

Enter your Jira username (email) for your Atlassian account in the Account Email field.
Enter a valid hostname for the Atlassian organization.

Step 3: Save your ticket tracking system.

Click Add Ticket Tracking System to save your configuration.

Figure: Ticked Tracking System Integrated with Console

Remove Your Ticket Tracking System

Deleting a Ticket Tracking System from Console will remove all links to that Ticket Tracking System's existing tickets from Console. This action will not delete tickets in the Ticket Tracking System.

Step 1: Log into Console and go to the ticket tracking system page.

Log into Console.
Click Shared Configuration.

Figure: Console Homepage

Click Manage > Ticket Tracking System.

Figure: Ticked Tracking System Integrated with Console

Step 2: Remove a ticket tracking system from Console.

Figure: Remove Ticked Tracking System from Console

Click ... > Delete in the Actions column for the Ticket Tracking System you want to remove.
Click Delete in the confirmation dialog.

Create and Manage Tickets

Once you have a Ticket Tracking System set up, you can create tickets to track different issues reported in Console. (NOTE: currently only API vulnerabilities are supported).

Create a ticket for your issue.

Figure: Create a Ticket

Click Create Ticket. This will display the Create Ticket form in a right-sliding window.

Figure: Select your Ticket Tracking System

Select your Ticket Tracking System from the Ticket Tracking System drop-down menu.

Figure: Select a Project from your TTS

Select a project from your Ticket Tracking System using the Project drop-down

Figure: Select an Issue Type from your TTS

Select an issue type. Note that "subtask" issue types are not supported.
With this information, the Console will fill in details about the issue. You can leave the auto-generated content as it was created or modify the content to suit your needs.

Figure: Enter Issue Details

When you are happy with the ticket contents, click Create Ticket to complete the ticket creation process.
Once your ticket is created, the Create Ticket link will be replaced with a link to the issue in your Ticket Tracking System.

Figure: Issue Link with Details

Manage a ticket.

Once created, your ticket can be managed in your Ticket Tracking System. However, you can also return to the place in the Console where you created the ticket to see the current status.