Connect Jira to Claude for AI-Powered Project Management

Connecting Jira to AI and querying for sprint updates, blocked work, and team performance metrics often means navigating dashboards, crafting complex filters, or writing JQL — tasks that slow down decision-making and distract your team from more important work.

But with CData Connect AI, it’s as simple as clicking a few buttons. You can connect Jira to Claude in minutes and start asking plain-language questions to surface real-time insights from your live project data.

In this blog post, we’ll show you how to integrate Jira with Claude AI using Connect AI — creating a seamless interface between your project data and Anthropic’s powerful, LLM-based assistant.

This article outlines how to bring together three essential technologies to unlock AI-powered project visibility:

• Jira – The project management and issue tracking tool

• Connect AI – The secure, real-time integration platform

• Claude – The natural language intelligence layer

Atlassian’s Jira

Jira is Atlassian’s leading platform for Agile project management and issue tracking. It’s the most widely adopted solution among software development teams, known for its scalability, flexibility, and robust customization options.

Jira empowers teams with sprint planning, epic and backlog management, custom workflows, project roadmaps, and seamless team collaboration. Its powerful feature set makes it the go-to platform for managing high-velocity software projects and complex enterprise initiatives.

CData Connect AI

CData Connect AI is a no-code enterprise integration platform designed specifically for AI-driven data access. It enables secure, governed, real-time connectivity to business systems using the open Model Context Protocol (MCP).

Unlike traditional ETL tools, Connect AI does not move or copy your data. It queries live data where it resides at the source, while maintaining your organization’s existing authentication and access controls.

This makes it the ideal bridge between enterprise tools like Jira and AI platforms like Claude — enabling natural language interaction with your data, without compromising security or compliance.

Anthropic’s Claude

Claude is a conversational AI assistant developed by Anthropic and powered by its proprietary large language models (LLMs), designed for safe, trustworthy, and context-aware interaction.

When integrated through Connect AI, Claude can securely interpret and query your live Jira data. Users can ask natural language questions about tickets, sprints, team velocity, and more — with no need for technical setup, SQL, or JQL.

Claude turns Jira into an intelligent interface for project oversight, automating insights, surfacing blockers, and enabling rapid, AI-powered decision-making.

Why connect Claude to Jira

Connecting Claude to Jira through CData Connect AI brings a transformative layer of intelligence to your project management workflows. Instead of digging through dashboards or building custom reports, teams can surface the insights they need — instantly and conversationally.

This integration empowers project managers, developers, and stakeholders with:

• Instant project status updates without switching tools or navigating dashboards

• Natural language queries to explore sprint velocity, team capacity, and burn-down progress

• Automated identification of blocked work and workflow bottlenecks across teams

• Cross-project portfolio analysis to monitor trends, dependencies, and performance across initiatives

• Faster reporting for executives and stakeholders, reducing time spent compiling status updates

With Claude, your team can spend less time filtering data and more time acting on it — accelerating delivery and improving decision-making.

Prerequisites and scope of connecting Jira to Claude

Before integrating Jira with Claude via Connect AI, it’s essential to understand what’s required for a successful setup. Clarifying your integration scope and confirming the right permissions ensures a smooth deployment and optimal performance.

To get started, you’ll need the following:

1. Jira access credentials with appropriate permissions to read issues, projects, sprints, and workflows

2. A Connect AI account with access to the dashboard and MCP configuration settings

3. Defined data scope based on your use case — such as project-level insights, sprint tracking, or cross-team reporting

4. Authentication method selected based on your Jira deployment:

   1. OAuth – Best for Jira Cloud environments

   2. API Token – Ideal for secure, programmatic access

   3. Basic Auth – Suitable for legacy setups

   4. SSO – For organizations using federated identity providers

By scoping the integration around your business needs — whether it’s tracking sprint velocity, identifying blockers, or generating stakeholder reports — you’ll ensure Claude can deliver targeted, contextual responses.

Once prerequisites are in place, the next step is configuring your Jira connection in Connect AI.

Set up your Jira connection in Connect AI

Properly configuring your Jira connection in CData Connect AI is the foundation for secure, real-time access to your project data. Whether you’re using Jira Cloud or a self-hosted instance, Connect AI simplifies setup with guided workflows and built-in enterprise-grade security.

Essentially, the integration process involves two steps:

1. Adding your Jira connection in Connect AI

2. Registering Connect AI as a remote MCP server within Claude

Once both are complete, Claude can begin querying your Jira data using natural language.

Add a connection to Jira in Connect AI

Follow these steps to connect your Jira environment within the Connect AI platform:

1. Log into the Connect AI dashboard and navigate to the Sources section on the left

2. Click + Add Connection, then select Jira from the list of available connectors

3. Enter your Jira instance URL — this could be a cloud-based or on-premises URL

4. Choose your authentication method, based on your Jira deployment:

   1. OAuth – Recommended for Jira Cloud environments

   2. API Token – Ideal for secure, direct programmatic access

   3. Basic Auth – Suitable for legacy or testing environments

   4. SSO – For organizations using federated identity providers

5. Complete the authentication flow and test the connection to confirm access
   

   
   

Troubleshoot your Jira connection in Connect AI

If the connection fails, double-check:

• Your credentials and token expiration

• That your user has sufficient read access

• That the Jira instance is reachable from Connect AI

Connect Claude to your Jira data

Enabling Claude to access your Jira data through the Model Context Protocol (MCP) creates a seamless, secure bridge between AI and your project data — all without moving or duplicating information. MCP is an open, standardized framework designed specifically to enable AI systems like Claude to interact with enterprise data while maintaining strict governance, access control, and compliance policies.

This architecture ensures that Claude communicates with Connect AI securely, respecting your organization’s authentication settings and permissions — delivering intelligent insights without compromising control.

Steps to connect Claude to to your Jira data:

1. Sign in to https://claude.ai or create a new account

2. Expand the left navigation menu

3. In the bottom-left corner, click your username and select Settings

4. In the Settings screen, select Connectors

5. Toggle to Organization connectors in the top-right corner

6. Click Add custom connector at the bottom

7. Enter a name (e.g., “Connect Cloud MCP”)

8. In the Remote MCP server URL field, enter: https://mcp.cloud.cdata.com/mcp

9. Click Add to save the connector

10. Click Connect and enter your Connect AI username and password
    

    

11. After connecting, click the three-dot menu next to the connector and select Tools and settings

12. Review available tools, enabling or disabling them based on your use case. You can also choose whether Claude should ask for permission before using each tool

13. Click Done to save your settings
    

    

Query the Jira data in natural language

With Claude connected to Jira via Connect AI, users can query live project data conversationally — without writing JQL, navigating dashboards, or setting up reports. This empowers teams to make fast, data-driven decisions directly from natural language interactions.

Steps to start querying:

1. On Claude.ai, click + New Chat in the left-hand navigation pane

2. In the new chat window, toggle Search and Tools to ensure the CData MCP connector is enabled
   

   

3. Begin typing your query using plain language

4. Allow connector permissions if prompted — Claude may request access to specific tools during your first query

Here are some example prompts to get started:

• “Quick burn-down analysis of the last quarter.”

• “What’s the status of ticket [TICKET NAME, e.g., PROJ-123]?”

• “Which tasks in the current sprint are still unresolved?”

• “Are there any blockers flagged in the Engineering project?”

• “Compare sprint velocity across the last three sprints.”

Through Connect AI, Claude understands Jira’s data model — including projects, sprints, workflows, issue types, and custom fields — by translating enterprise data into a structured format that Claude can interpret using natural language. It recognizes ticket IDs, field names, and labels, enabling flexible, intuitive queries without technical complexity.

Best practices:

• Use specific terms like sprint names, ticket IDs, or field labels for precise results

• Reference custom fields using their display names (e.g., “priority,” “severity”)

• Ask follow-up questions to refine or validate responses

• Use queries during meetings or status reviews to pull live data in real time

This natural language interface eliminates the friction of writing queries or switching tools, giving teams a faster, smarter way to access the insights that keep projects on track.

Scale and optimize your integration

After setting up your Jira-to-Claude connection, it’s important to maintain performance and plan for scale as your usage grows.

Troubleshoot common issues

• No data returned – Check user permissions and tool access in Claude

• Missing or incorrect results – Ensure tokens are valid and custom fields are mapped in Connect AI

• Slow responses – Monitor system load and optimize connector usage

• Auth errors – Confirm correct authentication method and scope settings

Best practices for scaling

• Use dedicated integration accounts for better control

• Monitor performance through Connect AI’s dashboard

• Set up feedback loops with users to improve accuracy

• Enable audit logging to maintain compliance and visibility

Maintain governance

• Assign connector ownership and review permissions regularly

• Align Claude tool access with team roles

• Use metadata and tags to organize and manage at scale

With a few simple strategies, your integration can scale smoothly — staying secure, efficient, and aligned with your organization’s needs.

Frequently asked questions

Talk to your Jira data today with Connect AI

Start asking questions of your Jira data — in plain language — in just a few minutes. CData Connect AI makes it fast and secure to bring LLM-powered intelligence to your issue tracking and project management workflows.

• Sign up for a free trial — no credit card required

• Set up your Jira connection and start querying with Claude in minutes

• Enterprise-ready options available for custom deployments, audit controls, and compliance

Ready to get started? Try Connect AI now