The motivation behind the latest GitHub integration updates

You may have noticed some changes to our GitHub integration recently. We’d like to take a moment to explain what motivated these updates.

We built our initial GitHub integration over two years ago with the intention of helping you connect Tracker stories to your code. That motivation remains the same! We want you to easily connect your code to stories.

We evaluated the usage of the GitHub integration and determined that there were several ways to improve it:

1. We removed the need for individual users to connect to GitHub. Our original integration required an extensive permission set so that we could confirm you had the right level of access to make changes in Tracker and GitHub. Moving forward, your ability to access GitHub content will be determined by your GitHub permissions.

2. We recognized that the GitHub integration and ability for users to add code manually had duplicate functionality, which was confusing. We decided to simplify the flow of information. Now, simply add the story ID to your branch name in GitHub or your command line, and all branches, PRs, and commits will post on the Tracker story.

3. We’ve changed our integration to a webhook, instead of an oauth app connection. We made this decision for two reasons. First, you now have more granular control over which events are sent to Tracker. Second, we can extend our GitHub integration functionality to GitHub Enterprise users. It also lets us move more quickly toward building out more source code management integrations, including BitBucket and GitLab.

We hope these changes make connecting your code to Tracker stories quicker and easier. Please see answers to FAQ’s below:

How do these changes affect existing GitHub integrations?

All GitHub integrations that have been created prior to this change will continue to work without any changes or updates. You don’t need to do a thing - the integration will continue to work as expected.

What do I do if I need to update my existing integration?

To update an existing integration, follow our steps for adding a webhook to an org or repo in our Help Center article here.

Why isn’t my secret token showing during setup?

The GitHub integration must be saved in order to receive the secret token. Both the URL and secret token are needed in order to set up the webhook on GitHub.

Who has permissions to set up a GitHub integration?

You must have GitHub Admin permissions to set up a webhook on a repo or org, more on that here.

If you have any feedback or questions, please let us know by using the Provide Feedback widget under Help in Tracker, via Twitter, or by emailing us.

Stay tuned for an update on the GitHub Enterprise integration, as well as, additional SCM integrations coming soon!