GitLab Issues

Key Features and Benefits

When integrating GitLab with Agile planning tools, you will be able to:

• Ensure your teams are aware of the progress of relevant issues, regardless of which tool they're using
• Facilitate automated communication within teams by allowing inter-team communication and collaboration with up-to-date information of the issue — represented in both systems
• Allow GitLab labels to flow to your Agile planning tool of choice — helping organize your teams' workflow
• Let developers communicate back and forth via comments

So what does this really mean in terms of the impact it will have on your organization? 

• Improves inter-team collaboration and breaks down team silos.
• Supports cross-tool traceability and reporting, removing the need for manual processes and spreadsheets.

Common Integration Patterns

• Sharing Stories and Defects between Dev and Test
• Providing Developers with Early Visibility into Requirements
• Agile Planning SLI Pattern: Issues are created in GitLab, but Agile teams want to have finer-grained control over planning and scheduling of these issues. Issues are brought into Agile planning tools so that this is possible.

Demo Videos

Community and Enterprise Editions

Planview Hub supports GitLab Community Edition and GitLab Enterprise Edition.

Minimal User Permissions & Hub User

We recommend that you create a new user within your external tool, to be used only for your Hub integration. This is the user information you will enter when setting up your repository connection within Planview Hub. By creating a new user, you will ensure that the correct permissions are granted, and allow for traceability of the modifications that are made by the synchronization. 

In general, your user account should have sufficient permissions to create, read, and update artifacts in your repository. However, depending on the use case, your user may need different permissions. For example, if you are only interested in flowing data out of your repository, your user may not need to have full CRUD access, as the 'create' and 'update' permissions may not be needed.

Your user should have a secure password or token. Please be aware that Hub will not allow you to save a repository connection utilizing a weak password/token, such as 'tasktop.'

See GitLab help documentation to learn how to create a custom user in GitLab Issues.

List of minimal user permissions:

Planview Hub 18.2 and later 

• The user must be an admin user or project owner for that GitLab instance.

Planview Hub 17.3 - 18.1 

• The user must be an admin user for that GitLab instance.

Note: If using a normal user for your Gitlab repository connection, you will need to set up a person reconciliation extension.

Connecting to the GitLab Issues Repository

Token Authenticator

Required Fields:

• Location/Connection URL
  • Example Format: http://server.gitlab.com
• Personal Access Token
  • The personal access token associated with the GitLab user you wish to use for your integration.
  • See GitLab help documentation for instructions. 

Optional Fields:

• Throttling Settings: This field indicates the number of API calls that can be made per minute. See details here.
  • Note: This field should only be set under the guidance of customer care as the ideal value is highly dependent on each customer's unique environment. 
• Connection Security: If checked, insecure connections to this repository will be allowed. See details here.

SSO Authentication

Additionally, GitLab Issues supports the following SSO implementations:

• Script (HTTP cookies)
• X.509 Certificate

Learn more about how to set up your repository in Planview Hub here. 

Rich Text

The GitLab Issues connector supports displaying and synchronizing basic Markdown syntax, but most GitLab Flavored Markdown is not supported.

Supported in Planview Hub 22.2.5+:

• Tables
• Strikethrough

Currently Unsupported:

• Fenced Code Blocks
• Checkboxes

Person Reconciliation

For field based (advanced) person mapping scenarios, you can choose to use any of the following person object fields.

• Available fields: person-email, id, name, username, state
• Default: name

The default person ID is your log in username. 

Note: Due to current GitLab API limitations, searching for users on GitLab On Demand by display name or email may experience slow performance. Customers who utilize Person Reconciliation scripts should preferably map users by username, then email (if necessary), to avoid such issues.

Learn more about how to configure person reconciliation in Planview Hub here.

Full Scan

In general, a full scan is not required to synchronize updates from this repository. However, it is possible that some read-only fields may require a full scan. Please consult with customer care for additional details.

Special Features Supported

Supported Work Items

Learn about the difference between containers and work items in Planview Hub here. 

Supported Containers

Learn more about containment in Planview Hub here.

Functional Limitations