Jira comments are the backbone of effective communication, collaboration, and incident resolution in Jira. Whether you’re working on internal issues or customer tickets, comments are the most important channel to communicate internally, further understand an ongoing issue, post updates, and more.
Although simple and quite intuitive, Jira comments are more advanced than what they seem. In this article, we’ll share a couple of tips to help you make the most out of them. All the examples are based on Jira Service Management as the tool is designed for both internal and external use.
Set Up the Right Permissions
The first step to better work with Jira comments is to set up the right permissions. Here, you’ll basically specify: who can add, edit, and view comments. Failure to do so can cause unwanted confusion, letting the wrong people manage comments or access sensitive information.
To edit permissions at the project level, navigate to Project Settings > Access > Project Permissions. Here you can find a large array of permissions for projects, issues, worklogs and so on. We will only focus on comments all the way down. The view consists of two main columns: The permission, and user groups.

As a general rule of thumb, your comment permissions should mirror your overall Jira site settings. Additionally, when it comes to Jira Service management, you need to grant permissions to individuals and teams tasked with interacting with your customers including, of course, support agents or DEV.
Learn the Difference Between Internal Notes and Customer Replies
It’s easy to mix up internal notes with customer-facing replies, especially as the tickets and comments pile up. Internal notes, as their name implies, are meant for collaboration behind the scenes. Instead of having to communicate on other channels like Slack or email, your teams can use internal notes to discuss any issues, and schedule actions directly within the comment thread.

This is extremely useful as it avoids any unnecessary toggling between apps. While you’re adding internal notes, you can still manage who can view them by clicking the lock under the note.
On the other hand, customer replies are the comments that your customers can see and reply to. They should always be clear, concise, and professional.
Save Time with Canned Responses
As a support agent, chances are, you’ll be responding to a lot of similar support requests or relaying the same internal notes.
Typing the same response over and over again is counterproductive. Instead you can rely on canned responses. Basically, canned responses are comments that you specify beforehand to quickly respond to frequently asked questions, relaying internal notes, adding your signature, and more. They allow you to get better response times and reliable answers.
While writing a comment, select “Canned Responses”. First, you can choose whether the response is personal or shared with the service desk team. Then, you’ll be adding the name, and of course, the response. While adding your response, there are a host of variables you can choose from to further finetune your message. They include: current users, assignee, key, reporter, and more.

Canned responses should be backed by a thorough audit. First, make sure to identify frequently asked questions and any repetitive requests you might ask your customers. For example, asking to fill a customer satisfaction survey can be drafted as a canned response.
Additionally, as you audit past support tickets, you can identify the common notes left by your teams. If you find any notes that are omnipresent, you might want to add them as canned responses.
Leverage Jira Automation
As the tickets and comments pile up, you need an extra helping hand. And of course, comments are deeply integrated with Jira automation.
But first, let’s quickly explain some fundamentals. Jira automation consists of four main components: Rules, triggers, conditions, and actions. You create a rule that starts with a trigger, which depends on some conditions, to deliver a desired outcome.
You can create dedicated rules where comments can either be the trigger or the action.
Jira comments as triggers
In the below example, we’ve created a rule, that whenever a reporter adds a comment to an issue, a message will be sent within a Slack channel dedicated to that incident. I mean the possibilities are endless for the action. It can be a dedicated email or notification sent, a sub-task created, and more.

Automatically add Jira comments
Now, let’s flip the script and use comments as the action. For instance, imagine a scenario where an issue transitions from “Waiting for Customer” to “Awaiting Implementation.” You could set up a rule that automatically adds an internal comment for the development team.
This is a great way to ensure that everyone stays informed and streamline your workflows.

Summarize (and Even Write) Jira Comments with Atlassian Intelligence
At times, the back and forth between support and client, can last for months, and hundreds of comments and internal notes. In this case, you can opt to quickly summarize these threads, highlighting the most important points and action items.
Use these summaries to keep stakeholders in the loop without requiring them to engage in lengthy discussions. This is particularly useful for leadership updates or customer communications.
I’m not a huge fan of this one, but we’ve all been there. You can use Atlassian Intelligence to write specific prompts to help you respond to specific support tickets. But always remember, think of AI as your writing assistant only. The final comet should always be approved and enhanced by you afterwards.
Use Labels to Categorize Your Jira Comments
Labels, in general, are a great way to classify any type of content. And in the context of a JSM interaction, labeling comments helps you (and other involved stakeholders) organize comments effectively. For the time being, Jira doesn’t offer a built-in solution for labeling comments. And this has been the gap that we tried to explore when building our latest app: Comment Toolkit for Jira.
Simply put, the app helps you associate your comments with specific labels for better organization and classification. Since we don’t have much room to customize the existing comments view, all labels are shown in a separate one. This is where you can find all labels, create and pin your favorites.

You can also easily locate issues based on comments by running a JQL search. And of course run dedicated automation based only on comment labels.

Tagging comments with labels like “Urgent,” “Follow-Up Needed,” or “Resolved” can make it easier to track key points in discussions. Additionally, specific actions, like creating a dedicated PIR page in Confluence for pages labelled “Troubleshooting”, can streamline post-incident workflows and ensure critical information is captured and documented in one place.
To get the most out of comment labels, encourage your teams to define and document a clear set of labels to be used. This will help you avoid confusion and ensure effective collaboration.
Jira comments are much more than text boxes or simple messages. By leveraging their deep integration with Jira automation and Atlassian Intelligence, they can allow you to further streamline your support workflows, boost collaboration, and overall efficiency.
As is the case with any native Jira feature, you can always build on it with third party apps. And as mentioned earlier, Comment Toolkit for Jira is primarily designed to enhance your experience using comments. If you’re curious, make sure to give the app a try here and leave your feedback.