Exporting backlog items to GitHub Issues

If your engineering team lives in GitHub Issues, send backlog items straight there. Pilea creates an issue in the repository you choose, and never imports anything from GitHub as feedback. When the issue is closed or reopened in GitHub, the Pilea item’s status follows.

What you’ll need

• Admin access in Pilea to connect the integration (only admins can change integration settings)
• A GitHub account that can install GitHub Apps on the organization or repositories you want to export to

How to connect GitHub Issues

1. In Pilea, go to Integrations in the sidebar under Data Sources.
2. Find GitHub Issues in the grid and click Connect.
3. Click Connect in the dialog. You’ll be redirected to GitHub to install the Pilea GitHub App.
4. Choose which repositories the app may access, and approve. Once you’re back in Pilea, you’ll see Connected successfully!

Credentials are encrypted at rest, and you can disconnect anytime from the integration’s config dialog.

ℹ️ Note: GitHub Issues connects at the organization level, so every workspace in your organization can export to it once it’s connected.

How to export a backlog item

1. Open the backlog item you want to hand off to engineering.
2. Go to the item’s Details tab.
3. Under Export to Issue Tracker, click Export to GitHub Issues.
4. In the export dialog, pick the Repository the issue should be created in.
5. Confirm, and Pilea creates the issue in GitHub.

Once an item’s been exported, it shows a link to the GitHub issue instead of the export button - one click to jump to it, and no accidental duplicates. A Remove link button detaches the item if you need to export again.

💡 Tip: Because you pick the repository per export, one Pilea backlog can feed several repos. Frontend bug? Export to the web repo. API request? Export to the backend repo. Same flow either way.

How status mirroring works

The Pilea GitHub App receives issue events for issues Pilea created. Closing an issue sets the Pilea item to Completed; reopening it sets the item back to In progress. Other issue changes are ignored.

What Pilea does and doesn’t do

• Does: create a GitHub issue from a backlog item, in the repository you pick, when you click export, and update the item’s status when that issue is closed or reopened.
• Doesn’t: import your existing GitHub issues as feedback, or modify issues on its own.

Troubleshooting

The repository I need isn’t in the export dialog The dialog lists the repositories the Pilea GitHub App was granted access to. Add the repository to the app’s installation on GitHub, or disconnect and reconnect GitHub Issues from the Integrations page and pick it during install.

I can’t change the integration settings Only admins can change integration settings. Ask a Pilea admin in your organization for help.

Looking to give Pilea’s AI read access to your code instead of exporting issues? That’s a separate integration - see the next article.

Next: Connecting GitHub repositories