Overview

Merge supports setting a ticket's status and priority when creating or updating tickets in Jira through the POST /tickets and PATCH /tickets endpoints, using either the normalized values or Jira's own native values (status_native/priority_native).

Nuances

POST /tickets

Priority is validated before the ticket is created — an invalid value returns an error immediately, and the ticket is not created.

Status works differently. Jira requires every ticket to be created at its project's default status — there is no way to assign a different status during creation. If status or status_native is included in the request, Merge creates the ticket and then makes one additional, best-effort request to transition it to that status:

{
  "model": {
    "status_native": "In Progress",
    "priority_native": "High"
  }
}

This is best-effort, not guaranteed. Jira doesn't expose which transition states are valid for a ticket before it exists, and each project can define its own workflow affecting the default status and which transitions are available. As a result, Merge can't know ahead of time whether the requested status is reachable.

If the resulting ticket doesn't have the status you requested, follow up with a PATCH /tickets request: it will either transition the ticket to the status you want, or return an error telling you which values are valid for status_native on that ticket.

PATCH /tickets

Unlike POST, both priority and status are validated before the update is applied. If either value is invalid — including a status with no valid transition available from the ticket's current status — the request returns an error rather than applying it partially.

When the rejected value is status_native, the error message includes the list of acceptable status_native values for that ticket, so you can correct the request immediately without guessing.

Using status_native for a specific status

status_native corresponds to Jira's own status name exactly as it appears in your project (for example, "In Progress"), for both POST and PATCH.

priority reverse-normalizes reliably to a native label, but status does not — Jira's status categories aren't one-to-one with native labels. For example, CLOSED can correspond to resolved, fertig, or done depending on the project's workflow, so Merge can't infer which one is meant from status alone. Use status_native with the exact label whenever you need to target one specific Jira status.

Permission errors

A failed status or priority update — on either POST or PATCH — can also be a Jira permissions issue rather than an invalid value. Jira returns a 404 with a message like "You cannot create issues in this project." when the connected user lacks permission to create or transition issues in that project. Worth confirming before assuming the value itself was rejected.

If you have any other specific questions when interacting with this API endpoint, please reach out to the Merge team at [email protected].