How to achieve a GitLab Jira integration

What this post added

This post details the technical steps and configuration options for integrating GitLab with Jira. It covers pre-configuration options (service templates vs. project-level configuration), authentication methods for Jira Server (basic auth) and Jira Cloud (API tokens), and the specific fields required in GitLab's integration settings (Web URL, Jira API URL, Username/Email, Transition ID). It also explains how to reference Jira issues in commits and merge requests, and how to automatically close Jira issues using trigger words in commit messages. The post also touches upon the Jira DVCS configuration and GitLab account configuration for self-managed and cloud instances.