A Practical Guide to Using GitLab Integrations

GitLab isn’t just a place to host code. Rather, it’s built to bring your entire workflow together.

One of the biggest strengths is how easily it connects with other tools you already use. These GitLab integrations expand core features and help teams manage everything from planning to deployment in one place.

Whether you’re on the Free, Premium, or Ultimate plan, and whether you use SaaS, Self-Managed, or Dedicated version, you have access to integrations that can fit right into your setup.

And with properly rendered GitLab professional services, those integrations will be a success right off the bat.

How GitLab Integrations Are Handled

The platform gives you plenty of control over how integrations work across your organization. You can manage them at the instance, group, or project level. That means you can set broad defaults for everyone or fine-tune settings for specific teams and projects.

Outlining Group Settings

In larger organizations, group defaults can save a lot of time. Only users with the Owner role can set or edit these, and once enabled, they automatically apply to all subgroups and projects that haven’t been configured yet.

If a group Owner later updates these default settings, any projects or subgroups using the inherited configuration will instantly reflect those updates. It’s a convenient way to keep everything consistent without having to update each project one by one.

Removing a default setting is just as simple. The Owner can open the integration, select Reset, and the inherited defaults will be cleared from all linked projects and subgroups.

Managing Project-Level Integrations

To apply a default GitLab integration at the project level, a user needs at least the Maintainer role. The process is just as straightforward:

1. Open the project.
2. Go to Settings → Integrations.
3. Pick the integration you want.
4. Select Use default settings.
5. Check Active.
6. Fill in any required fields.
7. Hit Save changes.
8. If you prefer to tailor the integration to that project, choose Use custom settings instead.

Maintainers can manage project integrations this way, while group-level integrations require the Owner role. This flexibility lets each team decide whether to stick with organization-wide settings or adjust them to match their specific workflow.

Types of GitLab Integrations

The platform connects with a variety of tools, covering nearly every part of the software development and delivery process. Managing code? Tracking tasks? Deploying to the cloud? In any case, there’s a good chance you’ll find a GitLab integration that fits right in with your workflow.

CI/CD Tools

If your team already uses an external CI/CD system, GitLab can work right alongside it. You can link tools like Atlassian Bamboo, Buildkite, Drone, Jenkins, or JetBrains TeamCity to run pipelines outside while keeping everything visible in one place. It’s a flexible setup that lets teams stick with the systems they know while still taking advantage of GitLab’s project structure and visibility.

External Issue Trackers

Some teams prefer to manage issues in specialized tools. GitLab supports that too. You can connect to popular issue trackers such as Jira, Bugzilla, Redmine, and YouTrack, or even tools like ClickUp and other custom systems. Once linked, the platform adds quick-access links to these platforms right in the project’s sidebar, so you can jump between code and issues without losing context.

Event Notifications

Staying informed is easy with notification-oriented GitLab integrations. You can send real-time updates about project events (like new commits, merge requests, or pipeline results) to messaging channels your team already uses. The platform works smoothly with Discord, Google Chat, Mattermost, Microsoft Teams, and Telegram, keeping everyone in the loop without having to constantly check the dashboard.

Stores and Registries

The platform also connects with app stores and dependency managers. You can automate builds and releases to Apple App Store Connect or Google Play, manage container images through Harbor, and link Packagist to keep your PHP dependencies up to date. These GitLab integrations help bring deployment and dependency management closer to the development process itself.

External Wikis

For documentation-heavy projects, you can link directly to external wikis, such as Confluence Workspace, placing that knowledge right in the sidebar where your team can find it fast.

Other Key Integrations

But dev tools aren’t the only thing you can integrate GitLab with. You may also go with Asana for task management, Datadog for monitoring and tracing pipelines, and major CSPs, such as GCP, Azure, and AWS, for deployment and infrastructure management. Together, they make GitLab a central hub for your entire workflow.

5 Benefits of GitLab Integration in the Real World

When companies bring GitLab integrations into their daily workflows, they don’t just gain convenience. What they see is real, measurable improvements in speed, visibility, and automation.

These stories show how different organizations have transformed the way they build, test, and deliver software.

Benefit #1: Speed and Security

Hilti’s engineering teams rely on GitLab for source code management, CI/CD, and security dashboards, all tightly connected with Jira, Docker, and AWS. Every part of their setup—runners, build artifacts, and deployments—runs on AWS and scales through Kubernetes clusters.

Before, deploying code could take up to three hours. Now, it’s down to 15 minutes. Developers get feedback on merge requests on the spot, including automatic security scan results that help catch issues sooner. Feedback loops have sped up from six days to three. Code quality checks are now more frequent, too, jumping from six times every three months to twice a week.

This combination of automation and visibility didn’t just make development faster. It made collaboration smoother and security a natural part of the process, not an afterthought.

Benefit #2: Transparency and Infrastructure as Code

Anchormen needed a platform that could pull several tools together—AWS, Azure, Docker, Jira, and SonarQube—without slowing development down. Their solution was to connect Jira with GitLab by linking every commit message to a Jira ticket number.

This simple habit created a clear trail between the work in GitLab and the corresponding tickets in Jira.

That traceability improved team visibility right away. Developers can now revisit any Jira ticket and instantly see the commits, changes, and discussions tied to it.

Anchormen also brought Infrastructure as Code into their workflow by integrating AWS and Azure. Using CloudFormation templates within GitLab’s CI/CD pipeline, infrastructure changes follow the same GitFlow process as application code.

Updates are automatically pushed to AWS, keeping environments consistent. And with SonarQube added into the CI/CD mix, code inspection now happens automatically.

Benefit #3: Productivity and Standardization

At Trendyol, the platform became the foundation for a unified, end-to-end development process. The results speak for themselves: a 30% boost in developer productivity and a drop in new developer onboarding time from 10 days to 8 days.

Trendyol runs GitLab alongside LDAP, Jira, Slack, and Kubernetes, creating a single environment that handles everything from communication to deployment. GitLab’s integration with Kubernetes plays a key role here, letting teams roll out new features and updates faster than before.

They also rely on simple, YAML-based pipeline configurations to keep builds and deployments consistent. That standardization helps maintain quality while allowing teams to move quickly.

Benefit #4: Automation and Scale

For Kiwi.com, automation was the goal, and GitLab delivered. The company needed a way to manage containers at scale, so they connected it with Docker, making containers the core of their software packaging process.

From there, they automated nearly everything: deployments, dependency management, and license scanning. The result? About 1,500 deployments per month.

GitLab’s Kubernetes integration keeps everything running smoothly, and Terraform within GitLab CI makes sure infrastructure changes are tracked, reviewed, and stored in one central place.

That single source of truth helps Kiwi.com stay agile while maintaining strict standards for compliance and scalability.

Benefit #5: Exploring Multi-Cloud Solutions

At ANWB, out-of-the-box GitLab integrations are helping teams experiment across multiple cloud providers. They currently run on AWS and Azure, but are exploring Google Cloud Platform (GCP) products through GitLab’s Knative integration.

Having tied GitLab directly into their Kubernetes workflows, ANWB is testing and managing workloads across clouds with ease. For them, Kubernetes isn’t a deployment method but a strategic direction.

And GitLab integrations are helping them take that step confidently.

Detailed Example: The Asana Integration

The Asana integration helps teams connect their code with their task management system, giving developers and project managers a clear view of what’s happening across both tools.

It’s available on all tiers—Free, Premium, and Ultimate—and makes tracking work from idea to completion a lot easier.

What It Does

Once the integration is enabled, the platform automatically scans commit messages for Asana task references. These can appear as a full task URL (like https://app.asana.com/1/a/project/b/task/c) or as a simple task ID with a hash symbol (for example, #c).

When GitLab spots one of these, it adds the commit message as a comment on the matching Asana task. That means anyone viewing the task in Asana can immediately see which commits are linked to it, no extra work needed.

You can also close Asana tasks straight from your commits. To do that, include a trigger word before the task ID in your commit message. Supported words include fix, fixed, fixes, fixing, close, closes, closed, or closing (for example, close #c). Once the commit is pushed, Asana automatically marks the task as complete.

This simple link helps reduce manual updates and keeps project boards accurate without extra overhead.

How to Set It Up

Getting the Asana integration running only takes a few minutes. First, generate a personal access token in Asana: that’s what the platform will use to connect to your account. Then follow these steps:

1. In the left sidebar, go to Search or go to and open your project.
2. Select Settings → Integrations.
3. Find and click Asana from the list of available integrations.
4. Make sure the Active toggle is turned on.
5. Paste your Asana personal access token into the configuration field.
6. (Optional) To limit the integration to certain branches, list them in the Restrict to branch field, separated by commas.
7. (Optional) Click Test settings to confirm that the connection works.
8. Finally, select Save changes.

Once configured, every relevant commit will automatically sync with Asana, giving both developers and managers a full, real-time picture of progress.

Who We Are

Cloudfresh is an official, certified GitLab Partner (tiers: Select & Professional Services).

We step in wherever you need support, from procuring licenses and testing performance to configuring integrations and advising on GitLab Flow best practices.

Our focus is on:

• All instances, whether you’re running on the SaaS, GCP, Azure, AWS, or on-prem version.
• Migration to GitLab from other systems or implementing it from scratch.
• Groups, users, roles, and permissions, so your structure makes sense.
• Planning tools, connecting your roadmap to real work.
• CI/CD pipelines, designed to fit your flow.
• Runners, tuned for consistent builds.
• GitLab Duo AI, from setup to everyday use.
• Security and permissions features, adapted to your needs.
• All types of GitLab integrations, so everything works together.

Just fill out the short form below to get started.