Linear

Learn how to mention Linear issues or projects in Cycle docs, create issues in bulk, and see their status in Cycle follow the ones from Linear.

Looking to connect product delivery and discovery? You're in the right place. Here's everything you need to know about integrating Linear with Cycle.

Table of content

The big picture is that you can map any Cycle feature/bug with a Linear project/issue, mirroring its status in real time. No more double-status entries! The same for GitHub and Jira will follow soon.

Check out the magic in action here! 😍

The logic is that Cycle status category will follow Linear status category. We don't map 1-1 each status inside categories. Once entering a status category, the doc will get the 1st status in this category.

To be more precise, we don't track the project status in Linear, we track the status of the related Linear issues. Let's explore all possible cases:

100% of issues are "Todo" -> Cycle status is "Not Started"
At least 1 issue is "In progress" -> Cycle status is "Started"
All issues are "Done" -> Cycle status is "Shipped"
All issues are "Cancelled" -> Cycle status is "Canceled".

For the issues, we track their status category directly.

Make sure your delivery statuses in Cycle are in the "Started" category for a smooth process.

We recommend having only delivery statuses in the "In Progress" category and no things like "Ready to dev".

Installation

Follow these steps or click the interactive step-by-step tutorial below 👇

Open your workspace settings and go to "Integrations"
On the right, click on "Add new" and select "Linear issues"
Log in to your Linear account

Link existing Linear issues or projects in Cyle docs

Since you added the Linear integration, you probably have existing issues over there that aren't tied to a specific product requirements document (PRD) or product roadmap elements.

To get started, go to your feature, click on “Link” and choose a Linear project or issue. The issue/project doesn't exist yet? Create it right from here!

You can also link Linear issues from anywhere in Cycle, including your feedback docs 👀

Preview the status of issues linked to a project

Just hover the project and you'll see this.

Mention issues or projects in Cycle

You can easily mention existing Linear issues in Cycle docs using the "/Linear issues" command. You can search by name or by ID.

When you mention it, the Linear project/issue will be automatically linked to the current Cycle doc.

This will also add a comment in Linear with a link to the corresponding Cycle doc so you can easily have everyone on the same page.

Feels good to create Linear issues right from the spec, side-by-side with customer insights, right? 😎

Edit a Linear issue or project

To edit a mentioned issue, click the down-facing arrow at the left of the Linear issue to expand it. From here, you can edit its status and/or assignee.

Every edit, no matter which tool it was made from, is safely synced in Linear and Cycle at all times.

Create (multiple) Linear issue(s)

To create a single Linear issue, highlight any text in a Cycle doc and click on the Linear icon in the toolbar. You can also use the keyboard shortcut "⌘+3".

To create multiple issues at once, highlight a bullet list of issues to create, and use the Linear icon in the toolbar or the keyboard shortcut, ⌘+3.

Note: Creating Linear issues in bulk will only work on bullet lists.

Link Linear issues to feedback

Some of you told us you wanted to accelerate linking a piece of feedback to a known Linear issue/project.

👉 Our answer is: just paste the Linear URL into the Cycle feedback doc and we’ll do the rest.

Watch this in action in this video. 🎬

⚡️ Linear automations

Bring your Cycle x Linear setup even closer.

Did a piece of feedback reveal a bug or a new feature idea? Create the bug in Cycle, and automate the issue creation in Linear.

To set it up, go to your Settings > Integrations > Linear and click on Automations. For each Cycle doc type, you can decide whether you’ll automatically create a project or an issue.

⬇️ Linear import flow

We just saw how to create Linear docs when you have some data in Cycle. What about the opposite flow?

There are two major use cases:

At each release, you want to use Cycle’s built-in feature to write product marketing stuff and centralize everything to have a history. So at each release you want to import Linear issues/projects that have just been shipped.
You’re starting using Cycle and want to import your existing product backlog to prioritize it and map user feedback to it in Cycle.

Go to your Settings > Integrations > Linear and hit Import. Define which doctypes you want those projects/issues to be mapped to, then select the ones you want to import.