Table of contents
GitHub Integration Overview
The GitHub integration brings engineering activity into the WorkSights timeline. Commits, pull requests, code review comments, and branch events appear as structured entries in the Code category, alongside Jira activity, so engineering work reads consistently across providers.
WorkSights connects through a GitHub App installation with read-only permissions. Source code, diffs, and file contents are never received.
For connection steps, see GitHub Setup.
What WorkSights Receives
The GitHub integration brings engineering activity into the WorkSights timeline. Commits, pull requests, code review comments, and branch events appear as structured entries in the Code category, alongside Jira activity, so engineering work reads consistently across providers.
WorkSights connects through a GitHub App installation with read-only permissions. Source code, diffs, and file contents are never received.
What WorkSights Receives
WorkSights captures push events and the commits within them, pull request events including open, close, merge, edit, and review activity, PR review comments and issue comments, and branch and tag creation and deletion.
Repository access is set at install time. You can grant all repositories or a selected list, and activity only flows for granted repositories.
GitHub Discussions, wiki edits, releases, and CI workflow runs are not ingested. Historical activity is not backfilled: only events from install time forward appear.
How GitHub Activity Appears
All GitHub activity uses the Code category.
Commits appear as one activity per commit, titled GitHub Commit and Push. The activity detail includes the full commit message and lists of added, modified, and removed files. Merge commits are skipped by design, so a merge doesn’t double-count work already recorded on the branch’s commits.
Pull requests appear as GitHub PR opened: Fix login redirect on acme/webapp #142 and similar, with all events on the same PR grouped under one activity object so the timeline stays readable. Pushing new commits to an open PR does not create a separate activity: the matching commit’s title is promoted to ...and Sync instead.
Comments on pull requests and issues appear as GitHub Comment on {repo} #{n} with the comment body in the activity detail. Consecutive comments by the same user on the same PR or issue collapse into one activity.
Branch and tag creation and deletion appear as their own entries.
Bot activity never appears. Dependabot, CI bots, and other GitHub Apps are filtered before processing.
Commit Duration Tags
Code activities default to 10 minutes. Developers who want accurate durations can add a #time tag to their commit message, for example #time 45m or time 1h 30m. WorkSights sets that activity’s duration explicitly, capped at 10 hours, with the start time back-dated so the activity ends at the commit timestamp. This gives engineering teams passive time attribution without a separate time tracking tool.
User Mapping
GitHub identifies people by username and rarely exposes member emails, so automatic email matching is best-effort and most mappings are manual. This makes the Users tab the critical setup step. Unmapped users generate no activity, and events that arrive before mapping are not replayed.
Integration Page Overview
The GitHub integration page contains three tabs:
- Overview - Connection details and GitHub App installation information
- Users - GitHub usernames mapped to WorkSights users
- Connections - GitHub App scope and repository selection
Data Notes
The WorkSights GitHub App requests read-only permissions. WorkSights receives commit messages, file name lists, PR titles, comment text, and usernames. Source code, diffs, and repository contents are never received or stored. Access is limited to the repositories granted during installation.
Troubleshooting
No activity after connecting
Map GitHub usernames to WorkSights users in the Users tab. GitHub keeps member emails private, so most mappings are manual. Events that arrived before mapping are not replayed.
Some users have activity, others don’t
Those users are likely unmapped. Check the Users tab.
Commits missing from the timeline
Confirm it is not a merge commit, as merge commits are skipped by design. Confirm the repository is included in the installation grant: if you chose selected repositories at install time, ungranted repositories send no events.
Activity appears late
This is expected. Activity is processed in batches roughly every 20 minutes.
Every GitHub activity shows as 10 minutes
This is the Code category default duration. Add #time tags to commit messages for accurate durations, for example #time 1h 30 m.
No events arriving at all
The App installation may have been suspended or uninstalled on the GitHub organization. Check the organization’s Settings → GitHub Apps page. Reinstalling creates a fresh installation, so reconnect from WorkSights afterwards.
New organization members not appearing for mapping
Members sync runs daily. Members joining after install appear for mapping within a day.