Cinnamon bread. Cheez Whiz. Green olives.

These are the sole ingredients of a potluck offering that’s popular in some parts of Minnesota and North Dakota. Some people use breads with a little less flair, like pumpernickel or rye, but the cinnamon version has its die-hard fans, especially in Roseau, Minn...

“When you go to our local grocer — we only have one in town — on the Super One display is fresh baked, in-house cinnamon swirl bread with a pyramid of Cheez Whiz displayed next to it,” said Sinnamon Krings, Roseau promotions director. “To someone not from here you might wonder why but to a local it’s as common as peanut butter and jelly.”

Those who love the combination are often nostalgic about it and remember eating it as a kid after church services or funerals. In some circles, it’s called “funeral bread.”..

The company debuted Cheez Whiz in 1952, first in Britain, where Kraft marketed it as an easy way to make the sauce for Welsh rarebit.  When the product landed on U.S. supermarket shelves the next year, Kraft already had the perfect way to introduce it to shoppers — on the company-sponsored television program Kraft TV Theatre... On Sept. 8, Sasser wrote that during that week’s program, Kraft TV Theatre demonstrated a recipe that is very close to funeral bread: Melba toast spread with Cheez Whiz and topped with sliced olives. Could this be the dish’s origin?

Now here's some entirely pleasant footage. Red pandas are not at all related to giant pandas, and the only thing they have in common is eating bamboo. Giant pandas are bears. Red pandas had the name first. 

Since launching the public preview of GitHub Copilot coding agent for Jira, we’ve been listening closely to customer feedback. Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to try the integration, report issues, and share suggestions—your input has directly shaped the improvements we have shipped.

What’s new

Improved onboarding and setup guidance

Based on feedback from early adopters, the integration now provides better guidance, including clearer error messages and steps to resolve common configuration issues. We’ve also extended our documentation to more comprehensively cover integration prerequisites.

Model selection

You can now choose which AI model Copilot coding agent uses for your task, directly from Jira. Simply indicate the model you wish to use in your comment when mentioning @GitHub Copilot. For more information on available models, see Supported AI models in Copilot.

Jira ticket references in pull requests

We now instruct Copilot coding agent to include your Jira ticket number in the pull request title and branch name. The pull request will also include a link back to the originating Jira ticket and the Jira context provided to the agent. This makes it easier to trace work from Jira through to your codebase.

Confluence context via MCP

Provide Copilot coding agent with access to your Confluence pages by configuring the Atlassian MCP server with a personal access token (PAT). This allows the agent to reference design documents, specifications, and other context stored in Confluence when working on your Jira issues. For setup instructions, see Extending Copilot coding agent with MCP.

Getting started

To get all these updates, ensure you have the latest version of the GitHub Copilot for Jira app from your Atlassian instance.

• Atlassian Marketplace listing
• Documentation about integrating Copilot coding agent with Jira
• Share feedback or access integration support

The post GitHub Copilot for Jira — Public preview enhancements appeared first on The GitHub Blog.