Testing Jira Portfolio on live environment

[nibeck]

We have many projects running with Jira. I would like to install and experiment with Portfolio in our production environment, so that I have live, changing project data.
 
Can I install/configure/use Portfolio without erecting the indivdivudl projects at all?
If yes, can I then back our/uninstall Portfolio without impact the existing Jira projects?

[Dave]

Hi,

You can install Portfolio in your current production it will pull data from your Jira and is basically a layer that sits on top of your projects to show you the high level project plan.

However, if you don't want it affecting the projects, you should never commit the uncommitted change back to your Jira (this is a button in the plan that will ask you to review and commit the changes once you're happy with it)

Clicking that button will take you to a screen to review and commit changes, so if you don't want to do any changes back to production you should not click on this.  Uninstalling portfolio will have no affect on your projects as long as you don't commit changes.  

You would also need to restrict the permission to Portfolio as well if you don't want users to start creating plans etc and committing back to Jira, but it can only be restricted by Groups so if its something for you to test yourself you will need to create a group just with you in it.

I would suggest to create a new user just for Portfolio testing, create a group "portfolio test" and add your new user to it.  The group should only have browse project permission (with no issue permissions this will stop any accidental commits back to Jira), give this group access to Portfolio in JIRA Administration -> Add on -> Manage add on -> Portfolio permission and remove all other groups.

You can then log in as this user, and create your portfolio plan for the project in question and experiment with it.

Although I would suggest to create a test environment with your production data, so you can experiment with Jira Portfolio in full instead without fear of affecting your production!

Hope this helps.