Bulk Clone Challenges: How to Avoid Errors and Maintain Relationships

[#1]

Picture this: you've just cloned an epic containing 50 user stories for your upcoming sprint. Everything looks good at first glance. Then you notice it. Every single story summary now starts with "CLONE -" and you're staring at hours of manual cleanup work.

Or maybe you're dealing with something even trickier: a complex project structure with multiple hierarchy levels that needs replicating across teams. But there's no straightforward way to clone issues in Jira when you're talking about epic-story-subtask relationships spanning several levels deep.

The Limitations of Jira's Current Cloning Capabilities

Don't get me wrong; Atlassian has made genuine progress here. They recently launched native functionality to clone an epic and its direct child items. Finally! But even with these improvements, significant gaps remain.

Here's what Jira's native cloning handles well:

• The new native feature tackles straightforward epic-to-story relationships effectively.
• You can clone an issue in Jira along with its immediate children, preserving basic parent-child links.
• Individual issue cloning remains solid with most fields and attachments copied.
• Basic bulk cloning capabilities are now available, though significantly limited.

But here's where things get frustrating:

• Multi-level hierarchies beyond two levels aren't preserved when you Jira clone all issues in an epic.
• Cross-project cloning breaks relationships, leaving you with manual reconstruction work.
• Zero customization control means you're stuck with automatic "CLONE -" prefixes and default field mapping.
• Every cloned issue requires manual cleanup afterward, turning time-saving operations into administrative burdens.

Common Problems Teams Still Face

Sound familiar? You're not alone. These issues create real headaches for teams trying to scale their Jira workflows efficiently.

• Epic-story-subtask relationships vanish during complex cloning operations. What should be a seamless hierarchy becomes a scattered mess of disconnected issues.
• Issue links disappear entirely. Dependencies, blockers, and "relates to" connections are gone. Your carefully mapped project relationships need complete reconstruction.
• Custom fields refuse to cooperate. Some copy over, others don't. The inconsistency forces manual field-by-field verification across dozens or hundreds of issues.
• Project tracking fragments immediately. Without preserved relationships, sprint planning becomes guesswork, and team coordination suffers.

The real kicker? Administrative overhead skyrockets while productivity plummets. Teams spend more time fixing cloning mistakes than actually working on projects.

3 Current Workarounds & Their Limitations

So what do teams actually do? Most cobble together creative workarounds that sort of work. Until they don't.

1. CSV Export/Import 

Export your issues, manipulate the data, then re-import. Great for basic duplication! But kiss goodbye to all issue relationships, comments, and attachments. You'll spend hours rebuilding connections manually.

2. Automation Rules 

Craft complex triggers that create issues based on templates. Pretty clever, right? Wrong. These rules count against execution limits, require skilled admin setup, and completely fall apart with multi-level hierarchies. Plus, maintenance becomes a nightmare as projects evolve.

3. Manual Cloning with Cleanup 

Teams systematically clone issues one by one, then painstakingly remove "CLONE -" prefixes and reconstruct relationships. It works, technically. But the time investment is astronomical, errors multiply quickly, and large datasets bring performance concerns.

Each workaround trades convenience for functionality. None solve the core problem: maintaining complex issue relationships during bulk operations.

How Specialized Apps like Epic Clone Solve These Challenges

Third-party solutions like Epic Clone tackle exactly what native Jira can't handle. These specialized apps address Jira's remaining bulk cloning limitations with targeted features:

Advanced Hierarchy Cloning

You can clone entire epics with multi-level child issues in one action. Epic-story-subtask relationships and links stay intact automatically, and custom field relationships are maintained across all levels without manual intervention.

Process Automation Integration

Our app’s new cloning REST API feature enables seamless integration with Jira Automation rules. This opens up possibilities for automated process workflows—trigger cloning operations based on project events, schedules, or external system changes.

Enterprise-Grade Capabilities

Background cloning runs up to 15 minutes without keeping dialogs open, making it perfect for large projects! 

Other enterprise-ready capabilities are:

• Cross-project flexibility with advanced field modification options so that you can automatically adjust assignee, components, fix versions, and epic names during cloning.
• Permission controls that restrict usage to specific projects and user groups, ensuring consistent governance across teams.
• Built on Atlassian Forge architecture, guaranteeing your data never leaves your Jira instance for maximum security.

When to Choose Apps Over Native Cloning

The choice is straightforward.  

For complex project structures requiring relationship and hierarchy preservation, and automation capabilities, apps like Epic Clone eliminate the frustration. For simple, same-project cloning operations and two-level hierarchies where manual cleanup is manageable, native Jira functionality might suffice.

Ready to clone issues without losing relationships or spending hours on cleanup?Try Epic Clone and discover what seamless bulk cloning actually looks like.