Jira Tips and Tricks Collection: Alternate Uses for the CSV Importer

[#1]

Tip Relates To

Application Type	Jira, Jira Service Management
Deployment Type	Cloud, Data Center
Audience	Application Administrators
Category	Importing, Custom Fields

Tip

You already know you can import Jira items in CSV format. But did you know you can also use the import wizard in two other helpful ways? You can (1) update information in existing Jira items and (2) import options for single and multi-select lists.

Explanation

Let’s say you need a select list with one option for every country in the world. Instead of pasting over 100 options into Jira manually, use the import wizard to add them in bulk. All you need is one existing work item and a properly formatted CSV file.

Steps

• Create a single or multi-select custom field. Ex: A custom field named "Country".
• Add the custom field to the desired screen(s) in your Jira space(s).
• Create one sample work item. Ex: DEV-1
• Create a CSV file in the following format:

Excel table view

Work item key	Summary	Country	Country	Country	Country	Country
DEV-1	Example item	Afghanistan	Albania	Algeria	Andorra	Angola

Comma-separated view

Work item key,Summary,Country,Country,Country,Country,Country
DEV-1,Example item,Afghanistan,Albania,Algeria,Andorra,Angola

Name the first column "Work item key", name the second column "Summary", and add a column called "Country" for each selection value to import. The above example will import the five countries listed.

• Finally, use the original CSV importer to import one or more values as custom field options.
  • Visit: Admin > System > External system import > Switch to the old experience > CSV

Notes:

• This can only done from the admin version of the CSV importer. (End users can import work items but not edit them.)
• The CSV file must contain a single work item and its "Summary".

Resources

• Bulk add custom field options with the Jira CSV Import tool – https://support.atlassian.com/jira/kb/how-to-bulk-add-options-to-custom-fields-via-the-jira-csv-import

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[Yatish Madhav]

Thanks @Rachel Wright - I didn't know about importing options for single and multi-select lists!

What permission would a user need to be able to do this? I just had a call literally a few minutes back and I really hesitate to give Jira Admin rights to a user that only needs to update options in a select list and a cascading select list.

Thanks
Yatish

[Rachel Wright]

Hi @Yatish Madhav, glad this was a timely tip for you! I used it myself recently to add 90 selection values to a multi-select field. Hopefully other admins will stumble upon this and not need to do it manually in the UI!

To answer your question, the ability to "edit" via import (and this action is essentially an "edit" of a single work item) is restricted to admins using the admin version of the importer. I'll add a note in my post above to make that clear. I found an old feature request to extend this ability to the end user importer, but it's closed as "Won't Fix." See: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRACLOUD-69295

Your instincts are good; I would not give a user application admin access for updating field options either. :)

For what it's worth, one of the reasons I love the "Components" field so much is that it's the only field a space admin can manage. I know that's not your use case though.

Another thing I've done in the past is connect the field to an external data source using a third-party app from the Atlassian Marketplace. Then the list can be managed by others outside of Jira.

Hope this helps!

Rachel Wright
Author, Jira Strategy Admin Workbook

[Matt Doar]

If I move an issue from XYZ-12 to ABC-14, and then import from a CSV that refers to XYZ-12, does a new XYZ-12 issue get created, or does ABC-14 get updated as intended? I don't recall if this problem still exists in Cloud

[Rachel Wright]

Hey @Matt Doar , what an interesting question! I would assume that Jira would not create a dupe item as IDs are supposed to be unique. Once XYZ-12 is moved to ABC-14, there should never be another XYZ-12 (even if the item is moved back to its original space.) I'm basing this assumption on my Jira Server days where I remember there being a database table that solely stored IDs for moved items.

BUT, we should never assume and we should never rely on my memory, right?! The best thing to do is try it (in a test environment, of course)! Here goes:

I created an item (we'll call it XYZ-12) and used the move command to move it to a different Jira space. We'll call the item's new ID ABC-14. Next, in my CSV file, I specified the original ID (XYZ-12) and ran the admin version of the importer.

Result: Item ABC-14 (new ID) was updated as expected.

It sounds like this might have been an issue in the past, but it looks like it may be working as expected in Cloud today.

Thanks for the fun challenge!

Rachel Wright
Jira Strategy Admin Workbook