How can I bulk change "epic link" to "is parent of" link?

[Cornelius Dufft]

- I have about 1.000 Epics and need to move them to issuetype "Feature", to comply with our business outline.

- The Epics have several Stories and/or Tasks linked per "Epic link" under it.

- When I try to move an Epic to issuetype Feature, the "Epic link" gets lost. I am loosing the link to the previously linked Stories and Tasks. But the "is Parent of" links (like all other link types) are retained as intended.

- I think if I could automatically (bulk change or admin change) change the "Epic link" of these Epics-Stories/Tasks to "is Parent of" links first, these links would be retained and I could safely move the issuetype Epic to Feature later because

How can I bulk change "epic link" to "is Parent of" link?

[Trudy Claspill · Accepted solution]

Hello @Cornelius Dufft 

Welcome to the community.

The Bulk Change feature is not able to do what you want. However, you could do this with an Automation Rule. Are you familiar with the Automation feature?

https://support.atlassian.com/cloud-automation/docs/jira-cloud-automation/

Automation Rules are limited in how many issues they can process in a single execution, so you would likely have to do this in batches. Refer to this

https://support.atlassian.com/cloud-automation/docs/automation-service-limits/

There are also limitations on how many executions of Automation Rules you can have for free, so you might want to also review that before starting the process to ensure you are not going to go over your limit. Refer to this.

https://support.atlassian.com/jira-cloud-administration/docs/explore-jira-cloud-plans/

https://support.atlassian.com/cloud-automation/docs/how-is-my-usage-calculated/

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Cornelius Dufft -- Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

Yes, and...to Trudy's answer:

This form of change can be quite disruptive, as you note for the change of issue type.  This is one reason Jira as a special operation for this: Move.  I encourage you to find a way to backup the information before starting, as that may help with any recovery you need to do. 

Please consider working with your site admin to perform a site backup, or to export the epics and their child issues.  The latter would provide you the data needed to later reconnect the children to the moved parents using issue-import if something goes poorly in the conversion.

Kind regards,
Bill

[Cornelius Dufft]

Hi @Trudy Claspill , @Bill Sheboy , thanks, that makes much sense.

In a test project, I created the rule that

1. for all applicable epics
2. for all Stories (or other issues) in the Epics)
3. a "is Child of" link to the parent Epic is created
4. and a comment is added in the story/task.

I tested the rule in my test project and it works, i.e. the Epic-linked stories and tasks in an Epic are now additionally linked as "is Child of".

I then moved the test Epic to Feature. The Epic links were removed, but the "is Child of" links are kept.

Next step is to get a backup and then do the two steps project by project to 

1. add "is Child of" links
2. move Epics to Features.

Thanks you two!

Cheers, Cornelius

[Cornelius Dufft]

FYI, @Angela Jordanovska 

[Cornelius Dufft]

Hi @Trudy Claspill , @Bill Sheboy , 

just to give you a feedback. With your hints, I could successfully migrate all capabilities to epics and all epics to features. So first add "is Child of" links with an automation rule, then do bulk change request to move the issues.

Thanks again :-)

[Rodolfo So]

Hi @Cornelius Dufft 

can you send us screenshot of your automation rule for this?

Thanks

[Cornelius Dufft]

Hi, @Rodolfo So , sorry, I have deleted all these automation rules. I used them for a one-time migration, only. But I think it was straightforward using the "automation" tab.

[Rodolfo So]

@Cornelius Dufft  , Do you used parent link to connect stores to feature?Thanks

[Cornelius Dufft]

Hi @Rodolfo So , originally I was using the "Epic link". Then I replace these with the "is Child of" link.

For new issues we also allow the "Parent link" which I think is available for issuetypes which are over/under each other in the issuetype hierarchy.