How does the Jira cloud to cloud migration work? What does it do to the metadata?

[Adam Sterrie]

We are scheduled to migrate an existing Jira cloud site, "site A", into another Jira cloud site, "site B", so there will only be one site, "site B".
I want to know what the migration tool does to the metadata from site A to merge it into site B and what that does to filters and boards that reference metadata by name. What of site A and site B have statuses, custom fields or any other metadata with the same name but are used differently so don't mean the same thing? And what about projects with the same key? Does the migration tool prefix everything from site A or otherwise rename to differentiate them or do they simply copy as is and leave it for the users and admins to work out what to do?

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @Adam Sterrie 

Welcome to the Atlassian community.

You can find the documentation for the "cloud to cloud" migration here:

https://support.atlassian.com/organization-administration/docs/copy-product-data/

And this page drills into Jira in more detail:

https://support.atlassian.com/organization-administration/docs/copy-jira-data/#Validate-data

This page give some more details about what data is and is not copied:

https://support.atlassian.com/organization-administration/docs/what-product-data-is-copied/

What of site A and site B have statuses, custom fields or any other metadata with the same name but are used differently so don't mean the same thing?

• I have not worked with a cloud to cloud migration before, but in a server to cloud migration if the elements (status, fields) don't have the same configuration then when they are copied the suffix "(migrated)" is appended to the element name.

And what about projects with the same key?

• The documentation states that it will not copy a project that has the same key as an existing project. You have to remove such projects from the copy plan or give them a new key before you can copy them.

Does the migration tool prefix everything from site A or otherwise rename to differentiate them or do they simply copy as is and leave it for the users and admins to work out what to do?

• If it is the same as the server to cloud migration elements that have the same name but different configurations get a suffix appended to their names during the migration. Things that reference those elements (workflows, filters) will be updated to reference the elements with their new names.

I strongly recommend that your team do testing of this process before executing a copy to your production instance. With an Enterprise plan they should be able to set up a sandbox that is a copy of the production instance and test the migration to the sandbox to see the results.

Note also that not all data is supported in this process. Refer to the documentation I referenced above for more information.