Is it possible to update a batch of existing issues to point to an existing Epic?

[Rob Horan]

I am helping a team with a series of issues that should be a part of an Epic but are not.  I have not tried the CSV importer to update existing issues, and wanted to confirm that using Epic Link in the CSV would work.

For Example, lets say QA-1 is an Epic and QA-2 and QA-3 need to be issues in the Epic.  Would this CSV work?

issue key,epic link
QA-2,QA-1
QA-3,QA-1

Apologies, but I don't have a test environment to try this on in this case and don't want to risk problems before at least confirming.

[Radek Dostál · Accepted solution]

It should, although you also need an empty 'Summary' column (don't add values to it, you just need to map it in the csv wizard so it knows to map this to existing issues).

So long as you are updating existing issues, then yes. If you were also creating the epic and wanted to use epic link as part of a single import - don't, it's not that intuitive, and would be easier to first import the epics, then stories afterward once you know the epic keys.

If you're updating the issues, don't include the epic at all, it's not needed, you just need it's key in the epic link value but it doesn't need to be in the csv.

However, you could easily do this with a bulk edit, rather than a .csv, which takes more time. With bulk edit you can use issue picker for the epic so you get a better visibility in case you have doubts.

[Rob Horan]

Issue key isn't enough?  The CSV needs a summary as well?

I think Bulk Edit will be the way to go, though.

[Radek Dostál]

You need both the key and summary to make it update existing issues. With key only I believe it will treat the rows as new issues (but I haven't touched the .csv import in a while).

So mapping both the key and summary it will switch into "updating existing issues" mode, and if you leave summary empty, it will not care, because the issue summary cannot be null, so it internally doesn't do anything with it, it just moves to the next mapped column, which in your case would be epic link.

Still, I think that bulk update would be the easier choice rather than a csv.

[Hannes Obweger - JXL for Jira]

Hi @Rob Horan

for an alternative approach, if you're open to solutions from the Atlassian Marketplace, this would also work very elegantly with the app that my team is working on, JXL for Jira.

JXL is a full-fledged spreadsheet/table view for your issues that allows viewing and inline-editing all your issue fields (among many other things), including the Epic link field. You can inline-edit fields individually, or in bulk, using copy/paste.

This is how this looks in action:

You can do that for up to 10k issues in one go. You can also copy/paste between JXL and Excel/Google Sheet (or any other app, really).

Hope this helps,

Best,

Hannes

[Rob Horan]

Hi @Hannes Obweger - JXL for Jira  - thanks, but using an app is not the desired option for this scenario.

With that said, your app does look very nice, and I could see it being extremely useful.