Migrating a project from one instance to another with a pre-existing name conflict

[Jeffrey NUNES]

I have a scenario where I am looking to consolidate our companies two Jira instances into one, however, there is an exact duplicate of a project name that needs to be migrated.

Jira Instance A with a project called "DEV" (Looking to migrate to Instance B)

Jira Instance B with a project called "DEV" (Destination instance)

Both of these instances have been running for years with no connection whatsoever, so there is a deep history of tickets, over 4k. They are both active projects as well. 

Initially, I thought about renaming the project to "SDEV", then initiating the migration, however, I fear that the backlinks that are created will no longer exist if I change the project name, migrate, then deprecate the old Jira. 

Then I thought this may work much better if this is done with the existing project on our destination instance. But while researching the possible consequences of changing the key of a Project and then recreating a Project with the old key, I just found this information:

(source: https://support.atlassian.com/jira-work-management/docs/edit-a-projects-details/)

So even if I rename the 'DEV' project present today in the Jira instance B, the problem will remain exactly the same: The change of key is only 'cosmetic', the original key remains the one used by the system.

My question is: What are my options? Can this migration happen? Has anyone else come across this issue?

Thank you!

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @Jeffrey NUNES 

Welcome to the community.

What links are you referring to when you say that you fear the "backlinks that are created" will no longer exist?

[Jeffrey NUNES]

I was referring to when a ticket is tagged as: relates to: DEV-1111 changing to relates to: SDEV-1111

[Trudy Claspill]

Is that a link in the source DEV project to another issue in the source DEV project?

Is it a link from an issue in a different project to an issue in the source DEV project? If it is a link with a different project, is that project on the same instance as the source DEV project?

Is this a cloud to cloud migration? What process are you using to execute the migration?

[Jeffrey NUNES]

Is that a link in the source DEV project to another issue in the source DEV project?

Yes

Is it a link from an issue in a different project to an issue in the source DEV project?

Yes

If it is a link with a different project, is that project on the same instance as the source DEV project?

Yes

Is this a cloud to cloud migration? What process are you using to execute the migration?

Yes, and i am using the "Migrate cloud site beta"

and thank you for the help :) 

[Trudy Claspill]

Within a given site the links between issues use a unique numeric ID that is assigned to the issue. Those unique numeric IDs link to other tables from which the issue key for the issue is obtained.

When you change the Project Key for a project, that does not directly impact the link information because of the use of the unique numeric ID for each issue. The instance will automatically use that ID to retrieve the current issue key for the linked issue.

However, if you migrate a project to another instance and then delete the project on the source instance, links to the issues in that project will be broken.

I recommend that you open a support case directly with Atlassian Support to consult with them on the proper way to update links on the source instance so that the links will point to the issues in the new instance after the project is migrated. I suspect that Atlassian Support may need to execute database updates for you on both the source and destination instances in order for the links to correctly link to the issues on the other instance.