How tosync up two diff column with same name but with diff value ensuring not to impact existing val

shruti gupta_cxhnha

I have two project and currently using two different  field with different drop down value

Example Project A with Field FieldA ( F1,F2,F3)

Project B with Field as Filed B(R1,R2,R3)

 

Requirement is :

Field A should be used in both project .

But the existing/old  card value should not change.

 

Could you please guide how to do it?

Andy Heinzer

Hi Shruti,

I understand that you have two different custom fields, each that only currently exists within the context of a single project.  And that you want to make one of these fields available to another project, without losing the data in that field, and then sync the values from the second field into this first field.

To clarify, when FieldA exists in project B, are you expecting those issues to have values such as F1, F2, F3?  Or are you wanting them to have the values that exist exactly in FieldB of R1, R2, R3?   We should be able to guide you either way, just wanted to make sure that the steps we give you are correct here.

Changing a custom field's context in Jira can be dangerous to do.  In some cases there is the potential for data loss in that field when making changes.  For that reason, we would recommend that you create a backup of your data, and if possible test this out in a staging environment.

There is a KB on this topic I recommend in Change Context for an Existing Custom Field Without Losing Old Data.  It explains how you can modify the context of the custom field to also include this new project.  Once you do this, you could then follow the steps to search for JQL issues in the new project, and do a bulk update.  You would have to repeat this process for each value that you want to set on the issues.  So if this custom field only has 3 options, it should take 3 queries followed by a bulk update for each. This KB follows an example where an existing custom field context has no default value, but in a new context they want a default value set.  

Your situation is slightly different in that in the KB in that you don't want a different context for this field for a different project, instead it sounds like you want to use the same context project A has for project B, and then give Field A in Project B the values (or similar values) from Field B.  If I have misunderstood what you are wanting to do here, please let me know.  That said the steps you can take to achieve this are very similar to that KB.

After you have created a backup of your issue data (just to be safe), you can then edit the context to make sure that fieldA can be used in project B.  You can follow the steps in Edit a custom field context to do this.  In your case, you should just be able to edit your existing context to add this other project to that existing context.  Given what you have told us so far, I don't think it's necessary to create an entirely new second context here.

Next you will need to use the issue navigator to search for issues in Jira.  I'd recommend using the advanced search, but basic search is okay here too.

In this case, the advanced JQL would look something like this:

project ="Project B" and FieldB=R1

You could then use the Tools -> Bulk update to edit those resulting issues and update FieldA for all of these issues to use the value of F1 (if you want to sync in that manner).  If you wanted FieldA to allow for other values such as R1, R2, etc, you would need to edit the field options before this would be possible to update via bulk update.

But once you update all the issues in the JQL query, you can then repeat the process for each unique value that exists in FieldB.

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns about these steps.

Andy