Retaining field values of fields using a project specific context when moving to another?

Question

As part of a consolidation I am moving many issues from individual projects into a larger project.  Most field values are easily maintained, but fields from the source project that use a unique field context are lost when moved into the new destination project even if those same field values exist in both.  Unfortunately, I can not simply add the destination project to the same context because there are many projects using this field all with unique contexts that I intend to move issues from into this destination project.

Did a little digging and found that these fields refer to the field value ID and not the field value itself.As far as I can tell, there is no way to retain these field values (other than in the issue history).

Does anyone have any recommendations? TIA!

Jonathon S · Answer

One field, many contexts.

Source project 1 context:

- Google

- IBM

Source project 2 context:

- Dell

- Samsung

Destination project values:

- Google

- IBM

- Dell

- Samsung

Unfortunately, I can not simply add the destination project to the same context because there are many projects using this field all with unique contexts that I intend to move issues from into this destination project.

Niranjan · Answer

Hi @Jonathon S ,

Though not the same issue, the issue you described is similar to the below article and issue

https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirakb/change-context-for-an-existing-custom-field-without-losing-old-data-674990056.html

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRASERVER-62455 - The issue is fixed in 8.9.0, 8.8.1, 8.5.9 .

* You can export the issues from source project in CSV format to include issue key, summary and  the custom fields (that has separate context for source project). 
* After moving issues to the destination project,  you can update the CSV file with new issue keys and perform a bulk CSV import (may be 20-25 issues per import) to validate the import.

Another tricky solution is to

* Create a new custom field CF2 and create a new common cf context for both source and destination project.
* Copy the values from CF1 to CF2(source project) using workflow postfunction or CSV bulk edit. now both the fields will hold the same values.
* Move the issues to the destination project.
* Copy the values from CF2 to CF1 (destintaion project)
* Disable CF2 in the destination project or remove it from the screens of destination project.

John Funk · Answer

Hi Jonathon,

If you are moving from one project to another in the same instance, it should be using the same field. Unless you have created multiple custom fields with the same name. Can you verify that? Otherwise, the shared field would be the same field.