Template/cloning project deletion

Question

I am doing a Atlassian audit. I just started with a new company administrating a new environment.

They have a list of templated company managed projects. They used these to create projects from and they are connected to many different projects.

I wanted to verify I can delete these template projects as I don't want to move forward with using templates to create projects as these should be on need of stakeholders.

Just want to double check that I can remove them without ill affect. I think in my experience I have never see a group of project templates. I also know that It shouldn't delete the schemes that are active.

but I wanted to reach out to the community to make sure this can be done.

A A Ron Geister _Trundl_ · Answer

So,  this is the shared settings your talking about. The only thing I don't like about this is that they are using these for 7 different workflows which won't work for every project. The schemes I am fine with but the projects themselves are not even configured right to share the right information.

I do agree with standardization for projects and not having to many custom projects but this doesn't always work for stakeholders such has HR, Finance. They all have different workflows and needs.

Thank you for the information and insight as I thought I was correct in my analysis but I always like to double check. Thanks much.

Trudy P Claspill · Answer

What do you mean by "template" projects?

Jira Cloud comes preloaded with what it calls templates for projects, which can be seen when you go through the Create Project process. Natively Jira Cloud does not support the creation of custom "template" that will appear in this list.

It does support the option to "Share settings with an existing project" when creating a new Company Managed project, which effectively sets up the new project to use the same schemes as the specified existing project.

If that is the only use of the "templates" you are referencing, then it is safe to delete those projects that are only used as a means to group schemes that can be used to set up a new project.

I would encourage you to think again about moving away from the use of such shared configurations and project "templates". If you are administering an environment where the company may want to roll-up reports across projects, that will be much easier to do if the projects are configured consistently, and having the schemes grouped in a "template" project is an easy way to ensure consistent configuration of new projects. Believe me, I've been there, working previously for a globally distributed organization with hundreds of projects. The company could not gain any insights from Jira that spanned the organization because every team had a custom Jira project. We eventually had to migrate all the projects to new projects that conformed to a standard configuration, so that we could support the need for cross-team reporting.