How to minimize the number of groups used on Jira?

Question

I am trying to cleanup the mess from inside a huge Jira installation and, in addition to the fact that I am not able to rename the groups, I'm facing a dillema:

* I want to limit the number of groups and the number of people creating groups (second part is kinda solved).

* Most ad-hoc groups were created for two reasons

* sharing filters 
* filtering issues - like find all issues owned by people from this group

What can I do to simplify these? -- btw, this is an old Jira 3.10 that I'm also in a never ending process of trying-to-update-without-breaking-too-much.

Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Answer

Have a look at the "groups to roles" converter - it's built into Jira, although I can't remember exactly when it became available (memory is muttering "at the same time as roles, so 3.7+, but I'm not 100% sure of that!)

Go to Admin -> Scheme Tools and look in the options there.  It works mostly on projects and their permission schemes, and it's not a panacea, but it might be worth a look.

Radu Dumitriu · Answer

Upgrade first to at least 4.4 then use this : https://plugins.atlassian.com/plugins/com.keplerrominfo.jira.plugins.rightsdna

We had the same nightmare to resolve, we created the above to fix it for good; and we used roles, roles everywhere.