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Is it Possible to Change a Project Screen Scheme or Workflow for a Subset of Project Issues?

Kyle Thureen

We have a Jira Scrum project, call it "ABC", that has years of issue history, and we are still working in this project. However, we would like to make substantial changes to the project's Fields, Screens, and Workflow to accommodate new ways of documenting our work. I'm wondering whether we can make these changes in our existing project without changing the historical record for older issues.

Is it possible to switch a project's screen scheme or Workflow and have the change only apply to certain issues within the project (e.g., those created after a certain date)?

Accepted answers

Matthias Gaiser _K15t_

Hi @Kyle Thureen

there's no option to apply a screen or workflow scheme only to newer issues.

I can think of two workarounds right now:

Use different issuetypes for the new issues - you can modify your schemes so that the new issue types use different workflows or screens.
Start fresh with a new project with your new settings and leave the old project behind for reference. If you need it, you can move or clone issues into the new project.
- As a variation, you could also synchronize them into the old project (if that's really important to you).

Does someone have some better alternatives?

Cheers,
Matthias

All comments

Matthias Gaiser _K15t_

Hi @Kyle Thureen

there's no option to apply a screen or workflow scheme only to newer issues.

I can think of two workarounds right now:

Use different issuetypes for the new issues - you can modify your schemes so that the new issue types use different workflows or screens.
Start fresh with a new project with your new settings and leave the old project behind for reference. If you need it, you can move or clone issues into the new project.
- As a variation, you could also synchronize them into the old project (if that's really important to you).

Does someone have some better alternatives?

Cheers,
Matthias

Walter Buggenhout

Hi @Kyle Thureen,

You can apply separate screens, workflows etc to separate issue types in a project as a scheme is meant to link a configuration to an issue type. But issues of the same type in a project will always share a single configuration.

So, theoretically, if you create new issue types and set up schemes with a separate configuration for those new types, you could pull this off.

However, assuming that you are using pretty common issue types in your project (like a task, a story or a bug), it may be awkward to have to come up with odd new names for the same issue types simply because you have a history there. It might be a cleaner solution to create a new project with the new configuration, leave the history behind an move the new, ongoing work into the new project. (Or vice versa)

Hope this helps!

Matthias Gaiser _K15t_

Nice to read that you're thinking the same way, @Walter Buggenhout

Walter Buggenhout

Great minds, ... @Matthias Gaiser _K15t_ 🤗

Kyle Thureen

Thank you, Matthias! That was my suspicion, but I wanted to confirm before giving up on making changes to the existing project.

Kyle Thureen

Thank you, Walter! That all makes sense. This all gives me a new appreciation for the amount of care required when setting up new projects, fields, screens, workflows, etc. in Jira. I've seen how incremental additions to these configurations create more complexity to manage over time, and so there definitely comes a point where starting with a fresh project is the best approach.

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