Copy a Board incl. Cards to a new Project

Question

Hi, I've created a template Kanban Board with standard cards/issues that apply to all projects. I'd like users to be able to copy this board & all the cards for their future projects as a starting point for that board. I've been able to copy the board & move the location to a new project, however the copied cards are still for the project I copied the board from - they haven't recreated for that new project. Has anyone else managed to achieve this that can help please? 
I'm using company managed templates.

Luka Hummel - codefortynine · Answer

Hi @Kelly and welcome to the community!

If you are willing to use a third-party app, you could try our Deep Clone for Jira.

Deep Clone can clone your projects and if it is a company-managed project it can also clone the project board.

To do that, you just need to configure the Advanced Project Clone feature for Deep Clone before cloning your project.

Trudy P Claspill · Answer

Hello @Kelly

Welcome to the Atlassian community.

We should first clarify some terminology.

Jira "cards" (a.k.a. issues) are contained within Jira Projects.

A Jira Board is a way to view and manipulate issues that exist in Jira Projects.

Boards are based on a Filter that specifies the criteria for deciding which issues to show in the board. When you create a new Company Managed Software project and elect to use the Scrum or Kanban template, then the board is created automatically along with a filter that selects all the issues from the project that has been created.

It is also possible to create a filter on your own, selecting issues from 1 or more projects, save that filter, and then create a new Board based on that filter rather than based on a project.

Because Boards are based on filters, and an issue can appear in more than one filter, the issue is not "in" the board and does not "belong to" the board. Any given issue may end up displaying in multiple boards.

You can also have multiple boards associated with any given project.

When you copy a board you are copying the configuration of that board, which includes bring across the same filter used in the original board. Copying a board does not in any way initiate copying the issues that the board is displaying, when you are relying on the native Jira functionality.

There is no native functionality that will do everything for you in one action - creating a new project, copying a set of issues, and copying a board configuration - based on a template project/board.

If you want to use only native functionality then you need to look at alternate methods for copying the original issues into the new project that you create. You could look at using an Automation Rule to do that, or you could use the CSV Import option. If you still copy the original board, you would then also need to update its filter to reference the issues in the new project. You could also explore using the Jira REST API to create the project, copy the issues, and create the board configuration you want.

Another alternative is to look for a third party app that has already figured all that out and will do it for you.