What is the best way to retain the issue key after moving issues from one project to another?

Question

Hello everyone,

My company has been using Jira Work Management projects to provide support for clients (by licensing them as users and using Security Levels) and we are currently in the process of migrating our support to JSM. Part of this process is going to be moving the issues from the three current projects in Jira to the new JSM project.

We would still like for our clients to be able to access their old tickets once they're in JSM. However, once you move the tickets, they adopt new Issue Keys and they may want to reference the tickets by their keys in the old projects. I was wondering if anyone could recommend the best way to move the issues while also allowing them to be referenced by their old Issue Key?

My idea so far has been to add a custom field called "Internal Reference," which would hold the previously-used Issue Keys. The question then is the best way to copy the data into that field, which I'm not sure can be done with an Automation Rule.

Marlene Kegel - codefortynine · Answer

Welcome to the Atlassian Community, @Daniel Ogulnick.

I am the product manager of Deep Clone for Jira.

Maybe a solution would be to bulk clone the issues, and move the cloned issues to the new project. With our app you can create a link between the clone and the original issue, which enables the user to access the old ticket (if the project is still visible for them).

They could also find the new issue following the link from the original issue.

You can read more about migrating issues with Deep Clone for Jira in our documentation.

Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Answer

In the background, there's a table that keeps a pair of values when you move an issue.  Very simple, two columns of issue-key and issue-id.  The issue-id is the id in the database and it never changes.  But evven if you move an issue several times, it keeps a record.

This means the quick-search can understand that what was ABC-123 (with issue id of 12582 for example) originally, changed to DEF-234, and later to GHI-45.  Typing any of those three into the quick search, or landing directly on their issue view url will automatically take you to GHI-45.

The changes are also recorded in the history.

John Funk · Answer

Hi Daniel - Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

It is not possible to retain the same key when you move to a different project. However, if your customers search on the old key, they will still be able to find it and it will direct them to the new JSM issue.

However, I believe they will need to retain the JWM license to be able to do that.