I need to duplicate a board in JWM - is this possible?

Question

We have testing every other month for updates/upgrades  - and I recently moved from Monday.com - we created our own template for each testing scenario/task and we would use the template to create a new testing board for each upgrade.  I cannot seem to find that same type of functionality in JWM.

Trudy P Claspill · Answer

Hello Shawn,

I am not familiar with the functionality of Monday.com.

It sounds like your "board" contains work items, and you want to copy the work items and board display.

In Jira the "work items" (a.k.a. issues) are stored in Projects. A Board is a way to visualize and manipulate the issues. Boards use a Filter to determine which issues will be displayed in the board. Boards have configuration settings that help determine how issues will be displayed.

When speaking specifically about a Jira Work Management project, the creation of the project includes creation of a single board with that project. The underlying Filter for that board references all issues in that project. JWM by itself does not currently support creating additional Boards for a project.

Issues can be shown in multiple Boards. The issues are not copies specific to each board, but rather the same issues. If you change the issue in one board that is reflected in all boards that display the same issue.

With the Jira Software product there are additional features that enable the creation of agile boards (kanban and scrum) based on Saved Filters; custom filters that you can create and save, and then use as the basis for creating a board. If you have licenses for the JSW product, then you could create and save filters that reference the issues in your JWM project, and use those saved filters to create additional boards. Boards created in this manner do have a function for copying the board

You can copy such a Board and get all the board configuration settings while referencing the same Filter (the same issues). You can change which Filter the board uses to reference different issues. This does not copy the issues. The issues exist separately from the board.

On the topic of copying the work items/issues:

You can create copies of individual issues one at a time using a native Clone Issue function.

There are a couple of native methods for copying, or creating, multiple issues at once. One is Automation Rules. Another is CSV Import. The best method would depend on exactly what information you need to have in the new issues.

There are also third party apps that you can add to Jira Cloud that provide more extensive copying capabilities, such as copying an entire Project (with its issues) to make a new project, or copying a subset of issues within a project to create a new set of issues. One such app is Deep Clone and Clone Plus is another.

You would need to consider what you want to really accomplish in the copying functionality.

Do you want to make a copy of the entire project (project configuration, issues, board) that will keep it separate from each other version you have tested?

Do you want to create copies of the work items, but keep them in the same project and use the same board?

Do you want to create copies of the work items and the board?

You asked about other products offering copy capabilities. I infer that you meant other Atlassian products. JSM (Jira Service Management) is based on the Jira core functionality extended to provide help desk types of functionality. It does not offer anything different in terms of the copy capabilities. I don't work with Trello, so I can't say what it might offer.

Shawn Yarnold · Answer

In Monday.com, I could create my own template for a workspace, that we could copy and rename from the template for every upgrade.

The template kept our testing scenarios, testing status, and priority all in tact for the next upgrade, so we never had to recreate it - only duplicated the template board and renamed it to match the version we were testing.

I hope that make sense.

Trudy P Claspill · Answer

First, to be clear, they are not my products. I'm just another user of the products, albeit one with years of experience. ;-)

Jira Software agile boards can be copied.

Note that in Jira boards are just a method to view and manipulate issues. The issues are not "in" the board. The issues are actually in a Project.

Are you really wanting just a copy of the board or are you wanting to copy all the issues/cards to make new issues/cards?