Selectively moving bugs from one Jira instance to another

Question

Hi all.  We're in the process of starting from a "clean slate" on new instance of Jira.  When the new instance goes live, we need to selectively move bugs from the old instance to the new one.  Are there any recommendations on the best way to do this?  I don't want to move an entire project as the project strucutre is on of the things that's being majorily overhauled.  One thing I was thinking is temporarily moving a project over, move the selected bugs to the new instance, and then deleting the imported project.  What do you all think?

Thanks!!

twong_atlassian · Answer

AFAIK, that won't actually be useful to getting it "into" another instance of JIRA.  The xml export you're talking about is just for providing information to possible consumers of the report: eg. you're feeding it to another system that you implemented or something.

unknown · Answer

Thanks, guys.  Let me ask you this: if I export a query from the old instance as XML, is there anyway to import that to the new instance?  Or can you only import an entire project?

twong_atlassian · Answer

I would say, it depends on how complex your move is and what your requirements are.  If it isn't too complex, you could do something like:

1. Restore your instance over to your new home via xml.

2. Create a new project.

3. Create a JQL filter that selects out your "to Move" set.  (or label every ticket you want to move, and use a jql filter to find that.  Or do any number of things to "select" your set).

4. Bulk move.

Problems with the above:

1. It can ballon out to a lot of work depending on what your criterion for "movement" are.

2. Issue keys and project keys will change.

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If you need to retain issue keys and all the same names and such, I'd look into doing something like using a db query to "select" the issue keys that you didn't want (the inverse of the ones you did want), and using the remote api to remove those issues in a test instance.  This could take a really long time depending on how much junk you had.

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TLDR: it really really depends on the situation, the criterion, and the end you wish to achieve.