Importing issues from another JIRA instance and combining projects

Question

I am trying to use the Configuration Manager plugin and JIRA's Project Import to import issues from another JIRA instance. This works quite nicely but here's the twist. We wish to combine several project into one project. AFAICT I cannot use Project Import to import a second project into a current project.

Additionally the projects we are importing have different workflows and fields. So we want to import these differing projects combining them into one project and using components to differentiate between the old projects.

Is this at all doable?

Probably not but I thought that perhaps I could use JIM's JSON export to get a bunch of JSON files, then write some Perl scripts to make changes to the JSON files so that they all can be imported. I could fix up the components and change the keys (not sure what to do about reference in comments to old keys). Am I facing the impossible or just very difficult?

Kian Stack Mumo Systems · Answer

The bulk move can be found when you are searching for issues. If you are on a search, in the upper right hand corner, there is a button that says "tools". If you click on that, there is an option for "Bulk Change". You can select up to 1000 issues. If you click that button, you can go through and select which issues you would like to modify. Once you press the "Next" button, you can chose to "Move" issues. This is not an add-on, but rather a built in feature.

As for the workflows, it would depend on how your two projects were set up. If they have distinct issue types for Project A and Project B, you could simply have two workflows associated with the Project All that are specific to  those issue types of Project A or B. If your projects share issue types, then it would be a bit more complicated, but I think still doable.

The issues keys would be modified, and there isn't anything that I can do about that. JRIA will automatically index them as you move them from one project to another.

You are correct in your interoperation of how the comments would be processed, and sadly that is a problem that would be hard to overcome. I can't tell you how the issue number would change, only that they would.  This  would have to be a post migration fix, assuming you did it in the manner I suggested in the answer.

Andrew DeFaria1 · Answer

Ok, a few things. First, where do I get this "bulk move"? Is it a addon? I couldn't find it.

Next, you really didn't address when Proj1 and Proj2 have different workflows. How do the workflow merge? For example, if Proj1 has a work flow with a state called "Closed" but Proj2's workflow has a sttae called "Completed" how does that shake out when the projects are combined?

Also, issues of Proj1 with keys like PROJ1-100 and PROJ1-200 and issues from Proj2 with keys like PROJ2-123 and PROJ2-256 will be migrating into ProjAll with keys like PROJALL-1, PROJALL-2, etc. How does that work?

Finally, it's very likely that comments in issues from Proj1 and Proj2 will refer to other issues in the same project in the comments. For example, a comment on (old) PROJ1-200 might say something like "This problem is similar but slightly different than PROJ1-100". Wouldn't that comment need to be revised to say "This problem is similar but slightly different than PROJALL-3000"? And how do I determine that PROJ1-100 -> PROJALL-3000?

Kian Stack Mumo Systems · Answer

Bulk move allows a user to migrate issues from one project to another. Hence, if you had a projects "Proj1, Proj2, ProjAll" you could migrate the issues from Proj1 -> ProjAll and Proj2 -> ProjAll. This would effectively combine your projects. As for tagging them with a component, there is a similar feature to bulk move called bulk edit. You could select all of the projects inside of Proj1 and edit all of them to have a component and do the same for Proj2. They would have components distinguishing the projects before you ever need to move them.