⛈️ Migration to Jira Cloud Have You Losing Sleep? Do it in Phases With Backbone, and Rest Easy

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Disclaimer: This is not a health advisory. If you have insomnia, please consult a doctor (or WebMD for a quick, though possibly inaccurate, diagnosis).

Cloud, cloud, cloud – it’s the talk of the town! Server support ends in less than 60 days, and the rush is on to move to Jira Cloud before the clock strikes midnight.

Despite the fact that we’ve seen this coming for quite a while, some folks are still panicking about losing the company data and suffering long downtimes if they migrate in one go using the big bang strategy. Add the scary prospect of onboarding your users all at once, and it can become the stuff of nightmares.

Not all hope is lost, though! What if I told you there’s a way you can migrate to Jira Cloud without putting your health (and career) at stake? You can opt for the phased migration strategy and take your time to migrate your Jira instance in small, manageable chunks rather than going for a single, large-scale migration. Sounds like a great choice, right?

In this blog, we’ll guide you through some best practices for simplifying your migration using the phased migration strategy. This includes keeping your Server or DC instance in sync with Jira Cloud using the Marketplace app Backbone Issue Sync for Jira.

What Should I Look Out for during the Phased Migration?

If you have chosen to migrate to Jira Cloud in phases, here are some best practices to ensure a smooth journey:

• 🗑️ Don’t delete your Jira Server or Data Center projects, so you can ensure users can easily find existing Jira issues and data.

• 🧊 Freeze the projects on the Server or Data Center instance and make sure they are not editable anymore to avoid losing any updates.

• 🚚 Migrate your projects from Jira Server or Data Center to Jira Cloud using the Jira Cloud Migration Assistant.

• 📣 Let your users know the project has been migrated and that work should now be done on the Jira Cloud instance. Ideally, you should set up a banner on that project for better visibility. You can learn more about how to set up a banner in this help article.

• 🧩 Last piece of the puzzle: keep the projects in sync using Backbone Issue Sync until the migration process is complete.

Keep Your On-Premises and Cloud Instances in Sync Using Backbone

Why should you keep your instances in sync? Well, despite the advantages of the phased approach, unique problems can arise when you don’t delete your on-premises project while migrating to Jira Cloud in phases.

• Keeping the on-premises project means users might run into outdated information.

• In this hybrid model, some projects might get migrated before others, meaning users must operate in both systems, causing confusion.

• Users might have to switch between two instances to find the most-recently-updated Jira issues.

This is where Backbone Issue Sync saves the day, reducing the risk of outdated data and misalignment between instances during phased migration.

By synchronizing with Backbone, you can keep the on-premises instance up to date with information from the Jira Cloud instance. Here’s how:

1. Install Backbone Issue Sync from the Atlassian Marketplace on both the Jira on-premises instance and Jira Cloud instance.

2. Set up a unidirectional synchronization and link the issues automatically, as described in this help article.

Backbone gives you complete control over the type of Jira data you want to sync across instances. You can pick the issue types (e.g., task, sub-task, bug), field types (e.g., description, assignee, including custom fields), workflows, comments, and attachments to sync. What’s more, you can also easily limit the issues you want to sync using JQL-based filters (e.g., status, date created), as explained in this help article. 

A quick preview of how easily and effortlessly you can set up Backbone Issue Sync is shown in the video below.

Pair Existing Issues Automatically across Instances

The fun doesn’t stop here! For the last step, Backbone can help you automatically pair the issues (original and migrated) with each other in a couple of clicks so they can remain in sync. This saves you the time and effort required to manually find the relevant issues on both instances and link them. You can learn more about the exact steps in this help article.

Switch Easily between Instances

Once the issues are paired, a link between new Cloud issues and existing on-premises issues will be created, making navigation between the two instances easy. This link can be accessed easily via Backbone’s issue sync panel. Clicking on the link on the on-premises Jira link, for example, takes you directly to the corresponding Jira issue on Cloud.

You can set up as many synchronizations as needed to keep your projects up to date. Once all projects are migrated to Jira Cloud, you can stop the syncs and clean up the old projects. Then your migration to Jira Cloud is complete!

Skip the Sleeping Pills, Go for Backbone Issue Sync Instead

Backbone Issue Sync for Jira powers your phased migration journey, so you can reduce the risks of data loss and downtime, and ensure a smooth transition to Jira Cloud. Backbone will keep your instances in sync so you can migrate at your own pace without losing sleep.

Simplify Your Migration Journey Using Backbone Issue Sync for Jira →