Selecting to clone and export a project or part thereof for further reuse by others

[Roberto Lofaro]

Status:

1. I am doing a trial offline (Ubuntu) of Jira Core and Jira Software

2. created a profile on Jira Cloud (Core+Software+Confluence) that plan to use for publications of templates of projects

3. for the time being, I am doing some sample testing of the various options

4. personal background: methodology and software since the 1980s, cultural&organizational change since the 1990s (along with data-driven initiatives)

Business case:

The solution currently proposed, to export all, create a new instance, remove what is not needed is unnecessarily complex

I saw that some suggested "project configurator for Jira", but, as the API is avaiable, I wonder if somebody is already working on a plugin that is able to "mirror" the whole access to information stored into an instance, and selectively choose what (including metadata) should be in an export

For now, my idea is only to create sample projects to share freely as exports via Github and publications, but actually could be useful to some companies working on projects "resell" their best practices

As the cloud offer of Atlassian now gives the service for free for smaller teams, this could actually enable some of them to "specialize" and reshare specific "project-based solution" that cannot simply be automated (eventually up to licensing), without need for them to expand their own staff, as it happened in other domains (e.g. used similar approaches in the past to deliver both projects and training in specific domains)

Within larger companies, it could be useful e.g. to "adapt before adopting", by exporting a project and importing it with the support of a competence center (as I did in the past e.g. for tool-based management reporting / KPI / dashboard projects, as well for some organizational change activities)

Background of the concept:

a. in the late 1980s, worked for a software development unit of the consulting arm of an auditing firm, and we had aroud 5,000 people out of 70,000 focused just on collecting, processing, packaging, resharing information from projects, using an internal methodology to leverage on experience- I too was involved in developing a bit to be used specifically for Decision Support System model design

b. skipping other examples I worked on, saw, used in the past (1990-2000s), in the early 2000s used a tool that matched a similar approach, called Solonde, that was able to "read" into the SAP datamodel (thousands of tables, at the time) - enabling, indirectly, to recycle concepts (eventually Solonde I think was acquired by SAP, as more recent offers from SAP to access data actually used a similar approach)

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Um.  You say " I wonder if somebody is already working on a plugin that is able to "mirror" the whole access to information stored into an instance, and selectively choose what (including metadata) should be in an export" immediately after mentioning an app that is for doing exactly that.  There are a couple of others in the marketplace too, but all the vendors are doing exactly that - writing code to export and import the metadata.  For Cloud, they all are directly coding for the API, that's the only way they can do it.

All of the ones I'm thinking of were written to do this export/import you are talking about.

So, I'd say you should take a closer look at Project Configurator, Configuration Manager and the others in the marketplace, there's several apps that can do exactly what you are asking for.

[Roberto Lofaro]

Yes, I already checked those that you stated (and the one I referred to), and installed one

did you already use them in the way I am looking for?

i.e. successfully selecting and exporting a full project from either Core or Software, and then re-importing it (both on server and cloud- albeit eventually I would look only for the cloud version), with all the information that was in the original project?

before posting I read threads and material from the existing apps, and seems as of end 2020 others trying to do part of what I am aiming for were still sharing negative feed-back on its full feasibility

anyway, if you have specific threads that you would suggest, all suggestions are welcome 

thanks!

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Yes, most users of project configurator are using it for exactly what you describe.  That's what it was built for.  Same with the others.

[Roberto Lofaro]

Thanks again.

The import/export documentation of Project Configurator itself confirms the limitations I read about in posts online, ditto the website of Project Configurator support (reading threads there).

Anyway, will have to check after completing a first set of cases and trying to import/export to see if the limitations have an impact or it is just theoretical.

Will go for the trial.

Thanks.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Most of the limitations you'll find are because Jira doesn't support them, not the copying tool.  You'll find all of the tools have similar llimitations because of that.

[Roberto Lofaro]

Thanks for your reply.

After reviewing the documentation and settings,  and your replies, for the time being decided to postpone my test on Project Configurator

Will see again at a later stage.

Thanks again for your cooperation.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Hope I managed to at least save you some time!