How can I bulk update priorities without changing updated date?

[Raju Alagappan]

Currently the team has way too many tickets assigned to individual team members and has not been given attention for a long time. These tickets have grown in size over a period of time. Team would like to bump the priorities of all existing ticket by 1 (eg: P1 to P2, P2 to P3 and so on) without modifying the updated date and then assign the tickets to be worked on with P1 during the next planning session.

Is there a way to bulk update all ticket priorities in a project without modifying the updated date?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

You can't do this without a database hack, you'd be lying about the updated date, and that's not what an issue tracker is for.

However, there is a sneaky trick you could play.  Go to the priority scheme and add a new priority called (say) P0.  Now rename p3 to p4, p2 to p3, p1 to p2, and then p0 to p1.  Everything will go down a priority level without actually changing.  You can delete the lowest level priority, Jira will offer to change issues in it to another level (this will change the updated date though, but are you really that bothered about that on the very lowest priority issues?)

[Walter Buggenhout · Accepted solution]

Hi @Raju Alagappan,

Theoretically you could do that by running updates directly in the database. But I don't think anyone would recommend doing something like that for I don't know how many good reasons.

If your goal is to bump the priority to P1, assign the tickets to be worked on and - in a next planning session probably assigning them to an upcoming sprint? - knowing the updated date may just help you facilitate the planning session. The other changes you are planning to do will update the updated date anyway. Suppose you update them tomorrow, you can easily retrieve them with a filter like this:

Priority = P1 AND Priority changed on 2020-12-08 

I would strongly recommend to use built-in bulk change functionality to perform the update.