About the Jira Cloud Migration Assistant early access program

Jason Wong
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
August 28, 2019

Update on Jan 27th 2020: The Jira Cloud Migration Assistant EAP (Early Access Program) is now coming up to its 4th and final EAP release - for the latest details, check out this blog post.

We understand that migrating from Jira Server to Jira Cloud can be daunting and difficult. Many of you have also asked for an easier way to move single projects from server to cloud. The Jira Cloud Migration Assistant will make it easier to move from server to cloud in a way that best suits you.

Screenshot 2019-08-29 18.31.01.png

The migration assistant is currently in development and soon we will be looking for people to participate in a trial. The Jira Cloud Migration Assistant early access program will allow you to try an early version of the Jira Cloud Migration Assistant prior to the official release.

The goal of this program is to allow you to test and benefit from new features in advance and provide us with some useful feedback as we continue to build this tool.

The early version of the migration assistant is not a full release and will not have full features. The trial of the Jira Cloud Migration Assistant is most suitable for people who are planning to:

  • perform a Jira Core or Jira Software migration from server to cloud in October/November 2019

  • migrate individual projects from server into a new or existing cloud site using CSV 

 

How to participate in this program

After submitting the form, you’ll be contacted if your migration plans match our program criteria and we have available spots.

Once the Jira Cloud Migration Assistant is available, we'll contact eligible customers via a Jira ticket at getsupport.atlassian.com with instructions on how to use it.

 

We want your feedback

We will be asking for feedback from all participants in the early access program. This feedback will help us improve the migration assistant for all customers and will help us understand your needs.

You can give us feedback through the same Jira ticket that the support team will assign to you for this program.

We’re looking for feedback on:

  • Whether the experience worked for you, including any bugs or issues

  • What documentation or information you need to use the tool

  • What was helpful and easy

  • What was difficult or just didn’t work

 

What will (and won’t) be migrated

When you use the early access version of the Jira Cloud Migration Assistant, most of your project data will be migrated. However, this is not a full release of the tool, so there may be some things that don’t get copied over. The table below outlines what will be migrated and what won’t.

The early access program will be suitable for you, if most of the data you need to migrate is in the first column.

Items that aren’t migrated may be included in future versions of the migration assistant.

Data that is migrated Data that isn’t migrated
Project setup
  • Project details
    • name
    • key
    • project type
    • project category
    • description
    • project lead
    • default assignee
  • project roles
  • issue types
  • issue type scheme
  • issue type screen scheme
  • workflows scheme
  • field configuration scheme
  • workflows - basic: links to the correctly migrated workflow scheme with status and transitions.
  • screens schemes
  • screens
  • status category
  • permission schemes
  • issue security

 

Issues - basic fields only

  • summary

  • description

  • issue type

  • status

  • priority

  • resolution

  • labels

  • reporter

  • assignee

  • due date

  • subtasks

  • some custom fields

    • text

    • date

    • number

    • time

    • labels

    • dropdown

    • checkbox

    • user picker (single/multiple)

  • @mentions

  • watchers / votes

  • issue links (including link types)

  • attachments

  • comments

  • comments with security

  • issue history

 

 

Users and groups

Users and groups will be migrated each time*. In the tool, you will have an option to choose whether you want to give your users Jira access or not.

Project setup

  • other custom fields

  • workflows - advanced: status, transitions, transition options (Properties, Triggers, Conditions, Validators, Post Functions)

  • project avatars

 

Jira Software fields

  • epics (epic link)

  • versions (affects versions, Fix versions)

  • sprints

  • components

  • issue rank

  • Jira Software specific custom fields and custom field values in issues

  • estimates (story points)

  • estimates (time)

  • Jira Software fields:

    • environment

    • linked issues

 

Jira Software boards

  • boards

    • name

    • filter

    • column names (no column status mappings)

    • location

  • advanced board settings

    • column status mapping

    • quick filters

    • swimlanes

    • sprint permissions

    • card colors

    • time statistic / estimation

 

Jira global entities

  • global permissions

  • general configuration (timezone, language, etc)

  • dashboards

  • cross-project boards

  • filters

 

App data - No app data is migrated

*More information about how users and groups are migrated will be given to participants of the program.

 

Planning and troubleshooting your migration

It’s important to be prepared for your migration. Many of the steps in our Jira migration planning guide are still relevant even when using the early access version of the Jira Cloud Migration Assistant. You will also find other relevant information on our Jira migration resources page.

If selected for the early access program, you’ll also be given a step-by-step guide for migrating projects with the Jira Cloud Migration Assistant.

If you have questions throughout the process you’ll be able to ask them in a private Atlassian Community group specifically for this early access program.

You will also be able to contact support at any time through your Jira support ticket.

 

Get involved

Sign up to the early access program, or follow the progress of this work.

11 comments

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Antonio Ferruz
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September 14, 2019

Thanks for the info!

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Andreas Krupp September 17, 2019

Hello @Jason Wong

At the Atlassian Open in Vienna last week, the cloud migration assistant was already shown with the "project only" migration capability if I am not mistaken. I signed up for the beta as indicated and have a client that pretty urgently needs to migrate a single project to the cloud. Is there any chance to get access to the beta already?

Cheers & thx :-)

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Jason Wong
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
October 9, 2019

Hi @Andreas Krupp thanks for signing up for the Early Access Program.

I got your request and setup a support ticket for you which should have sent you a notification. Let me know if you didn't get that in your inbox (it went out on Sept 20th).

The latest guidance I can give on timeframes is as per my update over here on JRACLOUD-31806.

We've very keen to move the Early Access Program through to the next phase where we are able to give Partners a copy of the app and give it a try. Will be back with an update on where we are at in about 2-3 weeks time.

Leng Be October 9, 2019

Hi @Jason Wong ,

 

Does this apply to Data Centre as well?  We are a Jira Data Centre customer.

 

Thanks

Leng

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Jason Wong
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
October 17, 2019

Hi @Leng Be ,

While the early access versions may work, we have not yet certified DC compatibility. For that reason I would not recommend using the early access version on DC.

Once the Jira Cloud Migration Assistant app is out of the early access program, DC compatibility will be put on the roadmap.

Felix Bauer October 10, 2019

Hi @Jason Wong ,

We would be highly interested in migrating also our JIRA Software Projects to the cloud. Is this something what will come eventually? 

Best,

Felix

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Jason Wong
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
October 17, 2019

Hi @Felix Bauer ,

Support for the migration of data such as sprints, versions, issue rank etc is already in development and so I do expect to be able to announce Jira Software project data migration support soon.

I will get back to you as soon as I can give guidance on when these features will be made available. 

Alex van Vucht (GLiNTECH)
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November 5, 2019

Will old project keys be reserved in the Jira Cloud environment?

Jason Wong
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
November 6, 2019

Hi @Alex van Vucht (GLiNTECH)

Yes, we've built the Jira Migration Assistant to never overwrite data in Cloud. If there is a projects with the same key in Server and Cloud, we will not be able to migrate the Server project into Cloud until you change the project key on either side. 

Given most people are migrating to Cloud, the Cloud tends to be more often the source of truth, and so I expect most people to keep their project key in Cloud, but rename their Server side project.

If you want to merge the issues into the same project, I think there will be a little bit of a workaround:

1. Rename the project in Server.

2. Migrate the project to Cloud.

3. Do a bulk move of the issues into the desired project. In this case the issues from Server will undergo a change in project key number.

Alex van Vucht (GLiNTECH)
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November 6, 2019

Thanks for the detailed response. Then the implication is that if a Server project is renamed, then the old key will not be reserved when the Server project is migrated to cloud.

I am currently investigating a case where a server to cloud migration also involves migrating Bitbucket Server repositories integrated with Jira Server to Bitbucket Cloud. In cases where I must change a project key, I will have to edit branch names, commits and pull requests to maintain references when the projects and repositories are migrated to Cloud.

By and large, Bitbucket Server does not make this available via REST. The Bitbucket Git API could do it, so I could do it in Scriptrunner for Bitbucket, or I could script out git client commands to make the changes.

Jason Wong
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
November 7, 2019

Thanks for flagging that @Alex van Vucht (GLiNTECH) . Let me know how you go and if you need any further assistance with getting the integration working prior and after migration.

I will put this through to our integrations team to consider such situations when issue key changes break integrations with source code management tools.

Jason Wong
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
November 10, 2019

Hi @Alex van Vucht (GLiNTECH)

Thanks again for raising this. We are investigating improvements to the migration of apps (formerly called add-ons), in which we'll investigate a longer term solution. 

There is an alternative approach. Y

  1. Rename the project key in Cloud that is in conflict. Renaming a project key in Cloud will not break the associations with your dev tool artefacts.
  2. With the Cloud project renamed, you no longer have a project key clash and so you could try migrating the project in server over to cloud without having to rename the project key.
  3. When you setup the integration in Cloud, it can then use the same project key it had in Server and reindex the associations.

Best to test, but this may be a way to make avoid scripting or modifying git history.

Jason Wong
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
November 7, 2019

Update Nov 8th 2019 - Jira Cloud Migration Assistant Early Access Program for Partners is starting
 
This Monday Nov 11th, we will start providing the Early Access Program app to a few Partners who have have signed up and responded on their MOVE ticket expressing interest in participating. We will continue distributing the app on a rolling basis over the next weeks, so please stay tuned on your MOVE ticket where we will share the jar and corresponding documentation.
 
We are actively developing the app, and adding more capabilities. Over and above the original spec I posted above on this page, the app now also migrates the following data:

  • Epics (including colour, Epic Link, Epic Name and Epic Status) 
  • Issue rank
  • Flagged issues
  • Estimated & remaining time
  • Story points

 
Looking forward to expanding the program and getting the app into your hands for an early preview as soon as we can.
 
Jason Wong
Product Manager, Cloud Migrations

Alex van Vucht (GLiNTECH)
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November 10, 2019

That's great progress! The only remaining items that as far as I can tell are still offered in a CSV import over this importer is:

  • Versions
  • Components
  • Sprints (although that requires specific IDs in the CSV importer)
  • Environment field

You mention that "Issue links" can be imported, but Jira Software "linked issues" cannot be imported. Can you please advise on the difference?

Finally, can you please advise if the Parent Link field used by Portfolio for Jira can be imported?

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Jason Wong
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
November 10, 2019

@Alex van Vucht (GLiNTECH)

Thanks for the feedback. I'm pleased to let you know that Versions, Components and Sprints are currently in-progress so it shouldn't be too long til we have support.

The linked issues in the notes on this page will be rewritten with the new docs - what we were referring to before were things like Epic links, which are now covered in the Early Access Program app as per my update above.

We do currently support issue linking with the following notes:

  • Links are only migrated if the linked issues (& their parent projects) have all been migrated to Cloud.
  • Links to issues that remain in server will not be linked from Cloud back to Server. However, if you later on decide to migrate the projects that remain in Server to Cloud, the Jira Cloud Migration Assistant will automatically restore the links between the projects and issues that have all been migrated to Cloud.

Unfortunately Portfolio for Jira isn't currently on our roadmap but we might be able to consider adding Parent Link field support as a stepping stone.

Alex van Vucht (GLiNTECH)
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November 10, 2019

The Parent Link field can be updated programmatically in Cloud through the Edit Issue REST endpoint so it is not a big deal that Porfolio isn't on the roadmap. It would face the same challenge as supporting Epic Links and Linked Issues in that it requires the issues to be created first.

It would be hard enough to stage  the import with Epics, then standard issues, then sub-tasks, then issue links, so I do not envy the challenge the Cloud Migration team faces in introducing support for Portfolio's flexible issue hierarchy. I appreciate the openness with where you're at the with the migration; it makes me confident that the tool will work fine for our clients .

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Aniket Agrawal November 11, 2019

@Jason Wong I have signed to EAP cloud to cloud migration and eagerly looking forward to close the migration task. Please let me know the tentative date when we can try this much awaited feature.

Jason Wong
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
November 26, 2019

Hi @Aniket Agrawal

Thanks for signing up for the EAP.

I can confirm that we’ve created a MOVE ticket for you and will get the app into your hands as soon as we can.

We’re still testing and setting up additional support, but I can share with you that you’ll likely get a copy of the EAP app in early Dec.

Aniket Agrawal November 27, 2019

Thanks @Jason Wong 

Jason Wong
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
December 3, 2019

Update Dec 4th 2019 - Jira Cloud Migration Assistant Early Access Program for Customers is starting
 
This week, we will start providing the Early Access Program app to all remaining Partners and Customers who have have signed up. We will distribute the app on a rolling basis over the next 2 weeks, so please stay tuned on your MOVE ticket where we will share the jar and corresponding documentation.
 
Thank you for your patience. I am very please to announce that over and above the original spec I posted above on this page, the app now also migrates the following Jira Software data:

  • Sprints
  • Versions
  • Components
  • Epics (including colour, Epic Link, Epic Name and Epic Status) 
  • Issue rank
  • Flagged issues
  • Estimated & remaining time
  • Story points

 
Looking forward to deliver the app to all of you who have signed up for the early access program, getting the app into your hands for an early preview.

 

Jason Wong
Product Manager, Cloud Migrations

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Jason Wong
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
January 28, 2020

For details on the The 4th and final EAP release in early March (JCMA Version 1.0), please head over to this blog post for more details:

The Jira Cloud Migration Assistant is coming soon!

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Anne Gallant February 1, 2020

Does the data get copied when migrated or moved?

Jason Wong
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
February 2, 2020

@Anne Gallant the data is copied over. We're doing this right now to guarantee that nothing is deleted or modified in both the source Server instance and destination Cloud site. This does mean that a move operation would currently require a few more manual steps.

What we've heard from customers is that the would like the data in the source to be kept for a little while to confirm that the data and team using it in Cloud is good before going back and removing the data in Server. 

Other post-migration practises I've come across include also just setting Server to read only, message redirects and hard redirects.

Would you like us to consider an option to move the data in future version of the app?

Anne Gallant February 3, 2020

Thanks.  This is what we were looking for the copying of data rather than moving it.  My recommendation would be to keep both methods as a client choice. In our case, we need to test the whole migration out while folks are still using the live data, it has been requested that we copy rather than move it.

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Pavel Pavlovsky
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May 26, 2020

Hi @Jason Wong ,

 

It's great that the Jira Cloud Migration tool supports custom field migration. 

Does it support migrating Entity Properties and in Particular: Issues, Projects, Users? And if not, is it on your radar?

Our app uses Entity Properties as the main data storage so that support is very beneficial for us, so clients might migrate more complete Jira Issue data from Server to Cloud.

Also, Jira Site Import approach migrates Entity Properties so it looks to be logical have it here too 

Thanks!

Pavel

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Alex van Vucht (GLiNTECH)
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May 26, 2020

Hi Pavel, love your plugin! I cannot comment for Atlassian but I have considerable experience using the Assistant for a complex and nuanced merge of Server data into Cloud. There does not appear to yet be an agent for migrating entity data, but Entity Properties are used fairly extensively in Jira Service Desk so it should be on the roadmap, as Atlassian wants to support migrating Service Desk projects.

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Pavel Pavlovsky
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May 27, 2020

Thanks for your feedback @Alex van Vucht (GLiNTECH) !

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Jason Wong
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
June 16, 2020

Hi @Pavel Pavlovsky _Railsware_ 

The Jira Cloud Migration Assistant does not currently migrate entity properties and for the most part the core Jira project migrations roadmap will be focusing on data objects that are considered standard in out of the box Jira.

However, having said that, we do have a whole initiative on app migrations where we are building a platform to orchestrate, map and migrate data needed for apps to successfully move data from Server to their Cloud equivalents and so I'd say we bring this requirement to the app migrations initiative and talk about how we make this possible for you over on this thread on community.developer.atlassian.com.

App migrations discussions that require improvements to the core migration tooling will then find its way back here into the Jira / Confluence Cloud Migration Assistants. Hope that makes sense? Just want to share with you how we are approaching this in detail.

So please join the discussions on the app migration platform. I'm sure we'll then talk about what's needed to help you get your entity properties over to Cloud.

https://community.developer.atlassian.com/t/about-the-cloud-migrations-category/36882

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