Difficulty creating project with workflow from existing project

[Gary Kuhlman]

Hi all,

Apologies if this is JIRA 101, but I've been struggling with this for the better half of the day.

I am attempting to create a new software project  that has the same workflow from an existing project that I inherited as QA from a previous JIRA admin.

The existing project had the statuses of "open, in progress, ready for testing, testing in progress, resolved, reopened, closed"

My attempts of recreating a new project limited me to 3 statuses; "To Do, "In Progress", Done."

Is there way to create a new project/board that is a direct copy of an existing project/board/workflow and it's exact settings, statues, workflows, and related transactions?  It seems like an easy task but I've spent hours and keep running into dead ends.

Thanks in advance.

[Trudy Claspill · Accepted solution]

Hello @Gary Kuhlman 

Is the original project a Team Managed project or a Company Managed project? It will say which it is in the bottom of the navigation pane on the left.

If it is a Team managed project, there is no way to create a new project that immediately has all the same settings as the original project. The intent of Team managed projects is that they all operate autonomously by teams that want to have their own customizations. They are not designed to share such customizations.

If the original project is a Company managed project, then yes, you can create a new project that shares the configuration (workflows, screens, fields, notifications, permissions) as the original project, but you have to manually set up the configuration for a board for the new project.

If the original project is a Company Managed project, then a Jira Administrator can create a new Company Managed project and select the "Share settings with an existing project" option, and then specify the original project. The new project will then be created to share the settings I mentioned above. Note that if the Jira Administrators then change the settings, both projects will be affected. 

[Jack Brickey]

Yes but getting there seems to be the trick in the recent changes. At least in my instance. I’m going to need to spend some time with new UI just to reeducate myself.

[Trudy Claspill]

Yes, I concur. I wasn't going to go into explaining the steps until getting confirmation that the thread was about Company managed projects.

[Gary Kuhlman]

Thank you @Trudy Claspill   I did find this and attempt it.  However when creating a test sprint in the subsequent release, I only had 3 options of statuses for issues.  Digging into the workflow for my "new" project (which shared settings with the existing one), it was not the same and any attempts to modify the workflow were blocked because "I can only modify a copy of the workflow."

Really appreciate the advice - I'm going to take all feedback from this thread tomorow with a fresh brain and try again from scratch.

[Jack Brickey]

Understood Trudy. I jumped right into that assumption based on what I read but assumptions can surely be a bad thing. 😜

[Trudy Claspill]

@Gary Kuhlman 

Can you...?

1. Show us the Summary page under Project Settings for the original project, so we can see the names of the Schemes associated with that project,

2. Repeat the process of creating a new project, walking us through the steps, screen by screen, that you went through to create the new project, telling us all the selections you made along the way,

3. Show us the Summary page under Project Settings for the new project, so we can confirm that the Scheme names in the new project are the same as the original project. If the scheme names are not identical, then the projects are not sharing settings.

4. Confirm that the original project workflow for the issue type you are creating has all the various statuses you're looking for.

I've used this process many times, and it has always created the new project with the same schemes as the original project, if the process is executed correctly.

[Gary Kuhlman]

Hey again @Trudy Claspill  thank you again for your help.  

I just walked through the steps again and got some screenshots.  Here is what I am doing.

Here is the original project settings summary:

1. Project - New Projects - Select Scrum
2. Use Template
3. Select a Company-managed project.
4. Enter Project Name, Key. Choose "share settings with an existing project." Choose existing project displayed in summary page screenshot. Leave "Connect work across your tools" unchecked. Click Create.

5. View project, workflows, summaries, all look well.

6. Click on Board, Project does not have any board.
7. Create a Scrum board, board from an existing project, click next.
8. Enter board name, select new project I created in Project dropdown. Ensure Location is set to project I just created in Location dropdown, click "Create Board."
9. Click on Active Sprints.

Do you see anything I may be missing or doing incorrectly?

At this point the statuses are once again defaulted to only the 3 "TO DO", "IN PROGRESS", "DONE". Not the multiple statuses shown in my previous project, or workflows. This is basically where I am stuck.

[Trudy Claspill]

Ok, now I get it.

You're talking about the columns you see on the board. 

By default, when you create a new board you get the columns To Do, In Progress, and Done. These are not the Statuses of your workflow. These are just names for the columns, and you map your workflow Statuses to columns.

You need to go into the Board Settings > Columns page to configure the columns. There you can make new columns and rename columns, and map the Statuses available in your workflow to your columns.

[Gary Kuhlman]

@Trudy Claspill that was exactly it.  Thank you so very much (and @Jack Brickey as well) for getting me sorted!

[Jack Brickey]

Gary,

ultimately it seems you want to create a Jira software project using an existing project as a template. The challenge here, for me, is that there has been sweeping changes to the create project UI and my direct experience with this new UI is nonexistent. With that said, based upon what I observe, here is what I suggest…

1. click on create project 
2. select software development 
3. select Kanban or scrum
4. Select Company Managed Project

from here you hopefully will be guided to select an existing project. Unfortunately I can’t execute step 4 on my iPad as I can’t scroll to the button to create a CMP.

[Gary Kuhlman]

Thanks for the suggestion Jack.  The sweeping changes to the create project UI (and JIRA in general) is I think the pain point here.  

I guess I was hopeful there was some option to simply make an exact copy of a project/board/settings and use as a template but I can't seem to uncover it.  And googling brings up many results from 2013/etc which was radically different and no longer work.

I'll keep tinkering but also keep an eye on this thread on the offchance there is a big shiny button I am missing that accomplishes this.

[Jack Brickey]

Here is an article that references what aspects of the existing project will carryover to the new project. create-a-new-project 

[Trudy Claspill]

There is no other way built-in to Jira to create a "template" project. You might be able to find a third party app that would add such a feature.

[John Funk]

You have the process correct, Jack. 

Step 5 is where to you select the box with Share settings with existing project. 

[Jack Brickey]

Thanks John. I think Atlassian needs to test with iPads. I have run into a number of issues over the last year trying to admin using it.