Importing into Cascading Select field - Possible?

[Jack Brickey]

So I have done some searching in the Community already and all of the posts seemed to be <=2013 and the answer was basically 'you can't do that'. I thought I would refresh the question in the Community.

Does anyone know if this is possible and if so how?

Any addon app that might achieve?

Any crazy workaround ideas? Such as the one that woke me at 4am today - "Maybe I could import the two values in as labels. Then I could JQL search all issue w/ select list pairs and use Bulk edit to set the values." Should work and oh what fun that would be to boot!

[Alexis Robert · Accepted solution]

Hi @Jack Brickey , 

I've done this before with a simple CSV import. It's quite simple, as for cascading fields you need to have both fields value in the same cell. For example, if your first value is "Tool" and second value is "Jira", it would look like this :

Issue ID,Summary,Cascading Field

PROJECT-12,My issue,Tool => Jira

This way it's also easy to build your import file in Excel, as you can use functions like CONCAT to merge cell values in a single cell for a large dataset.

Let me know if you have more questions !

--Alexis

[Jack Brickey]

thanks Alexis! indeed it works and I am indeed using concatenate in excel for this.

[Sanda M_]

Hi Alexis,

Did you use External System Import function or just import issue from CSV function to successfully load it? I used the Import issue from CSV function using the format of Parent Value -> Child Value, but Child Value did not get load.

Thank you for your help.

SM

[Edward Moore]

Alexis do you literally mean "Parent Value => Child Value" with the equals and the greater than?

when formatted like that I get this warning

WARN - The value [ {null=PreQuote = Auto-Renewal and Approval} ] can't be added to the Custom Field [ Core Capability ]. The value [ {null=PreQuote = Auto-Renewal and Approval} ] can't be found or is in the incorrect format

[Jack Brickey]

Yes that is the correct format. 

in your case regarding the warning I wonder if the auto-renewal is the culprit? specifically the “-“. 

[Rodney Dsouza _Atlassian Certified Expert_]

The equal sign before the right-arrow did not work for me but using hyphen arrow does (using Jira Cloud)

->

This is documented by Atlassian here:

https://support.atlassian.com/jira-cloud-administration/docs/import-data-from-a-csv-file/#ImportingdatafromCSV-CSVfilestructure

[Lee Cash]

The hyphen solution doesn't work for child values (only the parent is uploaded) without using the Admin Import tool, which a lot of us don't have. 

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRASERVER-45878

[Julian Governale]

This is so silly that end users cant import child values.  This is making me so frustrated with this system.  There is always some limitation that end users cant do making it so us admins need to do it for them.  

[Michelle Gronwold]

Does this work for Jira Server/Data Center? It did not using xxx => xxxx. 

All that happened for me was getting a new Parent in my cascading select options called "xxxx => xxxx" literally. No child.

[William Crighton _CCC_]

NOTE: 2023 Aug importing into Data Center 8.22.6 - the external system importer imports hyphens between words fine but just as normal strings, to import a parent/child cascade field entry the exported hyphen between values needs to be replaced with a hyphen greater than symbol (->).

Also NOTE: the field needs to have a global context to be listed as a destination field in the source/destination field page. 

[Michelle Gronwold]

Thank you! This format worked for me with Jira Server/Data Center.

My field in Excel CSV file: "CRG Mgmt -> Report Submission"

My field in Jira server:

[shikha Goswami]

hy  @Jack Brickey i am trying to import the test cases from excel to jira and i want to map the fields to jira so the cascaded hiearchy is  not getting mapped in jira can u plz suggest me a solution for this 

[Jack Brickey]

The method of populating cascading fields using CSV import is, as stated above....

first value -> second value

For example...

State -> City

California -> Sacramento 

[Alexander Pappert]

you can edit them with automation for jira (https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-Software-questions/Automation-for-Jira-use-JSON-to-update-2-Cascading-select-custom/qaq-p/1413414 ).

so your workaround with temp. import values as label should be possible

[Jack Brickey]

thanks Alexander. I was contemplating this very improvement on the label work around. appreciate the reference will certainly have a look.

[Prince Nyeche]

Hi @Jack Brickey 

It is possible, using REST API to append the values into an issue. I believe importing cascading select list via the Importer isn't supported yet because the nesting is very complex. I would like to understand better, is the data going to be extracted from a CSV file or where's the source data value coming from?

[Jack Brickey]

csv. it is a painful import process as it is coming from Freshdesk and I have to manipulate the exported data first

[Prince Nyeche]

If the exported data is sorted correctly on a csv file with the values in different columns. I believe there's a way to import those values in a loop into Jira given that the cascading select list options already exist. if the options doesn't exist, that too can be done first via API as well.