Can I change the status or assignee of multiple issues at once?

[Liz Ralph]

I have a huge number of issues assigned to me or that are complete or no longer mine, and I need to change the assignee or the completion status. At the moment I'm making these changes one by one, but would like to know if there is a way to do this in batches. thanks!

[Mikael Sandberg]

Hi @Liz Ralph,

Welcome to Atlassian Community!

Yes, you can use bulk change to do this. Just filter out the issues you want to change and then click on the three dot menu up in the right-hand corner and select Bulk change and follow the on screen instructions.

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Liz Ralph -- Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

Yes, and...to Mikael's answer:

What problem are you trying to solve by re-assigning completed issues?  Why not just ignore updating those ones, only re-assigning the others?

What problem are you trying to solve by changing the completion status of a large number of issues?  Is the work somehow "no longer completed"?

Thanks, and kind regards,
Bill

[lizjralph]

Hi Bill,

A great question and I'm sorry that I have taken 3 months to see your reply!

We had a change in personnel, where one person left and her role was split into 2 - so she had her name against hundreds of issues, and we want to transfer these issues to the 2 new team members. 

I hope this helps!

thanks,Liz

Liz

[Bill Sheboy]

Thanks, Liz!

I can understand the situation, and can see how re-assignment could cause unintended consequences...not just for reporting/history. 

For example, let's say you are tracking down a decision/problem from an item completed in the past...and you wonder, "hey, that's assigned to Bill so let's talk to him..."  Bill says, "I dunno...never heard of that..." which leads to probing the history and wondering why.  Compare that to not re-assigning, where you see the item was previously assigned to "person-no-longer-on-the-team", and so the team swarms to figure the challenge out.

Perhaps instead of assignee, there is some role/area of responsibility which is common for the issues previously managed by a person.  Using labels, components, custom fields, etc. to mark the issues could help find them later without changing the history.

Kind regards,
Bill

[Hannes Obweger - JXL for Jira]

Hi @Liz Ralph

welcome to the community!

Just to add to Mikael's answer, if you would prefer a more "interactive" editing experience, you could also try JXL for Jira.

JXL is a full-fledged spreadsheet/table view for your issues that allows viewing and inline-editing all your issue fields. You can either inline-edit your values individually, or in bulk, using copy/paste - just like in Excel or Google Sheets.

This is how it looks in action:

(Note that JXL can do much more than that: From quick sorting and filtering, to inline issue creation, to issue hierarchies and groupings, aggregations and sum-ups. Disclaimer: I work on JXL :)

Hope this helps,

Best,

Hannes