Custom Fields Lost After Migration

Todd Hlavacek October 6, 2014

Hi all,

I have the same problem as the poster at this post:  https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/8618740/custom-field---lost-data-after-migration.  We upgraded our JIRA 4.3.4 by using the Rapid Upgrade method documented by Atlassian here to 6.3.7 last weekend (we are doing this in a developer's sandbox to ensure that the upgrade/migration works, so this isn't against Production JIRA...yet):

https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/Upgrading+JIRA+Using+a+Rapid+Upgrade+Method#UpgradingJIRAUsingaRapidUpgradeMethod-upgradingonwindows

We found that all of our custom fields created in JIRA 4.3.4 have gone missing in 6.3.7, and it's absolutely essential that we retain those custom fields.  Did we miss a step somewhere, or did the rapid upgrade miss a step?  

I'm glad this is only on a Developer's Sandbox using a Developer's license to trial the migration process before the actual migration later this year.  So like I said before, this does need to be resolved.  (smile)

I may have to redo the upgrade from 4.3.4, but doing it piece-meal from 4.3.4 to 4.4.5, then somewhere in the 5.x then to 6.3.7, to see if that retains all of the custom fields we have.  Before I do that, I'm hoping someone out there knows this issue and has a solution.

Thanks,
Todd

1 answer

0 votes
Matheus Fernandes
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
October 8, 2014

Todd,

Check if the custom fields are still present by running the following query in JIRA's database:

SELECT * FROM customfield;

If the custom fields are still there, I'd guess that these custom fields are not from bundle custom field types, and if that's the case you'd need to make sure that the add-ons your had in JIRA 4.3 are compatible and installed in 6.3.

Let me know how it goes!

Todd Hlavacek October 14, 2014

"bundle custom field types"  Ugh.  You're right.  The custom fields are present in the table.  Let me re-do the upgrade.  When I did that, the plugins caused the 6.3.7 upgrade to fail.  I had to delete the plug-in folder in order for the upgrade to work. 

Do I need to upgrade to a later version, but not 6.3.7 (like 4.4.5, then 5.x.x, then 6.1.5, then...)? 

Matheus Fernandes
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
October 14, 2014

You can upgrade JIRA directly to the latest. :) Also, if the custom fields are still there, you can just re-install the plugins through Administration > Find Add-ons rather than upgrading JIRA again, which should show the same behavior. So just try installing the add-ons, running a full re-index and see if everything appears again. :)

Todd Hlavacek January 22, 2015

Update... one of the plug-ins has been retired as of 6.2 and is no longer used in the newest JIRA version. The vendor listed a few possible ways to migrate from the retired custom fields over to Atlassian's defined fields. This is why these custom fields will not show up. So I have had to do an extra step of creating new custom fields in the new JIRA instance, and then running SQL scripts to migrate from the old to new. Problem solved. Thanks Matheus!

titanicit April 12, 2017

Hi Todd Hlavacek,

I have the same problem with you when i do upgrade jira version 6 to version 7 some plugins no longer support and the custom fields(Calulated Field) not working(could not get data). I saw your comment

"So I have had to do an extra step of creating new custom fields in the new JIRA instance, and then running SQL scripts to migrate from the old to new"

Can you explain more detail about the extra step and the SQL script that you migrate?

Thanks so much.

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