How to retain custom field values when moving issues to another project?

[andrés]

Summary:

I am trying to move issues from one next-gen project to another next-gen project, but the contents of all custom fields are lost out even if I select their "Retain" checkbox.

Details:

In both projects, I have defined exactly the same custom fields (same names, same type, same order). All them are of type "Paragraph" type within the "Description fields" category:

The fields above look identical for both projects (except for the crossed-out project name at the top, of course).

I am trying to move a Story as follows:

1. Click on its name in the Backlog
2. Click on the ellipsis at the top right
3. Click on Move

I then select the destination Project and Status, and come to the screen where I tell it to Retain the values of all custom fields:

However, in the next screen you can see that most of those fields are listed under both "Updated Fields" and "Removed Fields":

And after confirming the operation, the issue gets moved to the destination project and all the custom fields are empty:

What could be wrong? I've spent hours searching and trying different approaches to no avail.

Thanks

[andrés · Accepted solution]

I don’t know if things have changed since then, but after many days of research and trial-and-error, I was able to get an acceptable result back in May.

I think this includes all the steps I took:

1. Create a new Classic project instead of a next-gen
   project
2. Create new global custom fields matching the ones
   in the original Next-get projects and assign them to the new Classic project
3. Enable rich-text (wiki style) capabilities for
   those "Multi-line text" custom fields so that they could receive the
   data in the "Paragraph" fields of the original Next-gen projects. For
   that I used this workaround: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCNHPy88iKA
4. Bulk export the original next-gen tickets to CSV
5. Use a regular expression find-and-replace on the
   CSV to apply this workaround to all images: https://confluence.atlassian.com/cloudkb/importing-attachments-into-jira-cloud-using-csv-external-system-importer-966669960.html
6. Replace all instances of the word
   "Subtask" in the CSV by "Sub-task", since apparently
   Next-gen projects use the former while Classic projects use the latter
7. Import the modified CSV into the new Classic
   project using the External System Import
8. Manually re-assign all stories to their epics and
   fix the epics' names (they were truncated because Classic has a shorter limit
   than Next-gen)
9. Remove links in imported stories to their original
   sub-tasks (they had both links to the imported sub-tasks and to the old ones)
10. Re-order the tickets, as their relative
    rank/ordering got lost even though I selected the Rank attribute when importing

I hope this helps!

[Rudolph Bistrovich]

Wait so the solution is just to convert to a classic project?  Does this mean retaining info when moving issues within team-managed projects simply doesn't work?

[Andy Heinzer]

Hi Andres,

I created a support case on your behalf over in https://getsupport.atlassian.com/servicedesk/customer/portal/23/JST-569828

I recommend working with our Cloud support team to better understand the specifics of your problem here.  I know that the next-gen projects handle custom fields differently than the classic projects do, but that said, I don't expect that your data would be lost during a move. 

Perhaps we can update this Community post with more info once we resolve that support case.

Andy

[andrés]

Hi Andy,

Thanks for the follow-up.

Given what I shared above, does anything look misconfigured or sound unsupported?

Am I following the steps you would expect to move the tickets from one project to the other while retaining their custom field values?

Regards,

Andrés

[Andy Heinzer]

It's not easy to say for me.  I know your source project is a next-gen one, but it's not clear to me if the destination project is also next-gen, or perhaps a classic project.  These two project types handle custom fields in different ways.  For example when you create a custom field in a classic project you have the option to make this a global custom field.  Which means that all projects can use that field. But next-gen projects don't default to do this.  In fact all the custom fields you find in a next-gen project are isolated to that project.  It can make it complex to correctly migrate data between these project types.

But I think it would be best to work with our Cloud support team in your case since they can request access to your Cloud site to see your data if you let them.  This might help them to better understand the specifics and let us know if this is a misconfiguration, or bug/limitation of the move here.

Andy

[Victor Wieczorek]

I am experiencing the same issue and would be interested in the solution if one is found.

[Tomy Pineau]

I have the same issue here. Unfortunately, we have move quite some tasks before realizing the custom field values were not in fact retained. Have you found a way to fix it and fetch back your values? I fear we have just lost hours of work...

[Emily Yost]

Hi @Andy Heinzer - I'm having a similar issue. I'm trying to move issues from next-gen to classic to the same status, to reduce complexity. I understand that I will not be able to migrate my custom fields (my plan is to import them from a pre-migration export). However, description, comments, and email attachments are not included when I move the issue, even when I click retain description. What do I need to do to get the non-custom fields to move to the classic project?

[andrés]

@Emily YostSee my latest post below. I hope it helps!

[Emily Yost]

That does help @andrés . It's very similar to what I ended up doing!

[Tejasvi Harshwal]

Can you please share the link to your post which provides the solution. I am also facing the same issue. Thank you.

[andrés]

@Tejasvi Harshwal It's actually the post near the top of the page. Looks for my post from "Sep 23, 2020". Keep in mind it's already 3 years old, so things might have changed. I hope it helps!