Import needs to modify Jira Change History

[Gerald Harris]

I am importing a large amount of data from a different issue tracker into Jira, as a CSV, and I need to bring the change history along. I can place the data into Jira's comments field but that is less than ideal. I need to be able to place the change history from our previous issue tracker into the change history in Jira.

What options are available to do this?

[Dieter]

Hi,

i'm afraid this cannot be done without coding or changing the database directly.

if you are a coder: The class you can use to properly write the change history is ChangeLogUtils. You can find a lot of code examples when you google for ChangeLogUtils. e.g I have found: http://forums.atlassian.com/servlet/JiveServlet/download/46-3524-83650133-735/BugzillaImport.java as an example how the bugzilla importer writes the old bugzilla id to the change history. If you have a commercial license please search for ChangeLogUtils and you surely find many useful examples in Jira builtin importers

Another option is to write directly to the database tables changegroup and changeitem but in this case you must take care to update the sequence_value_item table properly. Always take a backup of your db before you do such a dangerous operation Also you should change the database directly only when Jira is not running and afterwards you have to reindex. Please read more about the database way to do it at http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA043/Change+History