Is there a way to change the Workflow Scheme of a non-empty project?

[Denis Rousselle]

Hello,

We have 638 projects whose workflow Scheme we need to change, these projects can contain several thousand issues whose status will need to be adapted,

Is it possible to automate this task in any way?

Thank you

Kind regards

[Rudy Holtkamp]

Hi @Denis Rousselle ,

Is it one scheme for the 638 projects?

[Denis Rousselle]

Hi @Rudy Holtkamp ,

Currently we have 28 different workflow schemes, the goal is to have just one

[Rudy Holtkamp]

Hi @Denis Rousselle 

Ok, what you want to do is:

1. Create the new workflow scheme
2. Apply it to one project, test if everything is ok.
   Now Jira will ask how you want to map old statuses to new statuses. Define that (/write it down), so you can use it later. 
3. Take a look at dashboards/filters/boards and fix these with the new statuses
4. Replace the first of the 28 workflow schemes with the new one. It will take some time when you have a lot of issues.
5. Then repeat step 3 & 4 for the rest of the workflow schemes.

You might want to do this outside office hours and make sure your users know about the changes. Make a confluence page, an announce banner, etc. 

[Dick]

Hi @Denis Rousselle 

As the number of projects is high, I would suggest a cleanup of old projects first (archiving after switching to a "stopped workflow" with only a single status: Done). 

In a follow-up step you would need to migrate the remainder of projects to the workflow you want to end-up with by hand (no other way).

An alternative would be to set in motion a renewal process of projects. Accompany this with a workshop or something similar to show the benefits to the end-users. You need to entice them to move their project.

Hope you can manage to reduce the number,

Dick

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[Denis Rousselle]

Hi @Rudy Holtkamp @Dick ,

We have indeed planned a cleaning and archiving of some projects.
Unfortunately, there will still be more than 300 projects to modify.
Isn't it possible to automate this task with APIs?

[Dick]

Hi @Denis Rousselle 

You're working with 300 live projects, that each have a number of issues in a number of statuses found in the 28 workflows you mentioned in the original post.

The migration of a single project inside Jira demands for each old-status in the old workflow, a selection of a new-status in the final workflow. Overlapping statuses notwithstanding. 

Automating this process for the 300 individual workflows is not possible due to the sheer amount of possible desires of the teams involved. 

What you *could*  do is communicate about the deprecated statuses (as in: guys, do not use this status anymore") and then monitoring the issue count in the status-list. Any statuses without any issues can be safely removed. This could ease the hassle of finding an adequate new-status for deprecated statuses during the transition to a new workflow. It could even make your transition more homogenous (automatable). 

Hope you can tame the statuses,

Dick

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