Options for duplicating projects with dynamic data?

scutrell October 30, 2024

I have a project which consists of a ton of issues. I need to clone it regularly which is onerous. All of the information is identical across projects (who it is assigned to, what the stories are called, etc) except for due dates (which are relative to their parent) and some kind of identifier (based on who I am doing the project for).


What are the best options here to cut down on the manual work of creating all of these tickets? My thoughts: a script using the API, some kind of custom template, automation rules?

3 answers

1 vote
Trudy Claspill
Community Leader
Community Leader
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October 30, 2024

Hello @scutrell 

Welcome to the Atlassian community.

Any custom solution relying on API scripting or Automation is going to be onerous, in my opinion, if the project has a "ton" of issues.

I recommend that you consider a third party app from the Atlassian Marketplace.

https://marketplace.atlassian.com/search?query=jira%20clone

I've heard good things about the Clone Plus app and the Deep Clone app, though I have not used either myself.

0 votes
Sarah Schmitt-Bär _Seibert Group_
Atlassian Partner
October 30, 2024

Hi @scutrell ,

as @Trudy Claspill mentioned, there are several Marketplace apps for cloning projects. 

An alternative to copying a project is to use Project Templates, available in Templating.app. Setting up a template for a company-managed project is simple, and you can even enable non-admin users to create projects based on these templates. You can then add a Jira Automation that applies an Issue Template when a new project is created, automatically inheriting a set of tasks with pre-filled data. You can also set due dates for tasks to be x days in the future based on the issue creation date.

For team-managed projects, you’d create them manually, but the Jira Automation for creating your issues would work the same way.

I’m the Product Manager for Templating.app, so please feel free to reach out if you have any questions!

Cheers,
Sarah

 

0 votes
Shawn Doyle - ReleaseTEAM
Community Leader
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October 30, 2024

Hi @scutrell 

 

Without knowing more about your use case, I would suggest exporting the tickets to clone to CSV and importing them to a new project. 

This would at least make the ticket creation easier.  You could then create Automation rules to update the fields that needed updating or update them while the tickets are all in CSV format and then do the import, which I would probably either script in python or perl or if simple enough in an excel macro.

 

 

scutrell October 30, 2024

Actually, this seems a lot more trivial than just using the Jira API (though I've not used it before so who knows...)

A simple find/replace Python script over a template file would be a pretty low lift.

Can you export an entire project of issues to CSV? And import an entire project of issues into Jira?

Trudy Claspill
Community Leader
Community Leader
Community Leaders are connectors, ambassadors, and mentors. On the online community, they serve as thought leaders, product experts, and moderators.
October 30, 2024

Are the source issues in a Team Managed or Company Managed project?

Do you want to create a new Team Managed or Company Managed project project from that template?

Do you have custom fields?

Do you have Components, Labels, or Versions within the issues?

Do you have Epics and child issues, issues and subtasks, and/or generic linked issues?

Do you have a customized board associated with the project?

 

You can export up to 1000 issues from the View All Issues screen, to a CSV file. A CSV file can imported to make new issues in a new project. However...

- You have to manipulate the file if these issues include subtasks under other issues, issues as children under Epics, or issues linked to other issues.

- If you are trying to create a Team Managed project and you have Epics with child issues, the CSV import process doesn't support making an issue a child of an Epic. (That can be done if you are importing to a Company Managed project.)

- You may need to actually create the project first in order to have the configuration set up correctly to receive the data you want to import; i.e. defining custom fields and workflows and screens. The import process otherwise may not know how to handle the data.

 

The level of difficulty will be based in part on the answers to the questions above.

scutrell October 30, 2024

It is a team-managed project, and I believe I'd like to clone it as a team-managed project. But it sounds like that will be difficult to do via CSV import.

Trudy Claspill
Community Leader
Community Leader
Community Leaders are connectors, ambassadors, and mentors. On the online community, they serve as thought leaders, product experts, and moderators.
October 30, 2024

It might be. I haven't done a lot of experimentation with CSV imports to Team Managed projects. And I haven't experimented much with the new import process that can be used to create a new Project during the import. I don't know how it handles fields that match system or global custom fields vs. fields that might be project specific.

In Team Managed projects you can leverage the Global Custom Fields that are managed by Jira Administrators and/or you can create local, project-specific custom fields. That could impact your attempts to import issues. Project-specific custom fields in TM projects can have identical names but be different field types. I think you would have to ensure that the custom fields were already set up in the destination project before trying to execute the import.

Shawn Doyle - ReleaseTEAM
Community Leader
Community Leader
Community Leaders are connectors, ambassadors, and mentors. On the online community, they serve as thought leaders, product experts, and moderators.
October 30, 2024

I agree with Trudy, once we start talking team managed there are other limitations.  I am old school and default to assuming everyone is still using Company managed.

 

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