Sharing issues across different projects using custom fields

[charlotte]

Hello,

I hoped someone might be able to point me in the right direction with this one.

#### SITUATION

I have three product teams that utilise their own projects / board to manage their workflow as company managed projects. We have another board/project that is where all bugs & issues are captured (team managed project which will need to be converted to a company managed one for this to work - I imagine).

I've set-up a custom field for the bugs & issue project/board where the people creating the tickets are able to select the relevant team for a bug(if appropriate).

What I'd like to happen is that when that custom field is selected, that issue will appear in the backlog of the relevant team, in order for them to refine / prioritise, then as it transitions through the workflow it's status is correct in both the relevant product board and bugs & issue board (if possible - maybe through automation?)

When I update the query of the product board to pull through the tickets from the bugs & issues board - that works fine, I'm able to see *all* the bugs & all the product issues. But if I update the query on the product board to only show things related to particular 'product team', then the query fails and I don't see existing issues and I only see things related to that custom field and I want to see both.

Does anyone have a work around or another suggested approach to resolve this issue?

[Trudy Claspill · Accepted solution]

Hello @charlotte 

Please show us the original filter for the product board and the ways you changed it.

You can combine issues from multiple projects to display in a board by doing something like this:

project=<project for the product> or (project=<the bugs/issues project> and <custom field for Team>=<the Team appropriate for this product team/board>)

You need a filter that gets the issues in the original product board and also the issues from the bugs/issues project for the relevant team. The "Team" field is, I presume, only used in the Team Managed project. Therefore you have to make sure that criteria is group with the Team Managed Project criteria, separate from the Company Managed project criteria. Otherwise your filter is interpreted to be looking for issues in both projects that also (in both projects) use the "Team" field and has its value set to the value you specify. You need to use an OR to get both sets of issues into one board.

You should note, though, that since the bugs/issues project is a Team Managed project and the others are Company Managed, the Statuses used by the issues in those projects are considered "different" even if they are named identically. In your Board Settings you may see multiple statuses with the same name with one being from the Company Managed project and the other from the Team Managed project.

If the above is not entirely making sense, show us your filters. Then we can customize our answers to use the terminology used in your filters.

[charlotte]

Hi Trudy

Thanks for sharing the relevant info - I've got a proof of concept up and running, so the query appears to be working. Thank you!!!

With regards to statuses - it's like we are going to implement this approach across three different product teams (currently). I'm assuming that mapping statuses across all three product boards and the bugs & issues will need to happen, in order for bugs to appear in the correct areas on both boards e.g. in progress on the product board, should also show in progress on the bug board.

Is there any value in converting the team managed bugs & issues board into a company managed one in this instance?

Cheers

Charlotte

[Trudy Claspill]

There are a variety of factors to consider.

With a Team Managed project any user that is assigned to the Administrator role in the project could change the workflow, adding or removing Statuses. That could impact the other boards you have that are pulling in those issues.

If you are considering converting the project to a Company Managed project you should review this document first.

https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/migrate-between-team-managed-and-company-managed-projects/

You would actually have to create a new Company Managed project and move the issues from the Team Managed project to the Company Managed project. That would impact any filter that referenced the old Team Managed project. And, there is the possibility of data loss if the Team Managed project has used custom fields. For instance, your custom "Team" field in the Team Managed project would not "move" with the issue into the Company Managed project. An alternative to using the Move Issue function is to export the issue data to a CSV file and then import it into the Company Managed project. That gives you the ability to map the Team Managed custom fields to comparable custom fields in the Company Managed project.

If you are using the Roadmap feature you may want to set up some comparable test projects and see how this feature is impacted by having the issues in different types of projects. I see you have the Premium plan and so you could have Roadmaps that use multiple projects as data sources. I have not worked with the Roadmaps feature much and so don't have any insights on how that might be impacted by your choice.

Team Managed projects are designed to be stand-alone, so some cross project features are not available when using them. Sharing custom fields, workflows, notifications schemes, and linking issues to Epics in other projects are examples.

There have been some discrepancies in how boards on Company Managed projects show Epics, issues, and sub-tasks from Company Managed projects vs. how they show the same from Team Managed projects, due to some architectural differences in the projects. Some changes are in progress by Atlassian that will resolve these discrpepancies:

https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/upcoming-changes-epic-link-replaced-with-parent/

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-Software-articles/Upcoming-changes-to-epic-fields-in-company-managed-projects/ba-p/1997562

[charlotte]

Thanks Trudy, you've given me a lot of reference information and expertise on this - thank you.

Let me review and then I can make the best approach for what we need - I'm imaging it'll be converting it to a company managed project, so we can share the custom field (as it's likely to be used for other things as well).

[charlotte]

Hi Trudy
I've made the changes to the board that I want to pull information into. But I'm getting a workflow issue now, as I don't have the correct statuses mapped, but when I look at the available statuses, they aren't showing in the board I want to pull into or vice versa. Any thoughts?

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @charlotte 

Please provide the details of the changes you have made, screen images, and details that explain what you expect to see and are not seeing in which screens.

[charlotte]

Thanks Trudy, I've found a work around that's now working. Appreciate your help!