Help with CSV imports?

[Ryan Belmont]

This feels like a pretty basic question, but the official documentation is somewhat unclear about whether I can actually do what I'm trying to do.

I've been asked to set up the system so that we can import CSV files of test cases for our QA department. They find it easier to create test cases in bulk in spreadsheets rather than in Jira proper. Looking around seems to suggest that I should be able to import data into Jira this way, but the Jira Importer tool seems to be more relevant to full-on project migrations.

I don't want to incidentally screw anything up playing around with this, can anyone give me a little more direction in terms of importing data and adding it to existing projects (Jira 4.4.1)? Is this actually possible?

Thanks,
Ryan

[Ryan Belmont · Accepted solution]

I did some more looking around, apparently the import feature I was looking for isn't something you can navigate to in the menus unless you're a system administrator, not a Jira administrator. Not sure why this is necessary, but at least that explains why I couldn't find it.

<jira domain>/secure/admin/views/CsvSetupPage!default.jspa?externalSystem=CSV

[Bob Swift OSS (Bob Swift Atlassian Apps)]

JIRA Command Line Interface can do this and we use it for that same purpose. How to import data from external systems or databases has more information.

[Jo-Anne MacLeod]

The csv importer is geared for new issue creation. So you can import into an existing project if you want. You may want to take a look at the command line tool to see if it would meet your needs as well.