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Migrate between team-managed and company-managed projects

This page will be useful to you if:

  • Your team currently works in a company-managed project, and you want to migrate to team-managed projects.

  • Your team gave team-managed projects a try, found that it didn't suit how you work, and you want to move your issues to company-managed projects.

Create a project to receive your existing issues

You'll need to have a new Scrum or Kanban project available, so your current software project issues have a place to go to.

Create a new team-managed project to receive your existing company-managed project issues

To create a new team-managed project:

  1. Choose Projects > Create project.

  2. Select Software development under Project template or Jira Software under Products.

  3. Learn more about the available templates and select a template.

  4. View the detailed information on the template and choose Use template.

  5. Choose project type: Team-managed.

  6. Give your project a name. You can change your template by selecting Change template.

  7. Choose who can access your project.

  8. Select Create.

We automatically generate a project key when the project is created.

Or, create a new company-managed project to receive your existing team-managed project issues

If you want to move from a team-managed project to a company-managed project, your Jira admin will need to create a new company-managed project for you. Reach out to them for help. Learn more about creating company-managed projects.

To create a new company-managed project:

  1. Choose Projects > Create project.

  2. Select Software development under Project template or Jira Software under Products.

  3. Learn more about the available templates and select a template.

  4. View the detailed information on the template and choose Use template.

  5. Choose project type: Company-managed.

  6. Give your project a name. You can change your template by selecting Change template.

  7. Choose who can access your project.

  8. Select Create.

Find and move your existing issues to your new project

Now that you have an empty project waiting to receive your old project's issues, you can move all your existing issues into the new project.

To complete this step, your Jira admin must grant you the Make bulk changes global permission. Learn more about global permissions.

Search for your existing issues

First, you need to find the issues you want to move:

  1. Select the search field in the navigation bar and select View all issues.

  2. Click the Project filter, and select the project you want to migrate from.
    (If you're looking at the Advanced mode, you'll need to select Basic)

  3. In the top-right corner, select more () > Bulk change all. The Bulk Operation wizard appears.

A cropped issue view, displaying a Project:All dropdown filter. There's a section for recent projects and all projects.

Press / then enter on your keyboard to quickly go to advanced search.

Move your existing issues into your new project

Next, walk through the Bulk Operation wizard to move your issues into your new project:

  1. Select the issues you want to migrate and hit Next.

  2. Select Move Issues and hit Next.

  3. On the Select destination projects and issue types screen, select where issues from your old project will go. If you’re moving from a team-managed project using epics, issues on this page will be grouped based on which epic they belong to. Select a destination project and issue type, and hit Next.

  4. On the Map Status for Target Project screen, select a destination status for each status in your old project. This is the status that each issue in your team-managed project will take on in the new project.

  5. On the final screen, click Confirm.

Things to keep in mind if you migrate from company-managed to team-managed

Team-managed projects and company-managed projects are technically quite different. Here's a few things to consider when you migrate from a company-managed software project to a team-managed software project:

  • Completed, planned or active sprints: Sprints won’t move from a company-managed project to a team-managed project. Past sprints will not be displayed on the timeline. The issues that were in your company-managed project will be added to the backlog of your team-managed project.

  • Components: Component fields are unique to every project in Jira. If you migrate issues with completed component field information, you will lose this data. 

Components field data is not recoverable, even if you bulk move these issues back to the company-managed projects they came from.

  • Custom fields: These must be recreated in your new team-managed project. Team-managed project fields are independent from global custom fields. When you move issues to a team-managed project, Jira retains most of your issues' global custom field values (except component and version fields). But, we don't map them to your team-managed project's fields. Your global custom field data is stored against your issues but the fields in your company-managed project are technically different from the fields in your team-managed destination, so they will appear blank. This data is not lost (except component and version fields). If you move your issues back to a company-managed project that supports the custom field, the original values stored against it reappear.

  • Story points estimation: This data will be lost, however you'll be able to start using story points estimation by enabling the Estimation feature in your team-managed project.

  • Reports: Data for your project's Velocity report won't be saved. The Velocity report will show that no points were completed in past sprints.

  • Report history: All reporting history is lost in this migration process. The Burnup report and Velocity report won't be migrated.

  • Parallel sprints: Currently, team-managed projects don’t support running parallel sprints.

  • Project and issue keys: Jira will automatically update the issue keys of migrated issues to reflect their new project. Any existing links to old issue keys will be automatically redirected.

  • Versions and releases: Any version information is lost in this migration process, even if you have the Releases and versions feature enabled in your new team-managed project. 

Versions and releases field data is not recoverable, even if you bulk move these issues back to the company-managed projects they came from

Things to keep in mind if you migrate from team-managed to company-managed

Team-managed projects and company-managed projects are technically quite different. Here's a few things to consider when you migrate from a team-managed software project to a company-managed software project:

  • Board statuses: If you customized your team-managed board, you'll need to set up the same statuses in your company-managed project's workflow. Only Jira admins can create and modify statuses and workflows. Learn more.

  • Custom fields: If you use custom fields in your team-managed project, a Jira admin needs to recreate the fields and add them to screen schemes and field configurations in your company-managed project. Custom field data will need to be recreated, otherwise it will be lost.

  • Issue types: If you added your own issue types to your team-managed project, you'll need to have a Jira admin recreate these using an issue type scheme that they associate to your new company-managed project. Learn more.

  • Project access: Access to company-managed projects is controlled by a permissions scheme. Only your Jira admin can update your company-managed project's permission scheme. Learn more.

  • Project and issue keys: Jira will automatically update the issue keys of migrated issues to reflect their new project. Any existing links to old issue keys will be automatically redirected.

  • Reports: Reports data won't be saved. Even though your issues will be retained, data for your project's Velocity and Burnup reports won't transfer over, and will be lost.

  • Story points estimation: This data will be lost. This is because the custom field that Jira uses to store estimates in company-managed projects (Story points) is different to the custom field used in team-managed projects (Story point estimate).

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