Copy work items that use Team-managed fields to another Jira project

Summary

When tickets are moved between team-managed projects, the values of custom fields are not preserved (please refer to the bug ticket JRACLOUD-76867).

In order to preserve the values of all fields when copying out of a team-managed project, you can perform the copy using Jira Automation.

Solution

Team-Managed fields lost on Request Type move

When team-managed custom fields are used in a Request type, and the tickets need to be moved to another project, Jira is unable to map these fields to the new Request type. Jira removes the team-managed custom fields from the source Request Type and adds the custom fields from the destination Request type.

Use the Automation clone action to copy the field values

Automation can be used to 'move' work items from one team-managed project to another that uses its custom fields. This can be achieved by creating a rule that clones the ticket from the source project and updates the custom fields in the destination project.

Basic automation rule setup

1. Navigate to Settings > System > Global Automation

2. Select Create rule

3. Select Add Trigger and add Manual trigger from the work item

   1. This is an example, but other triggers can also be used as well

4. Select Add Component > Then: Add an action

5. Search and add Clone work item:

   1. Project: Target project to create a copy of this work item

   2. Work item Type: The work item type it will be cloned as

      Don't choose Same issue type, as it will not work between team-managed projects.

   3. Summary: You can use smart values here - for example: CLONE - {{issue.summary}} will add "CLONE - " to the pre-existing summary

Now that the rule basics are configured, let's ensure we copy over the field values between the two projects.

Set field values between projects with automation

Choose fields to set: In this option, you will need to select the fields to be updated in the ticket once it is copied to the destination project.

The fields shown here will be from the destination project's custom fields. For each destination project custom field added, the value from the source project field needs to be matched.

1. Select Choose fields to set, search and add the desired fields from the Destination project

2. Next to the field, select ... (more options) > COPY

3. Once the Destination field is set to Copy Destination from Current work item, then select the Copy icon

4. In the new window that appears, select Current issue and the field to copy the value from

In the below example, the source field has been purposely named Source to demonstrate:

Here's an example of the above configuration:

• Source Project: TM-Source (TMS)

• Destination Project: TM-DestinationOne (TMD1)

• Issue Type: Questions for Legal

• Summary: {{issue.summary}}

• Choose fields to set: The Source field value will be copied into the Destination field

This rule as seen in the Automation editor is displayed in the screenshot below:

In this example, when a ticket from the TM-Source (TMS) project is cloned to TM-DestinationOne (TMD1), then the Destination field value in TMD1 work item will be the same as the Source field value from the TMS work item.

Once you've published and turned on the automation rule, you'll be able to run it to clone individual work items.

To execute the rule, navigate to the work item that needs to be cloned, and select Actions > then select your rule.