The Epic Link is deleted when performing a bulk move to a new project

Summary

When performing a bulk move on Jira Epic and Story type issues, the relationship between the Epics and Stories gets automatically removed (the Epic Link field of the stories is cleared). This knowledge article describes one possible reason why this issue happens, and how to identify it.

Environment

Jira Software Server/Data Center on any version from 8.0.0.

Diagnosis

Replicating the issue with the bulk move

Perform a bulk move following the steps below:

• Create a JQL query that catches a few Epic and Story issues

• Click on Tools > Bulk Change > All Issues

• Select all the issues

  

• Select Move Issues as the action

  

• Select a new project where the issues will be moved to

  

• Note that the Bulk Move operation is requesting to set a new value for the Epic Link field. Tick the Retain option (to retain the Epic Link value during the bulk move):

  

• After the bulk move is complete, check the history of the Story (and the Epic issue that was linked to it) and noticed that the Epic Link field got automatically cleared by the move:

  • History of the Story issue (note that the Epic Link field was automatically cleared):

    

  • History of the Epic issue that was linked to the Story issue (note that the Epic Child field was automatically cleared):

    

Checking the workflows associated to the source and target projects

• Take note of the status that the Story and the Epic issues were in during the move (for example, DONE status in the example above)

• Check the workflow(s) associated to the 2 projects (Source and Target project)

• Look at the properties associated to the status the Epic and Story issues were in (DONE status in the example above)

• Check if the DONE status is configured with the property jira.permission.edit.denied that prevents the issue from being editable in that status, as per the KB article Disabling edits in closed issues:

• If you see that property, then this KB article is relevant

Cause

This behavior is happening is due the following reasons:

• The move operation needs to re-create the Epic/Story relationship to account for fact that the moved issues will be assigned new issue keys in the target project

• Because of that, the move operation needs to clear and set the Epic Link field to a new value

• Since the Epic issue is in a non-editable status (due to the property jira.permission.edit.denied in the Workflow Status), this operation fails: the Epic Link gets cleared without being set to a new value

ℹ️ Note that this issue does not only impact the bulk move operation, but also the move action from the Jira Issue View page:

• Let's assume that a Story issue is linked to an Epic issue, and that both issues are in a non editable status

• Open the Story issue from the Jira issue view page, then click on More > Move

• When selecting a new project in the move operation, the user will be forced to set a new value for the Epic Link or the field will be cleared

• When selecting the Epic that this issue was already linked to, the following error will be thrown:

  1 You don't have permission to edit this epic, so you can't assign your issue to it.
  

Solution

Solution 1

Whenever you need to perform a move operation on issues that are in a non-editable status, follow the steps below:

• Edit both workflows (from the source and target projects), so that the issues can be editable when they are in the Resolved (or Closed or Done) status

  • Make sure to publish the workflows so that the changes are saved

• Perform the bulk move

• Re-edit the workflows to make the issues non-editable again

  • Make sure to publish the workflows so that the changes are saved

Solution 2

Transition the issues that you are planning to move into an editable status before performing the bulk move operation.