Can we use the created issues as "templates" to use in different projects (1 roadmap)?

[Isabelle Cuinet]

Hello Atlassian community,

A general question regarding the use of the issues per projects

We're trying to create a roadmap that enables the integration of all our client's current (and upcoming) projects to keep track of the progress.

I was wondering if there is a way of re-using the existing issues as templates on multiple projects so as to avoid having to create the same ones each time.

For example:

Project 1 - Baking a chocolate cake

. Initiative 1 - Mix flour with egg & milk 

   . Epic 1 - XXg of flour

. Initiative 2 - add chocolates

Project 2 - Baking a vanilla cake

. Initiative 1 - Mix flour with egg & milk (template)

   . Epic 1 - XXg of flour

. Initiative 2 - add vanilla

The problem that we're currently facing is that even through creating multiple plans or projects, the issues' statuses will stay the same and cannot be adapted depending on the project.

If it is not possible to adapt this aspect, are there other best practices which we could make use of to resolve this?

Thanks in advance.

Isabelle

[Aleksandra Bosacka _Deviniti_]

Hello @Isabelle Cuinet 

It's Aleksandra from Deviniti, the vendor of the Issue Templates app, and I'd like to suggest another alternative.

If you need to create templates for your projects, you could consider using one of 3rd part apps that provide the templates functionality. Here's a link to the Marketplace: https://marketplace.atlassian.com/search?query=issue%20template 

One of them is our Issue Templates for Jira, which provides support not only for Epic templates with Stories and Sub-tasks but also all structures created with the help of Advanced Roadmaps.

With our app, you could create a separate project for a library of your templates (for more details see Setting up templates repository) and store all the repetitive initiatives there. Alternatively, you can easily recreate an existing initiative with the help of the Recreate issue option. Please note that it's quite powerful and it will reflect all structure under a specific initiative, meaning all its links and relations :)

I hope you will find all the suggestions useful!

Cheers,
Aleksandra

[Marlene Kegel - codefortynine]

Welcome to the community, @Isabelle Cuinet.

I am Marlene from codefortynine. 

If you're open to work with an app from the Atlassian Marketplace I can recommend Deep Clone for Jira. 

With our app you can bulk clone issues and issue hierarchies. For your workflow you would create template initiatives (with epics, issues, ...) and bulk clone them every time you start a new project.

You can watch a demo video here.

I've also wrote an article about a similar use case. Please note that the article is a few years old and Deep Clone for Jira has a lot more functions today. 

[Curt Holley]

Hi @Isabelle Cuinet 
Welcome to the community!

I'm struggling with what you mean by "the issues' statuses will stay the same and cannot be adapted depending on the project." can you please elaborate?

Regarding the "Can you use existing issues as templates to create other issues" notion, yes  you can, either via cloning or perhaps a better option would be via automation. But how often do you have whole projects or even Initiatives/ Epics that are going to be so similar to another existing one, that cloning it would make sense?

that said, if you have recipes (so to speak) that are required regularly as part of work being done, then options worth considering could be:

1. Document them in a Confluence space and reference the relevant page to any stories that require that "recipe"/instruction
2. Create manual trigger or perhaps scheduled automation rules that contain these "recipes"/instructions so that they can be evoked whenever required into the appropriate issue types

[Isabelle Cuinet]

Hello Curt,

Thank you for the warm welcome and the quick reply!

For our client actually it is not related to baking (sadly) but instead, it's related to administrative procedures. We've decided to regroup the bigger objects' procedures (e.g. Case management, Opportunity management) into "Initiatives" that also includes custom objects (we have around 20 of them). Then, for the the different steps to carry out the whole implementation, we've decided to group them below Epics (followed by US and tasks).

For every project, different procedures are used each time, I'll give an example below using just 2 initiatives for 3 projects:

Project 1 - uses Case mgmt, Opportunity mgmt

Project 2 - uses only Opportunity mgmt

Project 3 - uses only Case mgmt

In a ideal world, it is to visualize these 3 projects onto the advanced roadmap and have those initiatives (blocks of steps) that can be disposed depending on the project that uses it. That means "dragging and dropping" the initiatives into the project's section of the roadmap. This should prevent them from having to re-create the whole procedure for each project.

But the problem we will encounter here is related to the status of the issue; if the issue is not cloned, the status cannot be updated depending on a project, because there'll be only 1 issue used everywhere.

I was wondering could bulk cloning be an option to apply cross-project?

Thanks again for the help!

Isabelle

[Curt Holley]

Hi @Isabelle Cuinet 
Thanks for the detail.
So, I still say you could have a lot of the detail about the Initiatives in Confluence and then each project creates their Initiatives embeds the confluence content and configures relevant custom objects per project.
OR
If the initiatives would truly be carbon copies every time, you could have them centralised in a (Jira) project and each "Project" links to them via their Epics. This way, all the work related to the  Case Management initiative is linked to it. It is considered "In progress" and where each project is at can be viewed via Advanced Roadmap plans/views, but all projects link back to the high level objective/Initiative. This saves on duplication and confusion by linking everything to the relevant outcome/objective/Initiative.
Where possible, you really want to avoid duplication and encourage linking to the same centralised outcome/objective/Initiative.

Have a look at this for some inspiration: How Atlassian Uses Advanced Roadmaps - YouTube