Defining a new Jira project - question about the key

[Amir Katz (Outseer)]

Is it possible to create a new project and set the number of the first issue to a number other than 1?

That is, if the project key is FOO, I want the first issue to be FOO-10000 instead of FOO-1.

The reason is that later I will perform an issue import from another server, for issues FOO-1 up to FOO-9500.

Thanks

[Amir Katz (Outseer) · Accepted solution]

Here is an update of what I did (albeit bit kludgy):

1. Exported a single issue from the existing project to a CSV file, CSV-1. Issue key is FOO-9500.
2. Exported first 500 issues - FOO-1 to FOO-500 to file CSV-2.
3. Created a new project on target server which is identical to the existing project.
4. Used system import via CSV to import CSV-1, with mapping of the issue key enabled.
   • Note that only Jira admins/sub-admins can use system export
5. New project now has a single issue, FOO-9500.
6. Imported issues from CSV-2, FOO-1 to FOO-500.
7. New project now has 501 issues: FOO-1, FOO-2,...FOO-500 and FOO-9500.
8. New issues created afterwards will start from FOO-9501 and not from FOO-501.
9. Apparently Jira uses the highest issue number and does not try to fill gaps. This is good.
10. Mission accomplished!

[Deleted user · Accepted solution]

Hi @Amir Katz (Outseer)

You can follow this article to change the starting number, although I'm not sure if it can impact your future desire to import other issues.

I'd recommend testing it on a test server first.

Kind regards
Jorden

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Two options

Create/import 9,999 issues, then bulk-delete them.  Delete scrubs all trace of an issue, so you won't be creating any extra data in the database long-term.

Stop Jira, use SQL on the database to change the pcounter field in the project table for the project you are interested in, and restart.  Normally, I'd tell you not to touch a database, but this is an exception - it's one of the few things that is safe and well-known.  But you *must* have Jira offline when you do it.

[Amir Katz (Outseer)]

Thanks to both @[deleted] @Nic Brough -Adaptavist-.

Touching the database is out of the question in my organization, so I will tackle the problem differently.

The approach is:

• freeze the source project (make it read-only)
• export all 10k issues via JSON
• perform import into the target project
• open the target project for modification.