Best practice for consolidating custom fields

[Darrel Jackson]

I have a Jira Cloud instance that has organically grown from a number of disparate teams using their own custom Jira configurations to an organisation-wide instance. As an admin I'm trying to reign in some custom configuration and either simplify them or just use out of the box fields. As an example, I have 4 different custom fields that all record defect severity for Bug issue types.

When I identify a duplicate custom field what I'd like to do is migrate the data to another field (either custom or out-of-the-box) then remove the old field. Let's assume all these fields are single value drop-downs.

What I think I need to do is this:

1. Add the new field to every screen the old field is on.

2. For each value in the current drop-down, find all the issues with that value.

3. Bulk edit those issues to set the corresponding drop-down value of the new field.

4. Once all drop-down values migrated, remove the old custom field.

The trouble I have is step 2 is very labour intensive as there are many custom fields and many drop-down values. Also for some reason I often can't see the new field in the bulk edit screen.

Am I doing it right? Any best practices that may be better?

[Prince Nyeche · Accepted solution]

Hi @Darrel Jackson 

Welcome to Community! You can use the CSV importer feature from Jira Settings to achieve this. I would suggest, you identify all the issues that contains the source field data to know where they all exist then export those issues with that old field visible (as it will contain it's present data) and add the new field data on the screen of the project as well.

While using the CSV importer from the External system import, this works well for single select list field, so you can map the field during the setup on the External system import configuration then initialise the process. Please note that you will require the issue key field, summary field can be left blank but needed. So you can bulk update those fields and its values. That's how to go about consolidating fields on Jira Cloud, without knowing any corresponding values as each issue can have different values on the old field.

[Darrel Jackson]

Great idea, exactly what I'm looking for. I'll try it.

[Darrel Jackson]

Looking at the admin guide it says: "Importing a CSV to update existing issues will reset columns to their default values if they are not specified in the CSV."

I was intending just to use Key and Summary plus the fields to be updated to avoid unintended updates to other fields. Does this mean I need to include every field on the issue?

[Prince Nyeche]

Hi @Darrel Jackson 

No, only include fields you want to update and not every field, what Jira does is update those fields once the import starts. Please always run a test in a Staging instance or test environment before applying to Production, in order to observe the behaviour of the action.

[Darrel Jackson]

Can I get a bit more help? I've supplied a CSV file with just the Issue Key and Summary fields plus the new field I want to load. I've left the Summary field blank. I've trialled it with just the header row and 1 issue. I do the import but it doesn't update the issue.

2021-02-01 00:53:19,589 INFO - Import started by darrel.jackson using com.atlassian.jira.plugins.importer.imports.csv.CsvDataBean
2021-02-01 00:53:19,805 INFO - ------------------------------
2021-02-01 00:53:19,805 INFO - Importing: Users
2021-02-01 00:53:19,805 INFO - ------------------------------
2021-02-01 00:53:19,805 INFO - Only new items will be imported
2021-02-01 00:53:19,809 INFO - 0 users associated with import. All of them imported as inactive, this can be changed after import in User Access step.
2021-02-01 00:53:19,809 INFO - ------------------------------
2021-02-01 00:53:19,809 INFO - Finished Importing : Users
2021-02-01 00:53:19,809 INFO - ------------------------------
2021-02-01 00:53:19,809 INFO - 0 users successfully created.
2021-02-01 00:53:19,813 INFO - Retrieving projects...
2021-02-01 00:53:19,839 INFO - Project ExternalProject{id='null', key='A3', externalName='null', name='Assure 3', type='null', template='null'} exists and found correctly.
2021-02-01 00:53:19,864 INFO - ------------------------------
2021-02-01 00:53:19,864 INFO - Importing: Versions
2021-02-01 00:53:19,864 INFO - ------------------------------
2021-02-01 00:53:19,864 INFO - Only new items will be imported
2021-02-01 00:53:19,864 INFO - ------------------------------
2021-02-01 00:53:19,864 INFO - Finished Importing : Versions
2021-02-01 00:53:19,864 INFO - ------------------------------
2021-02-01 00:53:19,864 INFO - ------------------------------
2021-02-01 00:53:19,864 INFO - Importing: Components
2021-02-01 00:53:19,864 INFO - ------------------------------
2021-02-01 00:53:19,864 INFO - Only new items will be imported
2021-02-01 00:53:19,864 INFO - ------------------------------
2021-02-01 00:53:19,864 INFO - Finished Importing : Components
2021-02-01 00:53:19,864 INFO - ------------------------------
2021-02-01 00:53:19,873 INFO - Retrieving custom fields...
2021-02-01 00:53:19,881 INFO - ------------------------------
2021-02-01 00:53:19,881 INFO - Importing: Issues
2021-02-01 00:53:19,881 INFO - ------------------------------
2021-02-01 00:53:19,881 INFO - Only new items will be imported
2021-02-01 00:53:19,980 INFO - Importing issue: [externalId='autoid--7088538323149316997', summary='null']
2021-02-01 00:53:20,129 INFO - 0 out of 1 issues successfully created
2021-02-01 00:53:20,133 INFO - ------------------------------
2021-02-01 00:53:20,133 INFO - Finished Importing : Issues
2021-02-01 00:53:20,133 INFO - ------------------------------
2021-02-01 00:53:20,179 INFO - ------------------------------
2021-02-01 00:53:20,179 INFO - Importing: Issue Links & Subtasks
2021-02-01 00:53:20,179 INFO - ------------------------------
2021-02-01 00:53:20,179 INFO - Only new items will be imported
2021-02-01 00:53:20,183 INFO - ------------------------------
2021-02-01 00:53:20,183 INFO - Finished Importing : Issue Links & Subtasks
2021-02-01 00:53:20,183 INFO - ------------------------------
2021-02-01 00:53:20,185 INFO - ------------------------------
2021-02-01 00:53:20,185 INFO - Importing: Issue remote links
2021-02-01 00:53:20,185 INFO - ------------------------------
2021-02-01 00:53:20,185 INFO - Only new items will be imported
2021-02-01 00:53:20,189 INFO - ------------------------------
2021-02-01 00:53:20,189 INFO - Finished Importing : Issue remote links
2021-02-01 00:53:20,189 INFO - ------------------------------

[Julie d'Antin [Elements]]

Hello @Darrel Jackson , 

I can imagine the challenge consolidating Jira custom fields after they've grown organically  represent! My team and I interviewed a panel of Atlassian experts on how to manage custom fields in Jira effectively and we turned it into a guide. 

We have a full chapter of guidance on how to optimize your custom fields in Jira, maybe it's worth for you to have a look?

The best practices gathered there can be passed along to your colleagues as well, so after you're done consolidating your custom fields, you prevent custom fields bloat to happen again. 

Cheers, 

Julie 

[Artem Fomin - DevOps Action]

You may want to look at Power Scripts or Script Runner - both can copy values from one field to another with ease.