CSV Template Import fails with Epic Parent Links

[Jason Abofsky]

I'm trying to create a template CSV to import into future projects that have the full breakdown of Epics, Stories, and Subtasks with parental links but keep getting the following warnings/errors:

Import completed with 38 errors:

• Issue 'P2-1' is not of a sub-task type (Story). It will NOT be a sub-task of the issue 'P2-72'
• Issue 'P2-2' is not of a sub-task type (Story). It will NOT be a sub-task of the issue 'P2-72'
• Issue 'P2-3' is not of a sub-task type (Story). It will NOT be a sub-task of the issue 'P2-72'
• ...

All of the work items get created but none of the parental links are there for Epic-Story.

I'm importing the following fields from the CSV: 
Summary, Issue Id, Issue Type, Status, Labels, Description, Issue Color, Story Point Estimate Parent Id.

[Luka Hummel - codefortynine]

Hi @Jason Abofsky and welcome to the Community!

I'm Luka from codefortynine and if you are willing to use a third-party app, our Deep Clone for Jira can help you clone your template. It can clone whole issue hierarchies/trees, including subtasks.

1. Navigate to the issue you want to clone
2. Click Action menu ••• > Deep Clone
3. Select Epic/Tree Clone
4. Configure and create your Epic/Tree Clone

[Jason Abofsky]

Thanks, but I'm trying to make a template to give to others with different accounts. I need to be able to send them a file to import.

[John Funk]

Hi Jason - Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

Parents are associated with Sub-tasks to stand issue types such as Story. For the Epic parent of the Story use the Epic Link field. 

[Jason Abofsky]

Perfect! Thanks. Of course, this means there's a bug in the CSV export of issues that accidentally puts the Epic Link into the Parent Id column.

[Jason Abofsky]

I saw it work once. But now when I try to import again into a second project, no errors or warnings are returned, but the story doesn't get linked to the epic. Here's my csv sample:

[John Funk]

You did this same thing on another project using the Issue ID as a number like that and it worked? 

[Jason Abofsky]

I hadn't gotten any warnings or errors, but after I realized that no story got linked to epics.

What do you mean a number like that? Those were the numbers exported under Issue Id and parent Id. (I moved the Story's Parent Id (exported as "Parent") to Epic Link.

How should that table look if I want to create that basic scenario (a subtask linked to a story linked to an epic) that could be imported into a new project on the same or different jira accounts repeatedly (can that be done?)

[John Funk]

What type of project are you using? Team-managed? Company-managed? 

[Jason Abofsky]

Team Managed. I tried company-managed, which had different issues - 'story' and 'subtype' aren't recognized. I think what I'm trying to do isn't the norm and would be a new feature request: The ability to create a template of linked Epics, Stories, and Subtasks that can be passed from one user account to another and from project to project in the same account. Repeatedly. 

The issue, I think (I'm a software tester, lol) comes with the ID mapping which would conflict if you tried to do things repeatedly. It would need a way to re-map the Issue IDs to new ones, then update both the Parent Id / Epic Link field values with those new IDs to match. I'm betting the software doesn't have that yet.

[John Funk]

Team-managed projects use the Parent field and not the Epic Link field. Also, the CSV import function is intended to be kind of a one-off function, not a continuous way to create issues. 

[Jason Abofsky]

That's a shame. I guess I won't be able to make a project template for distribution. I'll submit a feature request and see what the future brings.

Thanks for responding.