Cloning issues- Copying Activity

[Andrew Wursta]

Is there a way to clone an issue and keep the activity (comments, updates) from the original issue? We have an automation rule set up that every month our tickets in a particular project clone to a new project we use as a pseudo archive and we would like to maintain the updates that were made in the original project. Is there an option to do that, or code we can use? 

[Luka Hummel - codefortynine]

Hi @Andrew Wursta and welcome to the community 👋

I'm from codefortynine and if you are willing to try a third party app our app Deep Clone for Jira can help you clone your issues including comments.

Although like @Trudy Claspill already mentioned it's currently impossible to clone the issue history of an issue.

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Andrew Wursta -- Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

Beyond the scope of the other answers provided, I wonder...

What problem are you trying to solve?  That is, "why do this?"

For example, are there specific questions you want to answer, research, etc. which are addressed by seeing the prior comments and change history of the source-issue-for-cloning?

And, how often does that research happen?

Knowing these things may help the community to offer alternative solution approaches.  Thanks!

Kind regards,
Bill

[Clara Belin-Brosseau_Elements]

Hello @Andrew Wursta

If you're willing to use a third-party application, I can suggest trying our Elements Copy & Sync app that allows you to copy issues with all their content (summary, description, custom fields, comments, attachments, etc.) and their child issues.

Using our feature Synchronization, you’ll be able to synchronize comments and other data from the original issue by picking the sync direction. 

You can trigger the cloning using Automation.

Don't hesitate to try our app, it's free during 30 days and stays free under 10 users.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Kind regards,
Clara

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @Andrew Wursta 

Welcome to the Atlassian community.

The native Clone Issue feature is not intended to clone all the activity information for an issue. It is intended to be used to create a "new" issue using the same basic information as in the source issue. You may notice that cloning an issue also doesn't automatically retain the current Status of the original issue but instead the new issue is set to the initial Status of the relevant workflow.

You could add functionality to your automation rule to copy over the Comments of the original issue to the new issue, but the time stamp information on the Comments in the new issue would be the current date, not the original timestamps of the original comments.

I'm not aware of a facility for copying the change history of the issue.

You might want to investigate the third party apps that provide additional cloning capabilities to see if they can meet your requirements. Here's a sample search from the Atlassian Marketplace:

https://marketplace.atlassian.com/search?hosting=cloud&product=jira&query=clone