How do I import from a csv while maintaining Epic > Story > Subtask relationships?

[Cliff Stovich]

When I attempt to import from a csv the relationships between Epics and Stories break. This is the csv that is generated when I export from a Jira project.

Key	Issue Type	Parent	Summary	Status	Issue color
TPC-1	Epic		Epic 1	To Do	purple
TPC-2	Story	TPC-1	Task E1-1	To Do	purple
TPC-3	Story	TPC-1	Task E1-2	To Do	purple
TPC-4	Story	TPC-1	Task E1-3	To Do	purple
TPC-5	Epic		Epic 2	To Do	purple
TPC-6	Story	TPC-5	Task E2-1	To Do	purple
TPC-7	Story	TPC-5	Task E2-2	To Do	purple
TPC-8	Story	TPC-5	Task E2-3	To Do	purple

When I save that csv and try to upload it I get the error: 

Import completed with 6 errors:

• Issue 'TPC-35' is not of a sub-task type (Story). It will NOT be a sub-task of the issue 'TPC-33'
• Issue 'TPC-36' is not of a sub-task type (Story). It will NOT be a sub-task of the issue 'TPC-33'
• Issue 'TPC-37' is not of a sub-task type (Story). It will NOT be a sub-task of the issue 'TPC-33'
• Issue 'TPC-38' is not of a sub-task type (Story). It will NOT be a sub-task of the issue 'TPC-34'
• Issue 'TPC-39' is not of a sub-task type (Story). It will NOT be a sub-task of the issue 'TPC-34'

So my stories aren't being uploaded. If I make them sub-tasks instead of stories I can upload without problem but I can't change the Issue Type from Story to Sub-task for what I'm trying to do. 

How do I get that downloaded csv to upload while maintaining the Epic>Story parent child relationship?

Thanks

[Cliff Stovich · Accepted solution]

Nevermind. I figured it out.

You would imagine that the "export to csv" function would create a csv that could then be uploaded via the external system import function to create the same project with the same issue relationships. That's not the case. The 'parent' function only defines relationships between a parent and subtasks. To link stories to epics you need to use the epic name and epic link functions.

[Vineeth T]

I've been going crazy with the same situation. I finally broke up the upload file into multiple files and cross referenced them:

• Feature (with blank epic-link/parent id)
• Epics (using Jira feature reference from uploading file-1 as "parent" field e.g., PROJ-101)
• User Stories (blank parent field, but used the epic-name from file 2 as epic-link in file 3 for hierarchy)
• Sub-tasks (blank epic-link field, but added Jira reference for user stories generated after uploading file-3 as parent column)

It is a real pain to upload hierarchy after the Parent column came in and deprecated the epic-link and parent-id fields. I have to maintain several config files and adds time to cross reference everything.