Is it possible to migrate issues without losing the Development info?

[Nicole_Brueckner]

Dear community, 

We are currently migrating one instance to a central instance (Data Center). Next to this they have Bitbucket Cloud in usage. 

Is there any chance to have the Development information migrated to the new instance? I know they are linked via issuekey, but if I would provide the old issuekey somehow in the new instance (Customfield "External ID")?

Thanks for helping out :) 

Best regards-, 

Nicole

[Ankita Mehta]

Hi @Nicole_Brueckner

Migrating issues without losing development information like Bitbucket branches, commits, and pull requests—is definitely important to keep the full context intact.

Since development data in Jira is typically linked via the issue key, simply migrating issues while changing their keys can cause those links to break. Using a custom field like “External ID” to store the old issue key is a common approach to maintain reference, but by itself, it may not be enough for Jira to recognize the development info automatically.

To preserve development details during migration, you’ll want to use a migration solution that:

• Keeps issue keys consistent or maps old keys to new ones transparently.
• Migrates or synchronizes development metadata linked to those issue keys.
• Handles linking commits, branches, and PRs from Bitbucket Cloud to the new Jira Data Center instance.

Some enterprise migration tools can handle this mapping and syncing intelligently, ensuring your development info stays connected throughout the migration. For example, you may consider enterprise - grade migration solutions like OpsHub,  also an Atlassian partner, for Jira and Bitbucket migration, they can save a lot of manual effort and reduce the risk of losing critical development context. All this without downtime and no disruption without writing a line of code.

Hope this helps! Drop us a line if you want to dive deeper.

Cheers!

[Nick Nader]

Hi Nicole,

Have you attempted a test migration on a staging environment with some of these issues yet? I believe the intended functionality is that once you migrate from Jira DC to another Jira DC or Jira Cloud, you simple reconnect the application link to Bitbucket Cloud and because of the issuekey in the branches, commits, and pull requests, that development panel should re-populate automatically with the Bitbucket details.

Let me know if you're running into issues with this!

Nick from Isos

[Nicole_Brueckner]

Dear Nick, 

Thanks for answering. My issue is, that the issuekey will not be the same in the new DC. Is there a possibility to check on a customfield? Then I would migrate the old key to this field. 

Best regards-,

Nicole 

[Nick Nader]

Hi Nicole,

Historically, even when the issue keys change during a migration of the issues, Jira keeps track of the original issuekey so that the bitbucket reference can be redirected automatically. I am not sure if this is still the case and testing would be advised to see if that still happens when migrating from DC to DC.

Nick from Isos