How to bulk update dates in tickets uploaded via CSV

[Gareth Ivatt]

Context: Trying to create a test account that has tickets with data ranging from Jan 2022 - July 2023 but when importing ~3k tickets from Linear into Jira via CSV, the created date and updated date all get set to the day the tickets were imported. (Ex. Uploading tickets on August 1st will label dates as August 1st even though the original ticket may have been created well before that).

[Marc - Devoteam]

Hi @Gareth Ivatt 

This is a topic I have come across as well. it all depends on the date format in Jira.

The best way to tackle this is to export some already existing issues from Jira (before your import), and in a basic text editor check the format of the dates.

Use the same format in your CSV and do the upload again.

[Gareth Ivatt]

Hi @Marc - Devoteam 

Thanks for the speedy response. 

When reuploading, do the same tickets get updated with the correct dates or will it create duplicate tickets? 

[Marc - Devoteam]

Hi @Gareth Ivatt 

You would need to create an extra column in your CSV where you specify the issue keys of the already created issues.

On the import, map this column to the issue key field, the existing issue will be update then.

From the documentation:

Updating existing issues

To update existing issues, your CSV file needs to contain a column that maps to Issue Key. If an issue exists for a given key, it will be updated.

In this example, the second row will create issue TT-1, while the third row will set the number of votes to 7 and add two labels, and the fourth row will change the issue summary. In the next row, issue TT-2 will be created with two labels. The last row removes labels with the <<!clear!>> special marker:

issue key,summary,votes,labels,labels

TT-1,Original summary,1,label1,label2

TT-1,,7,label-1,label-2 TT-1,Changed summary,,,

TT-2,Original summary 2,1,label-1,label-2

TT-2,,<<!clear!>>,<<!clear!>>,