one or many projects for different customers?

[Alex McRoberts]

We're just setting up our work flows. We have one core project, and the potential for two or more customers to use the same core project, but to customize the core project in their own ways.

Neither customer will want to share their changes with the other, is there a good process or work flow for a behaviour like this?

[Meg Holbrook]

Someone much smarter than I am may swoop in and correct this, but from my understanding: 

Issues that share common workflows would ideally share projects but different issue types. 

Projects that require different workflows would ideally be set to different projects. 

Will the projects share issues or have their own separate tasks?

[Alex McRoberts]

The workflow is likely to be:

* Master Project has a series of tasks (not fully defined, and new tasks will be added over time)

* Project "One" has a series of tasks. The body of a task may or may not impact the Master Project, and may or may not produce work which is to be pushed back upstream eventually to Master Project.

* Project "Two" has a series of tasks independent from Project "One". The body of a task may or may not impact the Master Project, and may or may not produce work which is to be pushed back upstream eventually to Master Project.

I admit, it's not very clear...

[Meg Holbrook]

From what I gather here, it seems like you may be better off utilizing one project with 2+ issue types. 

Separating by issue type allows the issues across the 'projects' to have the same bones but customization in terms of workflow and fields. 

Changing issue types to your 'master' project would require very little modification to your ticket. 

[Alex McRoberts]

One last issue, which may impact this. We will have customers involved in Project "One" that should not see issues from Project "Two" – vice-versa and neither should be able to see issues from Master Project.

Am I right in saying that issue security will be able to help me here?

[Meg Holbrook]

Unfortunately, issues are controlled at the project level, so if security is a problem then you will need to create another project. 

There are workarounds for this issue, but it's much easier to manage two projects with these constraints.