what are the differences between project configurator and Configuration manager in JIRA

[José Marañón [Awnaba Software S.L.]]

Hi Sindhu,

I am the main developer behind Project Configurator, so inevitably my answer will be biased too. But I will try to be as clear and transparent as possible.

First of all, I agree with George at least in one thing: read the documentation, give both products a try and see by yourself. Project Configurator evaluation licenses are fully functional, so you can evaluate the plugin under the same conditions as if you had already purchased it.

Project Configurator is the longest standing plugin for transferring JIRA configurations between instances. It was first released in February 2013 and has covered since JIRA 5.0 up to current JIRA 7.1. It is also the most successful, with 1023 installations vs. 604 installations for CM.

As part of the Atlassian Verified requirements, we formally commit to a support SLA for our customers, that guarantees they will get a response not later (and very often much sooner!) than the next business day. We strive to produce complete documentation, including typical use cases of the plugin (for example, how to automate its use...).

Project Configurator has distinctive features like:

• Export and import of dashboards
• Export and import of workflow layouts
• Ability to handle a selected group of projects
• Simulated import feature that lets you see exactly what changes will be made to the target instance before they are actually applied.
• More complete support for the most popular workflow plugins

This is not all. In the next months (and starting quite soon...) we will add very relevant new features to Project Configurator. Please stay tuned to our blog or watch Project Configurator in the Marketplace for timely information.

And last but not least, Project Configurator is much more affordable than CM.

Kind regards!

[George Dinkov _Botron_]

Hi Sindhu,

Full disclosure - I am one of the developers of Configuration Manager for JIRA so my answer is a bit biased. I encourage you to give both tools a try and see the differences for yourself. However we have quite a few customers that have used project configurator in the past and have switched to CMJ for one or more of the reasons I'll list below.

Some of the key differences are:

• CMJ provides deep change and impact analysis which is presented in the nice GUI for the administrator to review and make sure only desired changes are introduced. This is crucial when you are introducing changes to production systems that you are responsible for.

• CMJ provides deep analysis into dependencies – add-ons, version, etc.

• CMJ has very detailed audit log.

• CMJ supports different deployment modes – new project and merge for single or multiple projects, restore and merge for system snapshots and thus cover more use cases.

• CMJ has handling of configuration errors which prevent from configuration extraction and deployment – the “Integrity check” feature/add-on. This ensures that a snapshot always contains a working configuration and helps keep the system consistent.

• CMJ deployment handles data migration scenarios.

• CMJ has roll-back model that prevents changes to be deployed in event of an error – as a result only working and validated by the admin configuration is deployed.

• CMJ snapshots are always forward compatible. We handle all upgrade logic, no need for manual XML manipulations or XSLT transformations.

• CMJ is much more robust with probably the best support in the Atlassian eco-system. Please check the reviews on the marketplace: https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.botronsoft.jira.configurationmanager/server/reviews 

• CMJ supports resolving conflicting configurations – for example multiple custom fields with same name and type.

• CMJ has a public REST interface for automation purposes.

Also we'll release support for Agile boards in a couple of weeks and we'll add support for Service Desk in the near future.

If you have more questions you can always drop us an email at support@botronsoft.com where you'll get a response within 24h.

Cheers,

George

Update: Support for Agile boards is available since version 4.0 of CMJ and Service Desk is in progress.

[Teodora V _Fun Inc_]

Hi @Robert Horan 

We have carefully tested and prepared a Configuration Manager for Jira / Project Configurator comparison material on our website.

You can take a look, and if you still have any questions, let us know here or raise a ticket on our Support platform.

Hope this helps :)

[Robert Horan]

So... no advocates for Project Configurator?

[Dan Ivory]

Hi @Robert Horan

Please could you give us some more details about your question so we can help?

If you are interested to know what users are saying about Project Configurator we have some reviews available here https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1211147/project-configurator-for-jira?hosting=server&tab=reviews

Thanks, 

Dan

[Robert Horan]

In short, I was hoping to find an answer that explored the differences between the two.