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Table of Contents

Overview

Power Admin for Jira allows you to accomplish one of the most challenging and complex administrative tasks in Jira - merging custom fields. Our app gives you an intuitive, simplified, and quick way of merging two custom fields of the same type and confidently resolving conflicts along the way.

Let's say you have many custom fields with similar configurations accumulated throughout your Jira's lifespan. This makes it nearly impossible to make changes and clean up those custom fields using Jira's built-in configuration tools.

You can finally get rid of duplicate, legacy, and unnecessary custom fields without losing visibility on what will change and how your Jira configuration will look afterward. This way, you will reduce the number of custom fields on your system and improve your Jira performance significantly without disrupting your daily processes.

During the merge of source and destination custom fields, Power Admin allows you to decide how to merge their conflicting contexts - merge or replace the custom field options. You can also choose whether to merge or replace the source and destination custom field values in issues.

How it works

Power Admin for Jira lets you choose source and destination custom fields and then merge their contexts and issue values. There is an action button on custom fields' profile pages called Merge, and it is enabled for custom fields of the supported types listed below:

  • Number

  • Text (single and multi-line)

  • URL

  • Date Picker

  • Date Time Picker

  • Labels

  • Group Picker (multiple groups)

  • Select List (single and multiple choices)

  • Checkboxes

  • Radio Buttons

Merge flow

The merge process, as described on the merge wizard's initial page, takes you through the following steps: 

  1. Select Custom Fields -choose which two custom fields to merge.

  2. Merge Contexts - merge the context options and values in issues where both the source and destination fields are used in the same project context.

  3. Preview -checkin advance the changes that will be made in the configuration.

  4. Merge -  apply the custom field merge.

  5. Final Report - see a report of the number of objects that have been impacted by the merge.

Conflicts between contexts

There is a conflict between source and destination contexts when:

  1. The source and destination fields are used in the same project.

  2. The fields are from custom field types with options, OR the field is multi-valued (labels, group picker).

In these cases, you must decide how to merge the contexts by choosing between the merge or replace options. In all other cases, contexts are merged automatically.

Merge result

The source custom field's values in issues and contexts will be merged into the destination custom field. All configuration that references the source field will be updated to point to the destination field (e.g., screens, filters, etc.). After the merge, Power Admin will not delete the source custom field.

MergeCustomFields.mp4

Merge custom fields

  1. On Power Admin's Home page, select Custom Field from the drop-down, type a name or ID, and start your search.

  2. On the Search results page, click on а custom field's name. Power Admin will redirect you to the custom field's profile page.

  3. Click the Merge button on the profile page and start a merge.

  4. After clicking through the initial page of the merge wizard, choose a

    Status
    colourGreen
    titledestination
    custom field. You could also remove the current
    Status
    colourRed
    titlesource
    custom field and pick a new one.

  5. The Results section shows you the details and the contexts of the

    Status
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    titleresult
    custom field.

  6. If there are conflicts between

    Status
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    titlesource
    and
    Status
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    titledestination
    contexts, you will see an Action Required warning. You will need to confirm how a particular context from the destination
    Status
    colourRed
    titlesource
    custom field will be merged with the relevant context in the
    Status
    colourGreen
    titledestination
    custom field before proceeding to the next step.

  7. Click the pencil icon next to the Action Required warning, and the Context Merge section will appear.

  8. Choose between the Replace or Merge actions for merging context options or values in issues.

  9. Confirm the context changes and move to the next step.

  10. In the Preview section, review in advance what the final result will look like and which configurations will be updated.

  11. Click the Merge button to run the merge operation.

  12. Review the final report of the completed merge operation.

Context merge

The main principle behind the logic for context merging is that for a given project and issue type, the resulting custom field (after the merge) should work in the same way as before. If the source or destination field contexts did include this project and issue type, the resulting contexts should also include it, and vice-versa.

The context merge has two aspects:

  • Option merge - merging context options of the source and destination custom field contexts.

  • Issue value merge - merging the source custom field values in issues with the destination field issues.

Default value

When merging conflicting contexts, the destination field's default value is used in the resulting custom field.

Examples of how contexts are calculated in the merge result custom field:

Source field

Context A

Project 1, Project 2, Project 3

Issue types: IT1, IT2

Default value 1

Destination field

Context B

Project 1, Project 2, Project 4

Issue types: IT2, IT3

Default value 2

Merge result field

Context A

Project 1, Project 2

issue types: IT1, IT2, IT3

Default Value 2

Context B

Project 3

IT1, IT2

Default value 1

Context C

Project 4

Issue types: IT2, IT3

Default value 2

Source field

Context A

Project 1, Project 2

IT1, IT2

Default value 1

Destination field

Context B

Global context

IT1, IT3

Default value 2

Merge result field

Context A

Project 1, Project 2

IT1, IT2, IT3

Default value 1

Context B

Global context

IT1, IT3

Default value 2

Option merge

Power Admin for Jira allows you to choose how to merge the options of conflicting source and destination contexts of custom fields with options. You can either merge the options from two conflicting contexts or replace the destination options with the source context options.

Power Admin automatically merges the contexts of custom fields without options.

Merge

The options of the source field will be merged with the options of the destination field.

Example

Source options

Sofia

Boston

Destination options

Sofia

Zurich

San Francisco

Result options

Sofia

Boston

Zurich

San Francisco

Replace

When replacing, only the options of the destination field will remain. The options of the source field will be lost. Issues will lose all options of the source field which are not present in the destination field.

Example

Source options

Sofia

Boston

San Francisco

Destination options

Sofia

Result options

Sofia

Value merge

For label, group picker, multi-select, and checkbox custom fields, you can choose how to merge their issue values.

You can choose between two options: merge or replace issue values.

Merge

When choosing merge, for each issue, the values of the source and destination fields will be merged.

Moved values - number of issues where the values of the source field are moved to the destination field, and the destination field does not have a value for this issue.

Example

Source field values: A, B (these values in issues will be moved to the destination field)

Destination field values: no value

Result field values: A, B

Merged values - number of issues where the source and destination custom field values will be merged.

Example

Source field values: A, B

Destination field values: C, D

Result field values: A, B, C, D

Replace

When choosing the replace option, the value of the destination field won't be changed. If there is no value for the destination field, the value from the source field will be moved to the destination field.

Lost values - the number of issues that will lose their source custom field values after the merge.

Example

Source field values: A, B (these values in issues will be lost)

Destination field values: C, D

Result field values: C, D

Moved values - number of issues where the value of the source field will be transferred to the destination field.

Automatic value merge

Fields that do not support options and only allow a single value are merged by Power Admin automatically. In this case, the value of the destination field is used in the merge result. If there is no value for the destination field, the value from the source field is taken (i.e., the destination field always has precedence over the source field).