Selective Merge (Selective Deployment)
Introduction
The Selective Merge feature allows you to achieve a selective deployment of configuration changes during deployments. The idea is that you can choose which configuration changes to apply or not to the target Jira. You can alter some of the configuration changes that will be made to objects in your target Jira instance or skip any modification altogether.
When deploying configuration snapshots on a target Jira instance, you might face conflicting configuration changes, or you might have a list of configuration elements that you would like to keep unchanged on the target instance after the deployment. As a result, you need mechanisms to control how configuration elements from a snapshot will be deployed on the target system.
Configuration Manager allows you to create a configuration element from the source snapshot as a new one on the target instance, leaving the destination object matching to the snapshot object unchanged. You can also choose to remap the target object that Configuration Manager will merge with its matching snapshot object by changing the default matching. Alternatively, you can skip a change or deletion altogether by unchecking its corresponding checkbox.
Selective Merge allows you to:
Change the way you deploy configuration elements by adding them as new ones instead of modifying the already existing ones
Skip any changes or deletions of configuration elements on the destination Jira instance
Rematch deployed configuration elements to existing ones on the destination Jira instance
Use cases
The ability to selectively deploy configuration changes is highly useful for:
Migrations - when you want to avoid modifying the target Jira’s existing configuration and prefer creating new configuration objects instead.
Project Templating - when you want to deploy new projects with a new set of schemes/boards instead of reusing matching ones.
Concurrent Мodifications - during your Jira administration routines, you need to handle concurrent modifications in development environments and promote them to production instances.
Selective Merge options
Create snapshot configuration elements
With Selective Merge, you can choose to create a new element on the target Jira instead of overwriting an existing object. You only need to rename the snapshot configuration element in the deployment wizard to bypass changes. You can also convert a default scheme from a snapshot to a new non-default scheme on the target Jira. For more information on this feature, see Rename snapshot configuration elements document.
Match snapshot and target elements
We are giving you the power to control and change how configuration elements are matched during configuration deployment. For a snapshot configuration element, choose the target configuration element that will be compared to it. Create your snapshot and target object pairs that will be merged. For more information on this feature, see the Match snapshot and target elements document.
Edit custom field contexts
The Context editing feature allows you to change how a custom field’s context will be deployed/imported on the target Jira instance. You can choose to merge the source context with a different target context, deploy the context as a new one on target, or merge a source context with its matching target context. Learn more about custom field context editing.
Skip individual changes
Skipping changes gives you precise control over which configuration changes are applied during a deployment. In other words, it lets you skip specific changes and deploy only the ones you need. This makes deployments more flexible and reduces the number of unnecessary changes. Learn more about the skip feature
Download/Upload Selective Merge changes
Selective Merge allows you to download to a file all your corrections to planned configuration changes during deployment. You can later upload the file on a Jira instance and apply automatically your corrections. For more information on this option, see the Download/Upload Selective Merge Changes document.