Guidelines to customize the configuration mapping

Basics of customizing the configuration mapping

To customize the mapping of a project, configuration element, or user, you need to have a JSON file with a transformation record for it. The transformations are customizations you can apply to an element from the configuration being deployed.

The available JSON transformations to source configurations being deployed are:

• mapping a configuration element to a chosen destination element,

• renaming any configuration element such as project, workflow, custom field, user, and more,

• changing a project key, and

• changing a user email.

In the JSON file, you always need to provide the source ID of the configuration element you want to transform. Later, we’ll show you end-to-end what you need to do in order to apply a JSON transformation.

Now, let’s take a closer look at each transformation type and its JSON record.

Transformations you can apply with custom mapping

When the deployment analysis process detects a match between a source and a destination Jira Cloud configuration element, it creates a mapping between them.

Projects & configuration elements: Map the configuration element to a chosen destination element

With the Customize mapping option, you can change the destination element the source element is mapped to. All you need to do is provide a different ID in the following way, and the deployment analysis will create a new mapping:

Map by ID

Provide the ID of an existing destination configuration element of the same type.

Projects & configuration elements: Rename

With this transformation, you can:

• create source elements as new ones on the destination instead of mapping to existing elements,

• deploy new elements with a different name to the destination, and

• map a source element to a destination element with the new name.

For this purpose, you need to provide a new destination name like this:

After the renaming, any existing mapping will be disregarded afterward.

Projects: Change project key

You can add a transformation record to a project to change its key. Remember that you can change the project key using the inline edit transformation in the UI.

Users: Change user email

For users, you can add a transformation record to change the user’s email address or to match it to another destination user by providing an ID. These transformations will allow you to create, merge, and remap users. The source and destination users are matched either by their names or by their IDs.

Learn more about transforming users.

Users: Map to a destination user by ID

You can also add a transformation record to map a source user to a chosen destination user by providing the destination user’s ID.

Learn more about transforming users.

Ways of customizing the configuration mapping

To make transformations to projects, configuration elements, and users, you can:

• Download a JSON mapping file, add transformations to it, and upload it with the Customize mapping button.

• Construct a JSON file containing the transformations you want to apply and upload it with the Customize mapping button.

• Reuse a mapping file from a previous deployment and upload it with the Customize mapping button.

Download mapping and customize it

With the Download mapping button, you’ll get a JSON file listing the configuration elements in the deployment scope. This mapping file contains a description of how all these configuration elements will be deployed to Jira Cloud. The following JSON snippet illustrates how configuration elements are listed in the file:

As you can see, each configuration element has a source and destination record. The source record contains all the details of the source element, and the destination record holds information about how this element will be deployed. The configuration element can either be created as a new one or mapped to an existing destination element.

If you want to customize the default mapping of a configuration element, you need to add a transformation record for it like this:

Then, in the transformation record, you can map the element to a destination element or create it as a new element.

Construct your own mapping file

You can create your own mapping file without downloading such from the UI. Just follow the guidelines in this section. After creating it, you upload it with the Customize mapping option in the UI, the same way you would do with a downloaded mapping file. The following snippets show how to construct the JSON records of a transformation to a single configuration element:

or

The source record must contain the ID of the source configuration element. Similarly to the example above, you can add more details to the source record. However, for a successful transformation, the only required component for the source record is the source element’s ID. Then, you need to have a transformation with the new ID or name, as shown in the example above. You can also change projects' keys this way and users' email addresses and keys.

Users

In the source record, we always refer to source users by their IDs. So, when building your mapping file with a user transformation, you need to provide the source user’s ID like so:

This transformation will change the user’s email address. You can also build a transformation that will map a source user to a destination user by ID. You just need to provide the destination user’s ID in the transformation record :

You can learn more about what you can do with users in the User Transformations document.

Reuse a mapping file from a previous deployment

The third option to customize the mapping through JSON is to reuse a mapping file created for a previous deployment. It will work only if it’s applicable to the currently deployed configuration.

For example, you may want to apply a custom mapping file from a larger deployment to a deployment with a subset of the previously deployed projects. This way, you can break a large deployment down into smaller, more manageable chunks of data.

Validations & conflict detection

During the mapping file upload, we perform JSON validation checks for:

• non-JSON file formats, and

• syntax errors like missing source records or IDs.

After validation and confirmation of the new mapping, a configuration analysis process kicks off. It performs scans and applies the transformations to the configuration. All elements in the deployment scope referring to the transformed elements are fixed accordingly.

We’ve also built a fail-safe mechanism into the analysis process to avoid data loss or deployment failures. It’s able to detect and report conflicts that can be introduced with customized mapping, such as:

• Multiple source configuration elements are mapped to the same destination element after transformations.

• A configuration element is mapped to a non-existent destination element.

All these errors appear on the Analyze changes page for the particular project or configuration element.