Can TFS4JIRA update the issue/work item type?

Owned by Michał Szymul
Last updated: Jul 08, 2024
1 min read

Both Jira and Azure DevOps allow changing the type of an issue/work item that already exists. If an issue is already linked with a work item through the TFS4Jira synchronizer, how will such a change affect the synchronization?

Changing the type should not break the synchronization of the issue/work item unless the new type uses a different workflow (different statuses/states) that is not mapped in the synchronizer. However, the synchronizer will not update the type of a linked ticket. This means that if you synchronize a “Bug” issue in Jira with a “Bug” work item in ADO and change the issue to “Task” in ADO, the work item will keep the “Bug” type.

If you want to update the issue/work item type in a linked ticket, the best practice is to break the link between the Jira/ADO items and let the synchronizer create a new item with the updated type:

TFS4JIRA Self-hosted
To break the link, if you use Custom Fields to store Jira Issue ID/ADO Work Item ID, simply clear these fields in both linked items and allow the synchronizer to recreate the item with a new type applied. If you use comments in ADO to store Jira Issue ID, please follow this article to break the link:

TFS4JIRA Cloud-native
At the moment, it is impossible to break the link between items if they are synchronized using the Cloud-native plugin. Therefore, it is recommended to create a new item instead of changing the item type.