How to copy users to another instance

Owned by Bob Swift
Last updated: Jan 23, 2020 by Michael Kuhl

Description

This describes steps to use the JIRA CLI to copy users from one instance to another for either Server or Cloud instances. Copying all users or all users in a group to a new instance can be automated without scripting. If you need to select specific users, some manual or scripted steps may be needed to do the selection. Treat the techniques described here as examples that can be adjusted based on specific requirements.

Requirements

  • This requires CLI client version 7.0 or higher.
  • Customize your Atlassian start script to include access to both JIRA instances (jira1 and jira2 in this example) and also to the CSV CLI. See Atlassian CLI Start Script for more information.

Steps


StepActionExample
1Export users from original instance.getUserList
Action
atlassian jira1 -a getUserList --outputFormat 999 --group jira-users --columns user,name,email,groups --file users.csv

Result File

users.csv
"User","Name","Email","Groups"
"admin","Administrator","admin@examplegear.com","jira-users,jira-administrators"
"bob","Bob Swift","bob@examplegear.com","jira-users,jira-administrators"
...
2Modify csv file so that the column names match parameter names for the addUser action.copyCsv
atlassian csv -a copyCsv --sourceFile users.csv --file addUsers.csv --findReplace "User:userId,Name:userFullName,Email:userEmail,Groups:group"

Result file

addUsers.csv
"userId","userFullName","userEmail","group"
"admin","Administrator","admin@examplegear.com","jira-users,jira-administrators"
"bob","Bob Swift","bob@examplegear.com","jira-users,jira-administrators"
...
3Import users to new instance.runFromCsv
atlassian jira2 --action runFromCsv --file addUsers.csv --common "-a addUser --continue" --continue

Result

...
Run: -a addUser --userId "admin" --userFullName "Administrator" --userEmail "admin@examplegear.com" --group "jira-users,jira-administrators"

User 'admin' added.
...
Run: -a addUser --userId "bob" --userFullName "Bob Swift" --userEmail "bob@examplegear.com" --group "jira-users,jira-administrators"

User 'bob' added.
....