Project Clone

Clone entire Jira projects with Project Clone in Deep Clone for Jira. Simplify project duplication and ensure consistency across projects.

With Deep Clone you can clone a Jira Software, Jira Work Management, or Jira Service Management project, including its issues, components, versions, and settings.

• Company-managed projects (without their boards) can be cloned right after installation.

• Please follow the instructions under Advanced Project Clone in order to enable cloning

  • Team-managed projects (Jira Software and Jira Work Management only).

  • Company-managed projects with their project board configuration.

We currently don’t support the new Compass Components. If Compass Components are enabled on your project, Deep Clone won’t be able to clone your components.

Compass components are enabled in new Jira Software projects by default.

Cloning a Jira Project

There are two ways to access the Project Clone functionality:

Option 1: Project Clone from the Deep Clone Navigation

1. Next to the Create button, select Apps > Deep Clone.

2. Click Project Clone in the Jira navigation on the left.  

Option 2: Project Clone from the Bulk Clone dialog

1. Open the Bulk Clone dialog.

2. When configuring your Bulk Clone, choose Clone project… as the Target project.

Cloning a Project

1. You can now select the Source Project where those settings should be cloned from, including the project key and name for the new project.

2. Once you confirm with Clone project, the new project will be created. No issues have been cloned yet.

3. You can proceed to clone issues into the new project by clicking on Proceed. After that, you can clone all issues of the source project into the newly created project or pick other issues that should be cloned. You can also Cancel and leave the new project empty.

Advanced Scheme Options

When cloning a company-managed project, you can specify the schemes that should be associated with the created project.

Supported scheme types

The scheme types supported are the following:

• Field Configuration scheme

• Issue Security scheme

• Issue Type Scheme

• Issue Type Screen Scheme

• Notification Scheme

• Permission Scheme

• Workflow Scheme

Available clone options

For each scheme type, there are three kinds of options available:

• Keep source scheme

  • This will simply associate the target project with the scheme used by the source project

• Clone scheme

  • This will clone the scheme from the source project and associate the target project with the created scheme

  • Underlying entities, for example Workflows in Workflow Schemes, will also be cloned

• Use a different scheme

  • Associate the target project with any scheme from the Jira instance

  • This option is only available to Jira administrators, since regular users are not allowed to see all the schemes of the Jira instance.

Advanced Project Clone

Advanced Project Clone allows you to

• Clone team-managed projects

• Clone boards in company-managed projects

In order to do this, we need to use internal Jira APIs that are usually not available to apps like Deep Clone. This is why we need additional credentials of a user with Administer Jira Global Permission provided in the Deep Clone configuration. We would recommend using a service account so changes to the user or the user being deactivated don’t break the Advanced Project Clone.

Please navigate to in the top navigation bar to Apps > Manage your apps > Advanced Project Clone to get started. Afterward, Deep Clone is able to

• Clone team-managed projects

• Clone boards when a company-managed project is cloned

Known Limitations

Team-managed projects:

• Team-managed Jira Service Management (JSM) projects cannot be cloned yet.

• Cloning board configurations is not yet available for team-managed projects.

• Cloning Jira automation rules is not yet available. You can read more about sharing automation rules across projects in the Atlassian community.

• Workflow transition rules may have issues after cloning, e.g., when using roles in the “Restrict who can move an issue” rule.

• Some workflow rules are incomplete after cloning and might miss references to roles, statuses or custom fields. The workflow rules are shown with a sign in the workflow chart.

• When cloning to another instance, the default value of Priority fields won’t be cloned.

Board in company-managed projects:

• Board configurations for company-managed projects can sometimes not be adjusted automatically, e.g., if the board filter JQL does not include the project key of the source project.

Project Clone Limitations

• Team-managed projects and company-managed board configurations can only be cloned when the Advanced Project Clone is enabled. If you don’t want to enable the Advanced Project Clone, you can use the following workarounds:

  • Create the project manually and clone all issues using Bulk Clone afterward.

  • Follow these instructions to add boards after cloning the project.

• Company-managed Jira Service Management projects cannot be cloned entirely, and the following entities don’t get cloned:

  • Request types, Forms, and External resources

  • Customer permissions and notifications, language support, email settings

  • Portal, widget, and chat settings

  • Knowledge base links and SLA settings

• Cloning Jira automation rules is not possible at the moment. You can read more about sharing automation rules across projects in the Atlassian community.

• Cloning issue layouts

  • Cloning issue layouts is currently not possible for Deep Clone.

  • While we clone issue screens, it is not possible to clone the issue layout you have configured in one project to another project.
    You can copy the layout manually (in company-managed projects) to your target project using the Jira function under Project settings > Layout > Edit issue layout > Copy issue layout.

    

We are not able to clone issue layouts because the issue layout is not accessible via REST API. You can vote and comment to let Atlassian know if you need this feature.

• When cloning projects across instances boards can’t be cloned, due to limitations of the Jira API.

Permissions

By default, only Jira administrators can use Project Clone, since creating company-managed projects requires administrator permissions. However, you can extend or restrict permissions for Project Clone using the Deep Clone for Jira - Project Clone global permission:

In addition, only logged-in users can use Deep Clone on projects that they have the Browse project permission.

Read more about Deep Clone permissions

Learn more about Project Clones