CSV upload without creating duplicates or overwriting data

[Cara Rake]

Hi all

We have a system that we would like integrate with JIRA. It currently exports into excel and we convert to a csv and upload into JIRA. 

The problem is that we regularly overwrite existing data or create duplicates.

Is there an add-on or other tool that will allow me to upload items 1-10 multiple times and have JIRA ignore those issues and only create new issues for items 11-20?

Any advice on how to resolve this issue would be greatly appreciated. Please note that the unique identifier we are using is not the JIRA key.

Many thanks

Cara

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

No.

When you import, each line is an issue.  Jira only has two options - import new or update existing. 

There is no "randomly ignore lines".  If you don't want to ignore something, remove it from the upload file.

[Cara Rake]

Are there any add-ons or other API functionality I could use to avoid this?

[Dirk Spannaus]

So there seems to be no way to define a unique key for import? Is that right @Nic Brough -Adaptavist- ?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Yes, that is correct.

Jira handles the unique key in its standard way - a simple sequence increase per project.  There's nothing to stop you importing another key from a field in the CSV if you want (and Jira has an "external id" field built in for that if you don't want to do it in a custom field), but it won't become the key of the issues you are importing.