Bulk transition without changing updated date?

[Philip Winston]

I'm adding some PM related statuses to our workflow. I'm going to bulk edit my Open issues into a new status called Hold, and then drag a few back to Open in Greenhopper. Is there a way to do this without touching the updated date? If someone queries for issues updated in the last 7d or 30d I don't want them to think that everthing was updated. I don't want this one move to count as an update, I want update to refer to a normal user changes.

[Kai Gottschalk]

Hi Philip,

I guess I have a potential solution for your problem. It is not via bulk change (as you asked for), bit via .csv-import, where you can - besides creating issues - update them as well, see JIRA docu.

I'd recomend to draw - via advanced search - a .csv/excel-export of the affected issues containing only three fields: "Issuekey", "Status" and "Modified date". After changing the status of the issue as required, you can import the data via the "Import external projects"-function.

Disclaimer: Not what you asked for, not tested, and as well a bit manual work, but should most likely lead to the desired result.

Curious to receive your feedback!

Cheers
Kai

[Philip Winston]

Very interesting I might try this. I thought of another option in our case. We have 1000 Open issues and we want most all of them to be Hold now, where we move just some to Open. How about when we edit the workflow, we turn Open into Hold, then introduce a new Open, wire it all up how we want, seems like that might work if it lets you rename a status without affectings it's underlying ID. Might experiment with both ways.

[Randall Robertson]

Do you have any other workflows that also use this Open status you are considering renaming? Changing the status name affects all workflows that use that status.

[Philip Winston]

Oh good call. This is the only really active project, but still that feels weird to rename them Open to Hold for the dormant project and all future projects. Maybe the CSV export is the best idea, I'll try it.

[Kai Gottschalk]

Maybe the CSV export is the best idea, I'll try it.

As stated I'm really interested to know, if it worked out for you!

[Philip Winston]

I won't be trying this because I already messed up my modified dates! I merged two projects, and bulk edited every original issue to be component A and every new issue to be component B. A few weeks ago. So there is really is no point in trying to preserve the modified date any more, it would only be preserving it back a few weeks. That's too bad, it would have be nice if I had been more careful during the merge, if I could have preserved the original modified date through all my changes. Live and learn I guess. It would be nice if admin bulk changes had a flag "do you want to update the modified date". I can see an argument for not giving us that power, but it would be nice at times. After all I think the intent of "modified" is that knowing when a deliberate change was last made to the issue, but bulk changes due to project merges or workflow changes shouldn't really count.

[Ryan]

After a few hours of testing every possible manner of importing CSVs with different Updated dates, I can confirm it is not possible to change the Updated date. Every import updates the Updated date to right not (not the past date that I'm trying to make it say). It is possible to change the Created date, as described in the link Kai provides.

If anyone can prove me wrong, please do, as I would find that functionality to be helpful.

Thanks.

[Milan Chheda [INFOSYSTA]]

Facing a similar issue where I need to update "Modified date" but after trying for couple of days, I agree with @Ryan, there is absolutely no way, except for DIRECT DB QUERY, to update the "Modified Date" of an issue.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

No, you can't do this. Jira is designed to track changes to issues, and you're making changes, so it logs them

I think you might be able to write a plugin that provides a post-function that updates the date after a transition (which you'd probably want to protect so that only admins can use that transition). If you do that, it will still write to the history, and then you could well get questions on why the updated date is wrong.

[Sanu Soman]

Is this possible by csv import?

[Ann Kristin]

You set a date for "date modified" if importing by CSV, yes. 
(Now I see that it is already answered and an old question, sorry.)

[Sanu Soman]

Is this possible by csv import?