How to replace internal database with ldap but keep all users + projects

[Michael Ries]

Hi everyone,

I searched the web + atlassian sites for concrete answers but haven't found anything as specific as my Question. Before we start please recognize that i really read all of the tutorials and a lot other topics on different forums including this one, so linking me smth like this: https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiraserver/migrating-users-between-user-directories-938847059.html will not help me any further. Maybe I understand something incorrectly but belive me when i say "I read it all".

So let me describe our problem. We as a company are currently trying to replace our Jira internal Directory with our LDAP. We started out with the internal but our AD does alrdy exist aswell. Now we have got the same users in LDAP and Internal (usernames). Our problem is now, that when we connect the LDAP, Jira doesnt recognize the users as the same. Also migrating options specifically state, that users with the same name are going to be skipped. But that is what we specifically do not want. We need to have the same users from our LDAP being connected to the Projects + issues + workflows etc. from the "now" internal Directory.

For better understanding: Jira should recognize an User as the same, e.g. User1 exists in both Directories alrdy and has some project issues assigned to him. When we connect the ldap it should see User1(this time from ldap), ask if this user should be the user it should refer to in the future. So all projects from User1(internal) should move over to User1(ldap).

Ofc I understand that Jira will not do this/is not able to. So my question is now. How can we achieve this? Migrating doesnt seem to work. Then if we only connect the ldap we got the users (same name) but they dont have anything assigned. Also we tried to use SQL and switch out directory ID's but for some reason we can't figure out which tables are really connected to the Users (we looked at the DB schema aswell btw).

I'm happy about any possible ideas. In my mind it should be a simple task to ask from a tool like Jira, maybe the failure is on my end, but maybe not.

Thank you and greetings

[Michael Ries]

I think i have to update this one.

Can´t confirm right now that the problem is 100% solved, but the issue i stated  should apperently not be an issue at all.

It seems as if it was a problem with some older versions, but i just tried it v7.11 with the method of moving the Directory up and it seems to work. Only problem that seems to act a little strange is that if you have internal groups and users that are now synchronized via LDAP they might lose their groups afterwards, but that should be fixable aswell.

very important note thought: make sure the users(probably applies to groups aswell) have the same username in Jira and LDAP before you synchronize. Jira should be able to detect that it is the same user then and act accordingly (keeping issues, dashboards etc.)

greetings