Cloud: Is the changing the project-key in the current projects (with more than 30K tickets) safe?

[Maksim Feshchanka]

Hello,

We have a necessity to change the Key values (project key) for several projects, and it's very important to know that this procedure is safe enough and won't affect any data since the projects are active and a significant amount of data there (> 28K tickets in one project for now).
What should we know before to start this process? What should we be aware? Any necessary actions that need to be performed before the start?

Thanks ahead!

[Hernan Montes]

Hello @Maksim Feshchanka,

Although it is better to not change project keys, there may be times when this is necessary and you will be able to do so without any major issues, the main aspects to consider are project links between Jira and other Atlassian products, here you will need to recreate the link on each section of the linked application, for example, a Confluence space linked to a Jira project, and Agile boards, you will need to change the JQL used to reflect the new project key.

As always, it is better to set a test environment and do changes there first so you can look for any issues, and give yourself enough time to test changes once done in Production, all of this with a full system backup so you can roll-back any changes in case needed.

Please look at this document for more information - https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiraserver071/editing-a-project-key-802592377.html

[Maksim Feshchanka]

Hi @Hernan Montes ,

Thank you for the provided information and the link. I did check these materials before and here are some things that we'll perform before the renaming:

• Renaming the key on a Test-Project
• Developing a script for updating the attachments that stored externally (we're using S3 add-on)
• System/Projects backup

Questions:

• Will the links between the projects continue to work? eg: the ticket from the project with original key and ticket from the project with an updated key?
• How long background re-index will take and will the Jira functionality affected during this time?

Note: it's for a cloud version, so the correct link is: 

• https://confluence.atlassian.com/jiracorecloud/editing-a-project-s-details-938021482.html

[Hernan Montes]

Links should update automatically between projects, as for S3 buckets, I'm not sure it is needed, the way Jira handles attachments is not affected by the key change, attachment paths do not change project key, they remain as the original key, that's why you cannot use the same project key with another project, even if you have changed the key and it is not being used, but, if the connector uses simple URL requests, then yes, you will need to change it via scripts, you can do a small test in the test project to see if buckets are still able to retrieve files when project key is changed.

[Maksim Feshchanka]

I just tested the internal links between the two test-projects and it works as expected: links changing dynamically, once the project-key is changed.

Regarding the attachments, I meant the "Cloud Files" external S3 add-in for attachments, since the original Jira cloud attachments storage has a 20GB limit. So, these links won't appear after the key re-named (had tested before), so we'll update the project key for all the files associated with every ticket on the S3 side.

I'll add more info here once any further activities are done. Looks like there are no any step-by-step instructions about this procedure.

Thank you, @Hernan Montes !

[Hernan Montes]

No worries, I imagined that the external file management would be not path based, let me know if you have any issues.

Good luck!