duplicates vs duplicated by

[Yvonne W]

What's the difference between duplicates and duplicated by options provided for ticket linking ?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

Nothing, other than which issue is which.

Links are directional, which is why you have two descriptions for each link type - from one end of the link "X duplicates Y" and from the other end, "Y is duplicated by X". It's telling you which one was the original in that case.

[Yvonne W]

So, in this case Y is the original one right?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Yes.

I find the language on links to be clumsy. "X (original) is duplicated by Y (new one)" feels a bit contrived, but I have not really come up with a better sentence to make it more clear.

[crf]

It's also worth mentioning https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRA-24563...

[Ihab Soliman]

Does that mean that if I update the status of one of them the other status will update to reflect the same ?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Absolutely not, that would be an utter disaster for most links.  Links are for information about how two issues are related.  What you're asking for here does make sense in some cases, but not in most of them.  Read the list of default link types and just think through what they mean. 

To get you started on that thought, take the case of "AAA-5566 is a duplicate of BBB-123".  I deliberately close AAA-5566 because it's a duplicate.  There's no chance I want BBB-123 to be closed because I've closed a duplicate - the whole point of what I'm doing is BBB-123 stays open!

[Ihab Soliman]

Makes total sense, just making sure before I start linking my stories

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

I think it's about 99:1 - in 99% of cases, you don't want a change to update the other end of a link.  In 1% of cases, you do.  Because of that ratio, there's nothing in JIRA that will do it, but plenty of add-ons that can if you do need it (and those all enable some form of "if X, then update other end of link)

[Raj Vora]

Hi!  So based on the following example:

X (original) is duplicated by Y (new one)

I want to close out Y obviously, but what if Y has some additional and useful information like, lets say, debug data that X doesn't have.

1.  Can I automatically merge any of the info in Y into X?  Or do you suggest good old copy and paste.

2.  How do I make Y read-only?  I don't want other people adding to Y when they should being adding it to X.  I want to eliminate multiple streams of information.

[aju.jayapalan]

I go into the original ticket "X" and select "Link Issue" > "is duplicated by" > "Y" (new ticket)
Then I access "Y" --> It lists "X" as one of the "duplicates"

Is that the expected behavior since "Y" should be listed as the "duplicate"?

[Joseph Michaud]

I think there is an unfortunate choice of defaults for the Inward and Outward descriptions for "Duplicate" link type.  In the link that Bharadwaj Jannu shows earlier:

https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/Configuring+Issue+Linking

I think the "Duplicate" relationship has the Inward and Outward descriptions (erroneously) reversed.

Let's say we're dealing with one bug and four testers (A, B, C, and D).  Tester A reports the bug first (bug A).  The next day testers B, C, and D report the same issue (bugs B, C, and D).  Bug A is central and B, C, and D are satellites.  In this star configuration, bug A has outward links to bugs B, C, and D (and B, C, and D have inward links to A).  On bug A's JIRA page I would expect to see an "Issue links" section titled "is duplicated by" and then the list containing B, C, and D.  I would read that as "A is duplicated by B, A is duplicated by C,...".  "is duplicated by" is listed as the "Inward description" not the "Outward description" (but I think that is backwards).  On bug B's page, I would expect to see a "duplicates" section listing bug A and read that as "B duplicates A."

(As a comparison, pretend now that we're dealing with libraries and library A (Issue A) depends on libraries B, C, and D.  In issue A's JIRA page I would expect to see an "Issue links" section titled "depends on" and then the list containing B, C, and D.  On their pages, B, C, and D would each have a section titled "is depended on by" and listing issue A.  This seems correct to me.)

I think part of the problem is that it is easy to see a "duplicates" section and think "here is a list of other issues that duplicate this one".  But "duplicates" is not meant to be a noun here . . . it is a verb.

[Bharadwaj Jannu]

It tells inward and outward description of the link types. See <your host machine>->admin->System->Issue Features->Issue Linking

Go through https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/Configuring+Issue+Linking