Hello Friends,
This is one of the tutorials for the jira users regarding the jira workflow management. Most of the companies uses Jira as the issue tracking system, and every one has their own workflows. Also, many may have number of instances of Jira itself for various reasons like testing, development etc. So, this is for the jira administrators who creates a workflow for different requirements.
There may be the situation, where we need to create a workflow on one instance similar to that existing on the another instance. In that case what we will do???? Simple, just create altogether a new workflow on the instance, with all the new Statuses, Step names, transition etc etc…… But, there is alterative and the simple way to COPYing the existing workflow as it is from the other instance and use that, it will take hardly 5 min of yours.
The process is very simple, just login as the administrator on the jira where the workflow is present, then go to the Administration tab, and open the worflows page (Administration –> Global Settings –> Workflows ). There you can check for the workflow which you need, for e.g. Test Workflow. Click on the XML link corresponding to this workflow, to the right side of your screen.
This will download the workflow in xml format on your system. Now, you need to add this workflow on the other instance, for that, you need to add this xml file as it is anywhere in the helpdesk installation folder, i will prefer you to add this file under the WEB-INF file. Then, copy the total path of this file with the filename and its extension.
Now, go to the jira instance where you need to add/copy this workflow, and open the workflows page (Administration –> Global Settings –> Workflows ). Scroll down to the bottom of the page, there you can see one link, just above the add new workflow, named “import a workflow from XML.”
Now, once you click on the link, a new page will open. It will ask you for the details like Name, Description and path of the xml file from which workflow to import. Fill the Name and description as needed and copy the path of the xml file which we have added under the installation directory (mentioned above).
Once you click on import, the workflow will be imported and will be created automatically in the new instances. The only issue that may be present is regarding the statuses. As we know, in any workflow, we need to add statuses in jira first and then in workflow. That is, while creating a workflow we need statuses, steps and its transitions. So, Steps and Transitions can be created while creating the workflow, but the statuses needs to be pre-defined, and hence if the workflow does not find the same status while importing the workflow, then it will not add the Linked Statuses to the Step and will leave it blank. So, it is advised to create all the statuses before importing any workflow from the xml file.
In this way, you can copy or restore the workflow from other or even the same instance. Hope, this will help you.
Regards,
Nikhil Naoghare