Upcoming changes to support a new Jira Software epic field

Note: Due to changes to our deployment schedule for these changes, this article has been deleted and then republished. This method is used to provide notification emails to users subscribed to Announcement updates.

Updates and key info:

• Jira Software expects to begin rolling out these changes to cloud sites on March 27, 2023. Sites will be updated progressively; you may not see the changes in Jira immediately. 
• Jira Align instances currently connected to one or more Jira Software Cloud projects will be updated to support Jira Software's changes during our release activities for version 10.118.2, on Friday, March 24. Environments on both the bundled and continuous release tracks will be updated
• If you don't plan on removing the Epic Name field from your Jira Software issue screens, no action is required in Jira Align.
• If you remove the Epic Name field from Jira Software issue screens after Jira's updates are complete, you will need to remove the Jira Epic Name mapping found at Admin > Jira Settings > Jira Setup.

Later this month, Jira Software Cloud will begin rolling out changes to epic fields in company-managed projects. Review Jira's Upcoming changes to epic fields in company-managed projects article for more details.

If your Jira Align instance is currently connected to one or more Jira Software Cloud projects, you will see the following changes as of Friday, March 24:

1. On the Admin > Jira Settings > Jira Setup connector settings page, the Feature name custom field custom field mapping will be renamed to Jira epic name custom field and will be made optional. Existing mappings will not be removed.
2. Inside of Details panels for Jira Align features, the Summary field will be renamed to Jira Epic Name and will be made optional.
3. The Jira connector will begin syncing the Summary field of Jira Software epics with the Title field of Jira Align features. The connector will also begin syncing the Epic Name field of Jira Software epics with the Jira Epic Name field of Jira Align features.

Notes:

• After these changes are released, the Jira connector will not automatically resync all items, only those that are recently created or updated. You can trigger a custom sync from Jira to Jira Align to ensure consistency.
• If your Jira Align instance is only connected to Jira Software Data Center projects, you will not see these changes. We will release updates to those environments at a later time.

What you need to do to prepare 

Changes in Jira Align are only required if removing Epic Name fields from Jira

If you remove the Epic Name field from Jira Software issue screens after Jira's updates are complete, you will need to remove the Jira Epic Name mapping found at Admin > Jira Settings > Jira Setup.

If you don't plan on removing the Epic Name field from your Jira Software issue screens, no action is required.

Move field values in Jira Software

Per the article from our Jira Software Cloud team, if you’d like to move your Epic Name field values to your epics' Summary fields, you can do so by:

1. Exporting your values to CSV.
2. Updating the Epic Name and Issue Summary values in Excel or Google Sheets.
3. Importing this data back into Jira Software.

Note: If you’re updating your issue summaries, keep in mind that the names displayed on the board and backlog have a max limit of 19 characters – longer names will be truncated.

For more detailed information on how to export and import your epic field values, see: Import and export your data to and from Jira Cloud | Atlassian Support