Supported field types
Generally all System fields and Custom field types are supported. For some there is a special handling provided to match with the editing capabilities of Excel. Field types of 3rd-party apps may be supported depend on the implementation strategy of the app vendor.
Create new predefined field values
Fields such as Fix Versions contain values that are predefined by users with the appropriate project permission, e.g. the project administrators. If you have the permission to create the predefined values of a given field, and you enter a new value for the field in Excel, it will be added as a new predefined value to the project. If you do not have the project permission, the update is refused and reported as an error in the results summary.
Add values to multi-selection fields
Multiple values can be created in fields such as Labels by placing the values on new lines. The following example shows how to do this for the fields Labels, Issue Links and Fix Versions:
Key | Project Key | Issue Type | Summary | Labels | Issue Links | Fix Versions |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
SC-25 | SC | Functional Requirement | Add Labels and Versions | important | trace to:SC-15 | 1.0 |
User Fields
Fields like reporter, creator, assignee and other user field picker provide the Jira internal user name (which is mostly the email address, depending on the Jira setup). This is to all a unique identification of the user.
On Jira Cloud the user´s email could be deactivated by company policies. In this case you will receive the Jira internal user ID, "abcdef00101234567890abcd", extend with the (not unique) users display name.
Jira system admins can define if email addresses are shown: System > General configuration > User email visibility, turn to “Public”, “Masked” or “Show to logged in user” to retrieve/set user names via email.
Linked Issues
Links between Jira issues (including link relation), to Confluence pages and to external URL (webpages) are supported.
With the field “Issue Links” you can maintain the link relation and the connected Jira issue key.
When you add in Excel only one side of the relation, Jira will automatically update the other issues link.
After upload of link relations please ensure to update the excel sheet with most current data from Jira. Otherwise the update of the other side of the link may be missed in Excel and could cause removal of the relation again.
Create links between new issues or between new and existing issues
Links between new Jira issues are created by using the Excel row numbers of the issues in the Issue Links column. To create links between new Jira issues and existing issues, you use the issue key of the existing issue instead of a row number. (If the existing issue is also in the worksheet, you can use either the row number or the issue key.) The following example shows how to create links of type “specified by” and “specifies” between two new issues and to create a link of type “test” between a third new issue and an existing issue. It is not required to define both ends of the relation, Jira will take care for the second part:
1 (Excel row) | Key | Project Key | Issue Type | Summary | Issue Links |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
2 |
| SC | Functional Requirement | New functional requirement | specified by:3 |
3 |
| SC | System Requirement | New system requirement | specifies:2 |
4 |
| SC | Test Case | New test case | tests:SC-10 |
Sub-Task
The plugin supports sub-task load, upload and creation. The relation between a sub-task (Jira issue type) and a parent can be retrieved by the field “Sub-Task Parent Key”.
To create new sub-tasks (of sub-task issue type) for an existing parent issue, just fill up the “Sub-task Parent key” and upload. The “Sub-Task Parent Key” can also be filled with the Excel line number of the parent issue.
Limitations:
Changing the parent of a Sub-task is a feature only available through the Jira webpage, trying to do so through the plugin is not possible at the moment.
Creation of sub task (issue type) without a parent is not allowed by Jira.
Comments
Comments of Jira issues listed as Excel comments with author and timestamp. They can not be updated or deleted. Number of latest (downloaded) comments can be configured in the settings dialog.
To create new comments fill up the cell itself and upload the Excel sheet to Jira. Your comment will be added to the issue with your account details and timestamp.
Time Tracking
Fields for the time tracking are support. The values downloaded from Jira are given in seconds to allow calculation. For upload the configured time tracking default unit must be set to minutes.