Archiving a Project
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It is sometimes necessary to archive an old project, while retaining the project's data for future auditing purposes.
There are a number of ways to achieve this:
Online archiving
Archiving a project online means keeping all of the project's issue data in your live JIRA instance. The advantage of
archiving a project online is that you can easily make the project accessible again if required.
There are two ways to archive a project online:
'Hiding' a project
A 'hidden' project will still be visible via the 'Administration' menu, but it will no longer appear in the 'Browse Projects'
list, and noone will be able to search, view or modify any of the project's issues.
- Create a new permission scheme. Leave all of the permissions empty.
- Associate the new permission scheme with the project that you wish to hide (see Assigning
a Permission Scheme to a Project).
Making a project 'Read-Only'
If you make a project read-only, the project will be visible via the 'Administration' menu, and will appear in the 'Browse Projects'
list. The project's issues will be searchable and viewable, but noone will be able to modify them.
- Create a new permission scheme. Grant the 'Browse Project' to everyone
who needs to be able to search or browse the project, or view its issues. Leave all of the other permissions empty.
- Associate the new permission scheme with the project that you wish to hide (see Assigning
a Permission Scheme to a Project).
Accessing an archived online project
If you archived a project online, by hiding it or making it read-only, then all of the project's data can be made
accessible very easily. Simply associate the project with a permission scheme where the
appropriate permissions (e.g. 'Edit Issue', 'Assign Issue', 'Resolve Issue',
etc) are assigned to the appropriate people.
Offline archiving
Archiving a project offline means creating an XML backup, then deleting the project and all of its issue data from your live
JIRA instance. The project will no longer be available via the 'Administration' menu or the 'Browse Projects' list, and its
issues will no longer exist in your live JIRA system.
The disadvantage of offline archiving is that there is no easy way to restore a deleted project to your live JIRA instance.
Note
If there is a possibility that you will need to restore the project into your live JIRA instance at some point in the
future, then online archiving is recommended. Offline archiving should only be done if you are certain you will never need to
restore this project to a live JIRA instance (i.e. you will only ever restore the data to a non-production instance).
Archiving a project offline
- Create a global XML backup of your entire live JIRA instance.
-
Import the XML backup into a test JIRA instance. Make sure that the test JIRA instance
uses a separate database from your live JIRA instance, as the import will overwrite all data in the database.
- In your test JIRA instance, verify that you can view the issues of the project that you are archiving.
- In your live JIRA instance, select Projects from the Administration menu, then click the
Delete link to delete the project and all of its issues.
Accessing an archived offline project
-
Import the XML backup into a test JIRA instance. Make sure that the test JIRA instance
uses a separate database from your live JIRA instance, as the import will overwrite all data in the database.
Restoring a deleted project
Once a project has been deleted, restoring the project would require either writing custom code, or the following procedure.
(Please note that neither is supported or recommended.)
-
Import the XML backup into a test JIRA instance. Make sure that the test JIRA instance
uses a separate database from your live JIRA instance, as the import will overwrite all data in the database.
- In your test JIRA instance, delete all projects except the one that you are restoring.
- Merge your live JIRA instance with your test JIRA instance, as described in Merging JIRA instances.
