How to rename a group in Jira
Platform notice: Server and Data Center only. This article only applies to Atlassian products on the Server and Data Center platforms.
Support for Server* products ended on February 15th 2024. If you are running a Server product, you can visit the Atlassian Server end of support announcement to review your migration options.
*Except Fisheye and Crucible
Due to the Functional differences in Atlassian Cloud, the contents of this article cannot be applied to Atlassian Cloud applications. However, see Renaming of Group in the Cloud for the feature available here.
Purpose
An administrator may need to rename a Jira group to reflect changes their organization undergoes. This is currently not possible to do in Jira, but a feature request is under consideration: JRASERVER-1391 - Getting issue details... STATUS
However, we can manually change a group name and all the permissions related to it through the database.
Bear in mind that such procedure is not part of Jira's intended functionality. As such, this process is not covered under the Atlassian Support Offerings and the information given here is provided as-is. It should be thoroughly tested in a development or staging environment before implementing any changes in your production instance.
Before you begin
- Apps: This procedure won’t update the group names in apps, as this data isn’t stored in Jira’s database tables. You have to make the changes manually in each app.
- Jira Software/Service Management: Also, it will update the group names in the Jira platform, which is shared between Jira Core, Jira Software, and Jira Service Management (the latter two are built on top of the platform). It might happen that group names are also stored in places specific to Jira Software or Jira Service Management, and these won’t be updated.
- Jira will need to be restarted, ensure to test and plan a maintenance window.
Solution
You can rename the group by running SQL statements against the Jira database. Replace the <NEW_GROUP_NAME>, <NEW_GROUP_NAME_LOWERCASE>, and <OLD_GROUP_NAME> with the actual names of your groups.
The below steps assume you're renaming groups within the same User Directory.
If you're changing User Directories and want to replace the references to one group for another, skip steps 1, 2.1 and 2.2. Nested groups from the LDAP to Jira internal directory should then be configured manually.
1. Rename the group
update
cwd_group
set
group_name = '<NEW_GROUP_NAME>'
, lower_group_name = '<NEW_GROUP_NAME_LOWERCASE>'
where
group_name = '<OLD_GROUP_NAME>'
and group_type = 'GROUP';
2. Update the group name in all entities that are using it
update
cwd_membership
set
parent_name = '<NEW_GROUP_NAME>'
, lower_parent_name = '<NEW_GROUP_NAME_LOWERCASE>'
where
parent_name = '<OLD_GROUP_NAME>'
and membership_type = 'GROUP_USER';update
cwd_membership
set
child_name = '<NEW_GROUP_NAME>'
, lower_child_name = '<NEW_GROUP_NAME_LOWERCASE>'
, child_id = <NEW_GROUP_ID>
where
child_name = '<OLD_GROUP_NAME>'
and membership_type = 'GROUP_GROUP';update
notification
set
notif_parameter = '<NEW_GROUP_NAME>'
where
notif_parameter = '<OLD_GROUP_NAME>'
and notif_type = 'Group_Dropdown';update
schemeissuesecurities
set
sec_parameter = '<NEW_GROUP_NAME>'
where
sec_parameter = '<OLD_GROUP_NAME>'
and sec_type = 'group';update
schemepermissions
set
perm_parameter = '<NEW_GROUP_NAME>'
where
perm_parameter = '<OLD_GROUP_NAME>'
and perm_type = 'group';update
sharepermissions
set
param1 = '<NEW_GROUP_NAME>'
where
param1 = '<OLD_GROUP_NAME>'
and sharetype = 'group';Note: Updating shared edit rights is required only for Jira 7.12, or later. Earlier versions don't allow to share edit rights for filters and dashboards.
update
filtersubscription
set
groupname = '<NEW_GROUP_NAME>'
where
groupname = '<OLD_GROUP_NAME>';update
jiraaction
set
actionlevel = '<NEW_GROUP_NAME>'
where
actionlevel = '<OLD_GROUP_NAME>';update
worklog
set
grouplevel = '<NEW_GROUP_NAME>'
where
grouplevel = '<OLD_GROUP_NAME>';update
searchrequest
set
groupname = '<NEW_GROUP_NAME>'
where
groupname = '<OLD_GROUP_NAME>';update
projectroleactor
set
roletypeparameter = '<NEW_GROUP_NAME>'
where
roletypeparameter = '<OLD_GROUP_NAME>'
and roletype = 'atlassian-group-role-actor';update
globalpermissionentry
set
group_id = '<NEW_GROUP_NAME>'
where
group_id = '<OLD_GROUP_NAME>';update
licenserolesgroup
set
group_id = '<NEW_GROUP_NAME_LOWERCASE>'
where
group_id = '<OLD_GROUP_NAME_LOWERCASE>';update
customfieldvalue
set
stringvalue = '<NEW_GROUP_NAME>'
where
stringvalue = '<OLD_GROUP_NAME>'
and customfield in
(
select
id
from
customfield
where
customfieldtypekey in (
'com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.customfieldtypes:multigrouppicker'
, 'com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.customfieldtypes:grouppicker'
)
);3. Find filters and workflows that contain group names
Group names can also be used in filters and workflows, but just changing them with SQL statements would be too risky and could result in errors. You can run the following queries to get a list of filters and workflows that contain your group names, and then edit them in Jira.
select
filtername
, reqcontent
from
searchrequest
where
reqcontent like '%<OLD_GROUP_NAME>%';After you get a list of filters, go to Issues > Manage filters. Group names will usually be listed in the filter’s JQL query.
select
workflowname
from
jiraworkflows
where
descriptor like '%<OLD_GROUP_NAME>%';After you get a list of workflows, go to 
> Issues > Workflows. Group names might be in the workflow’s conditions, but you need to check other details, too.