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About importing from Bugzilla

JIRA ships with the JIRA Importers Pluginpre-installed, so that you can easily import your bugs from Bugzilla.

Version 2.0 or later of the JIRA Importers Plugin is compatible with Bugzilla 2.20 to 3.6.4. Users of older Bugzilla versions will need to first upgrade the Bugzilla database tables to a supported version, using Bugzilla's checksetup.pl script. The JIRA Importers Plugin requires your Bugzilla database to be MySQL or PostgreSQL.

For the very latest version of the JIRA Importers Plugin, please visit plugins.atlassian.com.

Please Note: JIRA's character encoding is set to UTF-8 by default. If, however, your JIRA installation's character encoding is set to something other than UTF-8, you may encounter problems with importing data from Bugzilla. For more information, please refer to JIM-5. Importing Bugzilla data into a non-UTF-8 JIRA installation is not supported.

The import process consists of:

Running the Import Wizard to configure the import process and save it into a configuration file. (Note that you can edit your configuration file later by by re-running the Import Wizard and providing the name of your existing configuration file.)
Configuring the connection from your JIRA server to the Bugzilla database.
Running the import using your saved configuration file. You will typically do this several times (e.g. once or more for tests, once for production).

These steps are described in more detail below.

On this page:

During the import process, the following data is copied from the Bugzilla database into JIRA:

In Bugzilla	In JIRA	Import Notes
Product	Project	Bugzilla data is imported on a per-project basis. You can either specify an existing JIRA project as the target, or the importer will automatically create a project(s) for you at time of import. (For more information about JIRA projects, please see Defining a Project.)
External Project	Project Category
Component	Component	You can choose to have the importer automatically create your Bugzilla component(s) in JIRA, or choose to have bugs imported into no component in JIRA.
Milestone	Fix Version	Versions are imported from Bugzilla (if you choose), and are set to the Un-Released and Un-Archived state.
Bug	Issue	Every Bugzilla bug becomes a JIRA issue of type 'Bug', with one exception: a Bugzilla issue with severity 'Enhancement' becomes a JIRA issue of type 'Improvement' and priority 'Major'.
ID	Bugzilla ID	Each imported issue will be given a new JIRA ID, and the old Bugzilla ID will be saved into a JIRA custom field called 'Bugzilla ID'. This custom field is searchable, so you can search for JIRA issues by their old Bugzilla ID. If you don't need this custom field, delete it or 'hide' it (as described in Specifying Field Behaviour).
Summary	Summary
Description	Description
Comments	Comments
Attachments	Attachments	Attachments are extracted from the Bugzilla database and saved to disk. To specify the location on disk, see Configuring File Attachments.
Priority	Priority (or a custom field)	You can choose to map one of either the Bugzilla Priority field or the Bugzilla Severity field (see below) to the built-in JIRA Priority field, and the other to a custom field. (Alternatively, you can choose to map both the Bugzilla Priority field and the Bugzilla Severity field to JIRA custom fields.) When importing into the JIRA Priority field, you can configure mapping of specific Bugzilla values to specific JIRA values.
Severity	Priority (or a custom field)	You can choose to map one of either the Bugzilla Priority field (see above) or the Bugzilla Severity field to the built-in JIRA Priority field, and the other to a custom field. (Alternatively, you can choose to map both the Bugzilla Priority field and the Bugzilla Severity field to JIRA custom fields.) When importing into the JIRA Priority field, you can configure mapping of specific Bugzilla values to specific JIRA values.
Status	Status	You can configure mapping of specific Bugzilla values to specific JIRA values. The JIRA 'Status' field is integral to JIRA workflow. To learn more, please see What is Workflow and Configuring Workflow.
Resolution	Resolution	You can configure mapping of specific Bugzilla values to specific JIRA values.
Duplicates Depends on Blocks	Link	You can configure mapping of specific Bugzilla link types to JIRA link types. In JIRA, you can configure different types of links (please see Configuring Issue Linking).
Work History	Work Log	Each Bugzilla worklog report will appear in JIRA as a separate worklog entry.
Estimated	Original Estimate	See Configuring Time Tracking.
Remaining	Remaining Estimate	See Configuring Time Tracking.
Logged	Time Spent	See Configuring Time Tracking.
Votes	Voters	If a user has voted one or more times for a Bugzilla issue, a JIRA vote is stored for that user.
CC List	Watchers
User	User	You can choose to have the importer automatically create JIRA users for any Bugzilla users who do not already exist in JIRA. Users who interacted with the Bugzilla system will be created as active accounts in JIRA. Other users will be imported into a special group called "bugzilla-import-unused-users" and will be deactivated. Passwords from Bugzilla are not imported for v2.16+ of Bugzilla (as they are hashed in the database). Users from Bugzilla will need to get their passwords emailed to them the first time they log into JIRA. Users with no real name stored in Bugzilla will get the portion of their email address (login name) before the "@" character as their Full Name in JIRA. If you are using External User Management, the import process will not be able to create JIRA users; instead, the importer will give you a list of any new users that need to be created. You will need to create the users in your external user repository before commencing the import (this way, votes etc can be imported correctly). If you have a user-limited license (e.g. personal license), and the number of required users is larger than the limit, then the import will be stopped. A page will be displayed showing a list of users that can't be created.
Status Whiteboard	Status Whiteboard	A JIRA custom field called 'Status Whiteboard' will be created.
Other fields	Custom fields	If your Bugzilla system contains any custom fields, you can choose to map them to specific JIRA custom field(s). If your custom fields don't yet exist in JIRA, the importer can automatically create them for you.

How to import from Bugzilla

Before you begin, please backup your JIRA data.
In your Bugzilla system, run the Bugzilla 'Sanity Check' to ensure your data is error-free.
Log in as a user with the 'JIRA Administrators' global permission.
Select 'Administration' > 'System' > 'Import & Export' > 'External System Import' > 'Bugzilla'.
The 'Import issues from a Bugzilla installation' page will be displayed:
Screenshot 1: the 'Import issues from a Bugzilla installation' page
If you don't yet have a configuration file (or if you want to create a new one, or update the one you have), leave the 'Use an existing configuration file' box un-checked, and click 'Next' to create a new Configuration File:
- Project Key Mappings: For each Bugzilla project that you wish to import into JIRA, select the JIRA 'Project category' (if applicable) and the JIRA 'Project key'.
  - To import into an existing JIRA project, type a project key (or project name) that already exists in JIRA.
    There is no warning or error message if you select an existing key (or existing project name with a different key). The importer will import issues to the project specified by the key (or project name).
  - To create a new JIRA project and import into it, type a project key that does not yet exist in JIRA.
    The JIRA 'Project key' will be the prefix for the IDs of all issues in the given project.
- Custom Fields: If your Bugzilla system contains any custom fields, you can either choose the JIRA custom field to which they will be mapped, or choose to have the importer automatically create a new custom field(s) in JIRA.
  Regardless of whether you specify mapping, the importer will automatically create a JIRA custom field for each extra Bugzilla field, unless you un-check the'Create new custom fields' option on the final 'Import Data' screen (see Screenshot 2 below).
- Field Value Mappings:
  - 'Priority' field — If you don't specify mappings, the importer will automatically create missing values in JIRA and will ensure that the issues are migrated with the correct priority (e.g. "Normal" in Bugzilla to newly-created "Normal" in JIRA).
  - Usernames — If you don't specify mapping, the importer will automatically map Bugzilla usernames to JIRA usernames (lowercase).
    Regardless of whether you specify mapping, JIRA will automatically create usernames for missing users unless you un-check the'Create new users' option on the final 'Import Data' screen (see Screenshot 2 below).
  - 'Status' field — It is mandatory to map the Bugzilla 'bug_status' field to specific values of the JIRA 'Status' field, as the JIRA 'Status' field is integral to JIRA workflow (to learn more, please see What is Workflow and Configuring Workflow).
  - 'Resolution' field — If you don't specify mapping, the importer will create corresponding Resolutions in JIRA instead of using the existing ones.
- Link Types: To learn more about JIRA link types, please see Configuring Issue Linking.
Configure the connection details to your Bugzilla database as follows:
- Bugzilla URL — the URL of your Bugzilla instance.
- Specify credentials — tick this box to show/hide the Bugzilla Login and Bugzilla Password fields. Note that if your Bugzilla instance requires authentication and you don't specify credentials, Bugzilla "Big File" attachments will not be imported.
- Bugzilla Login — the Bugzilla user to use during the import.
- Bugzilla Password — the password of the Bugzilla user to use during the import.
- Database URL— the location of the Bugzilla My SQL database server. Enter this in the following format:
  jdbc:mysql:host[:port]/databasename?parameters
  - host — the server hosting the Bugzilla MySQL database. You can specify which incoming TCP connections to allow by using the port parameter (defaults to 3306).
  - databasename — the name of the Bugzilla MySQL database (usually 'bugs').
    The database name, username and user password can usually be found in the 'localconfig' file in Bugzilla's root directory, or in /etc/bugzilla/.
- Database Login — the database user that JIRA will use to access the Bugzilla database.
  Ensure that this account can access your Bugzilla database from the machine where JIRA is running.
- Database Password — the password of the database user that JIRA will use to access the Bugzilla database.
- Driver Name— The fully qualified name of the base class of the JDBC driver to use.:
  - "com.mysql.jdbc.Driver" for MySQL.
  - "org.postgresql.Driver" for PostgreSQL.
The 'Import Data' page will then be displayed wit the following options:
- 'Create new users' — It is generally recommended that you leave this set to 'ON'. Only select 'OFF' if you do not want JIRA to automatically create new usernames for Bugzilla users who do not already exist in JIRA.
- 'Create new versions' — It is generally recommended that you leave this set to 'ON'. Only select 'OFF' if you do not want JIRA to automatically create new versions for Bugzilla 'milestones' which do not already exist in JIRA.
- 'Create new components' — It is generally recommended that you leave this set to 'ON'. Only select 'OFF' if you do not want JIRA to automatically create new components for Bugzilla components which do not already exist in JIRA.
- 'Create new custom fields' — It is generally recommended that you leave this set to 'ON'. Only select 'OFF' if you do not want JIRA to automatically create custom fields for Bugzilla fields which do not have a corresponding field in JIRA.
- 'Maximum issues and failues' — If you wish, specify a maximum number of failed issues after which the importer will stop. If you want the import to continue regardless of any failures, leave this field blank. If your Bugzilla instance has a large number of issues, it's generally a good idea to run first the importer on a limited number of issues (e.g. 100), then manually inspect the imported issues to confirm whether your configuration file was specified correctly. When the results are satisfactory, you can run the import with no limit.
The importer will display updates as the import progresses, then a success message when the import is complete. You can download the import log if you wish.

Congratulations, you have successfully imported your Bugzilla projects into JIRA! If you have any questions or encounter any problems, please contact Atlassian support.