Migrating from Jira
Move a Jira project into Coco Kanban — issues, comments, statuses, labels, epics and sprints — in one run, from a four-step wizard. It's available on every plan, including Free.
What you can do
- Import a Jira Cloud project into an existing Coco Kanban project.
- Bring across issues with their descriptions, priorities, statuses, labels, due dates, comments and parent/sub-task relationships.
- Turn Jira epics into modules and Jira sprints into cycles, with the right issues in each.
- Re-run the same import safely — already-imported issues are reused, not duplicated.
- Watch progress in an import history list.
What you'll need
- Your Jira Cloud URL — e.g.
https://yourcompany.atlassian.net. It must be a public, reachable Jira Cloud site. - Your Atlassian email — the account whose access will be used to read the project.
- A Jira API token — generate one at id.atlassian.com → Security → API tokens. Not your Atlassian password.
- A Coco Kanban project to import into. The importer fills an existing project; it doesn't create one. Make an empty project first.
The Jira account you use must be able to see every issue you want moved — the import can only read what that account can read.
Getting started
Run the import
- Go to Workspace settings → Imports.
- Step 1 — Credentials. Enter your Jira Cloud hostname, your Atlassian email, and your API token. Click Continue.
- Step 2 — Coco Kanban project. Pick the project to import into, from the list of projects in this workspace. Click Next — this is where your credentials are checked. Bad credentials fail here with "Invalid Jira credentials — check your email and API token."
- Step 3 — Jira project. Pick the Jira project to import from. Only projects your account can see appear. Click Next.
- Step 4 — Confirm. Review the summary: which Jira project, which Jira site, which Coco Kanban project it lands in. Click Start Import.
📷 Screenshot: The Imports wizard on step 1, showing the four-step indicator (Credentials → Coco Kanban Project → Jira Project → Confirm) and the credentials form.
The import runs in the background — you can navigate away. Its progress shows in Import History at the bottom of the page: queued → processing → completed (or failed). Hit Refresh to update the list.
📷 Screenshot: The Import History list showing a completed import with its timestamp and status badge.
Both workspace admins and members can run imports.
What gets imported
| Jira | Becomes | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Issues | Work items | Summary → title. Description (including bold, links, lists, headings, code blocks, quotes) is converted to rich text. |
| Statuses | States | Each Jira status becomes a state, grouped by its Jira status category: To Do → Backlog, In Progress → Started, Done → Completed. |
| Priorities | Priorities | Highest / Blocker / Critical → Urgent. High / Major → High. Medium → Medium. Low / Lowest / Minor / Trivial → Low. Anything else → None. |
| Labels | Labels | Created on the project as needed. |
| Comments | Comments | With the original author (if that person exists in Coco Kanban) and the original timestamps. |
| Epics | Modules | Each epic becomes a module named after the epic, with its child issues added. |
| Sprints | Cycles | Each sprint becomes a cycle with its start and end dates, and its issues attached. |
| Sub-tasks | Parent/child links | Sub-tasks are linked to their parent work item. |
| Assignees | Assignees | Matched by email address to an existing Coco Kanban user. |
| Due dates | Target dates |
The import also switches on the project's Cycles, Modules, Views, Intake and Pages features, so the imported modules and cycles are visible straight away.
About people
Assignees and comment authors are matched by email. If a Jira user's email matches someone who already has a Coco Kanban account, they're used — and they're automatically added as a member of the workspace and the project so the assignment sticks.
If there's no matching account, the assignee is simply left empty, and the comment is attributed to the person who ran the import. Invite your team to the workspace before you import and this problem disappears.
What does not come across
Be honest with yourself about this list before you migrate:
- Attachments and inline images. Files on Jira issues are not copied. Images embedded in a description won't render.
- Custom fields. Only the standard fields listed above are imported.
- Issue links and relations other than parent/sub-task — "blocks", "relates to", "duplicates" and friends are not brought across.
- Work logs and time tracking. Original estimates, time spent and worklog entries are dropped.
- Issue history / changelog. You get the current state of each issue, not the audit trail of how it got there.
- Watchers, votes, and the reporter field.
- Workflows, transitions, permission schemes and automation rules. Coco Kanban gets the statuses, not the rules that govern moving between them.
- Boards, filters, dashboards, and JQL saved searches.
- Jira Service Management ticket types, SLAs and queues.
Jira Server / Data Center is not supported — the importer targets Jira Cloud.
Re-running an import
You can run the same import again against the same project. Coco Kanban tracks what it imported, so:
- Issues that already came across are reused, not duplicated.
- New Jira issues since last time are added, continuing the project's work-item numbering.
- New comments are added; existing ones aren't duplicated.
- Existing modules (from epics) and cycles (from sprints) are reused and topped up.
This makes a "trial run, then a final cut-over" migration entirely practical: import early, keep working in Jira, re-run on the day you switch.
Tips
- Do a dry run into a scratch project first. Import, look at what landed, then decide whether to fix things on the Jira side (labels, statuses) and re-import into the real project.
- Invite your team before importing so assignees and comment authors resolve to real people.
- Import project by project. The wizard handles one Jira project at a time, into one Coco Kanban project. That's usually what you want anyway — it keeps identifiers and numbering clean.
- Large projects take a while. The importer paginates through every issue and comment and backs off automatically when Jira rate-limits it. A few thousand issues is fine; just leave it running.
- Tidy up statuses afterwards. Jira projects often accumulate near-duplicate statuses. After the import, merge or delete the states you don't want in project settings.
Limits & good to know
- The Jira site must be a public Jira Cloud URL. Internal hostnames and private addresses are rejected — this is deliberate, to stop credentials being sent somewhere they shouldn't go.
- The importer writes into an existing project. It won't create one for you.
- If an import shows
failed, the most common causes are an expired API token, a project the account can't read, or a Jira site that isn't reachable. Fix and re-run — re-running is safe. - Your Jira API token is encrypted before it's stored.