Cloning Epics: It's so Useful, It's Epic

Clone Epic Template will be discontinued as of August 4th, 2022. See this page for more information.

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When you create a new Jira project, you’re given the option of copying the configuration from an existing project.  And you can clone a Jira issues in a single click. But something’s missing. What if you want to clone an epic?

Clone Epic Template for Jira is a free app that allows you to clone an epic along with its issues and subtasks. You can create template epic with a backlog of issues. When the epic is cloned, the backlog is also cloned, with the same issues, and in the same order.

How Does Cloning Epics Work?

The cloning happens entirely on the user’s browser, with the app mimicking the actions the user would have to take to manually clone the epic and its issues.  Privacy and security concerns are minimized, since all of the action happens on the browser.
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When would you use this?

Cloning epics is useful for any situation where you repeat the same process for multiple cases. Think of tracking software upgrades, onboarding new employees, setting up marketing campaigns or the standard tasks you do when taking on a new customer.

What are the Limitations?

• For Company-managed (Classic) projects, epics can be cloned across projects (of the same project type) or to the same project. However, for Team-managed (Next-gen) projects epics can only be cloned to the same project.
• For fields, including custom fields (custom fields provided by some add-ons may not be supported), to be cloned, they must be present on the Create issue screen.
• Note that if the epic includes issues with project-specific fields (such as Components), you will not be able to clone those issues to another project.
• Links to related issues are cloned, however, web links and links to Confluence pages are not.
• While you can choose whether or not you want to include an epic’s issues, and the issues’ subtasks in your clone, you cannot currently select individual fields to include/exclude. All fields that appear on the Create issue screen and that have been populated in the source issues, will be included in the clone.
• Certain field conditions may prevent cloning. For example,  
  if a required field on a source issue does not have a value then the clone will fail.
• The user must have the needed permissions. For example, if an issue in the epic is assigned to another user, then the current user must have the Assign Issues permission in order to clone the epic. (The Manage Watchers permissions is often the culprit.)

Along with saving hours of time, cloning epics will allow you to standardize your processes. That improves productivity, assures compliance and allows you to implement best practices across the board.

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