Jira Bulk Operations

jira-bulk

Bulk operations for JIRA issue management at scale - transitions, assignments, priorities, cloning, and deletion.

Risk Levels

Risk Legend: - Safe, read-only | ! Caution, modifiable | !! Warning, destructive but recoverable | !!! Danger, irreversible

CRITICAL: Always use --dry-run before executing bulk operations. Bulk delete is permanent and cannot be undone.

When to use this skill

IMPORTANT: Always use the jira-as CLI. Never run Python scripts directly.

Use this skill when you need to:

• Transition multiple issues through workflow states simultaneously
• Assign multiple issues to a user (or unassign)
• Set priority on multiple issues at once
• Clone issues with their subtasks and links
• Delete multiple issues permanently (with dry-run preview)
• Execute operations with dry-run preview before making changes
• Handle partial failures gracefully with progress tracking

Scale guidance:

• 5-10 issues: Preview (default behavior), then re-run with --yes
• 50-100 issues: Use --dry-run first, then execute with --yes
• 500+ issues: Use --dry-run, then execute in smaller batches if needed

Quick Start

# Preview before making changes (bulk commands run as a preview by default)
jira-as bulk transition --jql "project=PROJ AND status=\"In Progress\"" --to Done --dry-run

# Execute the transition (--yes is required to apply changes)
jira-as bulk transition --jql "project=PROJ AND status=\"In Progress\"" --to Done --yes

For more patterns, see Quick Start Guide.

Available Commands

All commands support --help for full documentation.

Common Options

All commands support these options:

Transition-Only Options

These options are only available for jira-as bulk transition:

Examples

Bulk Transition

# By issue keys
jira-as bulk transition --issues PROJ-1,PROJ-2,PROJ-3 --to Done --yes

# By JQL query
jira-as bulk transition --jql "project=PROJ AND status=\"In Progress\"" --to Done --yes

# With resolution
jira-as bulk transition --jql "type=Bug AND status=Verified" --to Closed --resolution Fixed --yes

Bulk Assign

# Assign to user
jira-as bulk assign --jql "project=PROJ AND status=Open" --assignee "john.doe" --yes

# Assign to self
jira-as bulk assign --jql "project=PROJ AND assignee IS EMPTY" --assignee self --yes

# Unassign
jira-as bulk assign --jql "assignee=john.leaving" --unassign --yes

Bulk Set Priority

jira-as bulk set-priority --jql "type=Bug AND labels=critical" --priority Highest --yes

# Output as JSON
jira-as bulk set-priority --jql "type=Bug" --priority High --dry-run -o json

Bulk Clone

# ALWAYS preview first with dry-run (cloning creates many issues)
jira-as bulk clone --jql "sprint=\"Sprint 42\"" --include-subtasks --dry-run

# After reviewing the preview, execute with --yes
jira-as bulk clone --jql "sprint=\"Sprint 42\"" --include-subtasks --include-links --yes

# Clone to different project
jira-as bulk clone --issues PROJ-1,PROJ-2 --target-project MYAPP --prefix "[Clone]" --yes

Bulk Delete (DESTRUCTIVE)

# ALWAYS preview first with dry-run
jira-as bulk delete --jql "project=CLEANUP" --dry-run

# Delete by issue keys (preview first)
jira-as bulk delete --issues DEMO-1,DEMO-2,DEMO-3 --dry-run

# Execute deletion (after confirming dry-run output)
jira-as bulk delete --jql "project=CLEANUP" --yes

# Keep subtasks when deleting parent issues (subtasks deleted by default)
jira-as bulk delete --jql "project=CLEANUP" --no-subtasks --dry-run

Safety features:

• --dry-run shows exactly what will be deleted before making changes
• Without --yes, every run is a preview - --yes is required to actually delete (a warning is printed first)
• Default --max-issues 100 prevents accidental mass deletion
• Per-issue error tracking with summary of failures

Scale Recommendations

Getting rate limit (429) errors?

• Use --max-issues to process in smaller batches
• Consider running during off-peak hours

Exit Codes

Troubleshooting

For detailed error recovery, see Error Recovery Playbook.

Documentation

Related Skills

• jira-lifecycle: Single-issue transitions and workflow
• jira-search: Find issues with JQL queries
• jira-issue: Create and update single issues