Restoring Structure from a backup brings back the structures, automations, synchronizers, views and other data created at the moment of backup.

Restoring Structure will not affect issues in any way or restore them. The issues that make up the hierarchy should already exist in Jira. If you do full restore, then you need to run the standard Jira data restore first - see Structure Backup, Restore and Migration

The issues and other items in the structures are identified by their internal numeric ID. If you have transferred issues via Jira's Project Import, issue IDs have changed, and you will need to use Structure Migration instead.

Use Restore Structure when all of the following are true:

  • The backup was made on this Jira instance or on its predecessor
  • You need to fully restore structure data
  • You can lose the current Structure data stored on this Jira instance (issues are not affected, only their organization into structures)

To restore Structure from a backup:

  1. Navigate to Administration | Structure | Restore Structure.
  2. Enter the full path to the Structure backup file (either .xml or .zip).
  3. Click Restore.
  4. If Structure currently has any data, it will ask you to confirm the restore operation. Restoring from backup clears all Structure data, and it cannot be undone! If you have data that you're overwriting, you might want to back up that data first.
  5. You will see the Process Status page, which will show you the progress of the restore operation. You can abort the process by clicking the Abort button on the status page.

    If you abort the restore operation, Structure data will be left in a partially restored state. You may see some of your structures, but not all of them, and auxiliary data like synchronizers, views, favorites and perspectives may be completely lost. You can revert to the original state only by fully restoring Structure from another backup.

  6. Once the process is finished, the Show Result button will take you to the result page, where you'll be able to see the result and any warning messages.

After Structure has been restored, open the Structure | Manage Structure page to verify that your structures were restored successfully.

Downgrading from Structure 5.0 or Later

The introduction of Manual Adjustments in Structure 5.0 required changes to our backup file format, which makes previous versions of Structure unable to restore data from backup files created by Structure 5.0 and later.

To downgrade to an earlier version, you first need to restore Structure data from a 5.0 backup file:

  1. Unpack the XML backup file from the ZIP archive created by Structure.
  2. Change the version attribute in the <structure-backup> element from "5.0" to "3.3".
  3. Delete all <manualAdjustments> elements from the XML.

Once completed, you can restore directly from the modified XML file using the procedure above. You do not have to pack it into a ZIP archive.