🆕Comparison & Snapshots

Comparing Jira project configurations, and creating Snapshot milestones

Comparing Jira project configuration feature is designed to help users understand differences between configurations on the project level, without administrator access.

The new Comparison menu is available in Glass menu next to Export:

Compare

While comparing two configurations, all information that is available in Glass will be taken in account. Information currently not supported by Glass will not be part of the comparison.

In comparison, multiple options are available as Baseline (left side):

This project's any saved previous version (see more in Snapshots)
Any other project's any Snapshot (where you have both Browse & View Glass permission)
Any uploaded Snapshot (see more in Download Snapshot)

Baseline can be compared to (right side):

This project's Current Version
This project's any previous version (see more in Snapshots)

High level comparison

The purpose of high level comparison is to quickly validate if there is any difference, point out where the differences are, or just to confirm the configuration is untouched as expected. To deep dive into details we implemented low level comparison as well.

After pressing the compare button a high level comparison will be shown, where all the important project details are highlighted. Result is shown in the middle line on the object level. For example, if everything is the same, all markers are going to be green.

When there is any difference detected, there will be a red indicator in the middle for that:

On the high level view you can only detect significant changes - like using a different scheme or a removed a workflow. For more details you can dig deep with the low level comparison when needed.

High level comparison actually does a complete analysis, which means we deep dive into the lower levels, while showing only the final verdict and main objects.

What is ananlyzed during evaluation

Basic Summary - Project main values (from General tab)
- key, type, instance name, category, url, components, versions
Issue Type Scheme - Issue Types
Issue Type Screen Scheme - Screen Schemes
- Screen Scheme - Issue Type assignments
- Screens in Screen Schemes
- Fields in Screens
Field Configuration - Field Confiruation Scheme
- Field Configurations
Workflow Scheme - Workflows
- Workflow - Issue Type assignments
- Workflow statuses, transitions, actions
- Custom actions are highlighted in order of Conditions, Validators, Post Functions
- Any changes in workflow actions
People - People in the project
- All people, number of groups, project roles and people in roles
Security Scheme - Security Scheme
- Levels and Actors in the scheme
Permission Scheme - Permission Scheme
- Permissions in the scheme
Notification Scheme - Notification Scheme
- Notifications in the scheme

Low level comparison

The purpose of low level comparison is to deep dive and understand project settings on the lowest possible level, when a difference has been identified, in a textual diff view.

This Low level comparison view can help understand even the smallest differences between project configurations, like

a workflow post function has been added or edited

a new component or version has been added

fields have been added to screens

the permission scheme has been modified

and more...

When the low level analysis ends up with findings, you can use Glass's overview feature to analyze and visually better understand the configuration details, still without administrator access.

When you see on the High Level that the 2 configration are radically different, the Low Level Comparison usually adds low/no value. In this case pressing Low Level a warning will be shown, and load time can take several minutes. Although when there is only a small change in every section, the pop up will shown, but there will be no extra load time.

Snapshots

The Snapshot feature is an powerful extension for project configuration comparison. The purpose of Snapshots is to be able to save configuration checkpoints which can be used for comparison baseline, while files can be stored in Jira securely.

Create Snapshot

Only project admins can Create snapshots. 20 snapshots can be created per project for now.

New snapshots have the following inputs:

Name - which will appear in the comparison list
Description - note to self, to be able to summarize changes in the project settings

Compare 2 snapshot

When selecting 2 snapshots, the Compare Selected button become available to be able to quickly compare snapshots.

Download current

Current configuration can be downloaded, to be able to move the file to another instance (especially useful when moving from server to cloud, or from sandbox to live instance)

Snapshot actions

Snapshots can be

Edited (for Admins only)
Downloaded
Deleted (for Admins only)
Compared to Current configuration

Popular use cases

Project configuration - recent changes

Check what has changed since your last Snapshot.

Search for your latest Snapshot (on top), and press Compare to current
Compare 2 configuration and analyize recent changes

Note that this comparison may take some time, since Current Version will be downloaded real-time with the latest project configuration.

Project configuration - historical

Validate what has changed in your project by time.

Create Snapshots regularly when you do major changes in project configuration
Select any 2 snapshots and press Compare Selected
Compare 2 configuration and analyze changes by time

2 different projects

Validate if project A has the same configuration as project B within the same instance. Can be useful when projects created with shared configurations, or looking for resued schemes.

Create a new Snapshot for project A
Open project B, Select project A and the new Snapshot you just created
Press compare

Note that it is usually creates no value of comparing totally different projects, especially on the lower level.

Differences between platforms

Validate if cloud migration was complete and look for differences.

Do cloud migration
Open your Server/Data Center project
Download current Snapshot from Snapshot menu
Open the same project on Cloud instance
Upload the old downloaded snapshot and press compare

Note that Atlassian migration tool renames most configuration elements, so don't expect to have a complete green result. Although High Level comparison can be really useful to overview differences.