Cloning Issues with Deep Clone and Restoring Assets

How to Clone Issues with Deep Clone and Restore Assets with Insight Assets Backup & Migration
When migrating or restructuring Jira projects, teams often need to clone issues first and then restore Assets inside those cloned issues.
This article explains how to safely do this using Deep Clone together with Insight Assets Backup & Migration.
This approach is especially useful for:

Cloud → Cloud migrations
Project restructures
Sandbox → Production sync
Preserving Asset references after issue cloning

Overview of the Approach

The process consists of two main steps:

Clone issues using Deep Clone, preserving the original issue keys in a custom field (Copy the value of a field to another field)
Restore Assets into the cloned issues using Insight Assets Backup & Migration, mapping objects by that custom field

This ensures Asset fields in cloned issues are correctly re-linked to the right objects.

Step 1: Prepare a Custom Field for Source Issue Keys

Before cloning issues, create a custom field in the target site that will store the original issue key.

Recommended setup

Field type: Text (single line) aka Short text (plain text only)
Name example: Source Issue Key or Original Issue Key
Make sure this field is available on the issue screens used during cloning

This field will later be used as the identifier when restoring Assets.

Step 2: Clone Issues with Deep Clone

Use Deep Clone to copy issues from the source project to the target project.
Key configuration in Deep Clone

Map the original issue key into the custom field created earlier using the Jira expression “issue.key” (Copy the value of a field to another field)
- This ensures each cloned issue keeps a reference to its source issue

Result After cloning:

New issues exist in the target project
Each cloned issue contains the source issue key in a custom field
Asset fields may still be empty — this is expected

Step 3: Back Up Assets from the Target Environment

In the target environment:

Open Insight Assets Backup & Migration (Backup schemas from another instance)
Create a backup of the schema(s) used in the cloned issues

This backup will be used to restore Asset data into the cloned issues.

Step 4: Start the Restore Process in the Target Environment

In the target environment:

Open Insight Assets Backup & Migration
Select Backup
Start schema restore

Step 5: Configure Work Item Identifier

Start objects in issues restore
When prompted to select a Work Item Identifier, choose: “Custom field”

Select the custom field that contains the source issue key
This tells the app how to match:
- Original issues → cloned issues
- Asset references → correct target issues

This step is critical when issues were cloned.

If you select Work item key, objects are restored using the current issue key and no additional mapping is applied. This is not suitable for cloned issues.

Step 6: Validate Fields and Restore Assets

After configuring the identifier:

Validate Asset fields to restore
Start the restore process

The app will:

Match cloned issues using the custom field
Restore Asset objects
Re-populate Asset fields inside issues
Preserve object references and structure

Final Result
After completion:

Issues are successfully cloned
Asset fields in cloned issues are correctly restored
Objects remain consistent with the source environment
No manual re-linking is required