Migrating from JIRA and Confluence to OpenProject

Remarque

This page is a work in progress. The OpenProject team is actively developing an upcoming JIRA and Confluence migration tool. Information on this page may change as new migration options become available.

Last edited on: November 11, 2025.

Overview

This guide provides an overview of the current options for migrating data from Atlassian JIRA or Confluence to OpenProject. It also describes ongoing community and in-house development efforts for dedicated migration solutions.

With the end of life for JIRA Data Center, many organizations are evaluating OpenProject as a secure, open-source, and self-hosted alternative for project management and collaboration.

Migration Options

1. OpenProject migration tool

OpenProject is developing a solution for migrating from JIRA and Confluence. You can follow the progress of OpenProject’s JIRA migration Stream and provide feedback. This tool will simplify data import for JIRA projects, including:

Issue types
Users and groups
Fields and custom fields
Attachments
Workflows

Important
This feature is under active development and not yet available for production use.

Contributing and data donation

To support the development of the official migration tool, we are collecting anonymized data samples. This data helps test and validate import capabilities across different JIRA and Confluence configurations.

Conseil
Please reach out to us if you want to donate your data, we will sign an NDA to ensure confidentiality.

2. API

Use the OpenProject REST API to migrate data programmatically. This option provides full flexibility and supports most OpenProject entities, such as:

Work packages
Users
Comments
Attachments

Remarque
The API-based approach requires technical expertise and scripting or integration development to map JIRA and Confluence data structures to OpenProject.

3. Excel synchronization

The Excel synchronization integration allows you to import and export tabular data between JIRA, Confluence, and OpenProject using spreadsheets. This method is suitable for small- to medium-sized migrations and provides an opportunity to review and clean data manually before import.

4. Confluence → Markdown → Wiki

You can migrate Confluence content into OpenProject using Markdown export and manual import:

Use a Markdown export app such as Markdown Exporter for Confluence.
Copy and paste the exported Markdown into the OpenProject Wiki module.
Verify formatting and structure after import.
Upload attachments manually (these are not included in the Markdown export).

This approach preserves most layout elements and is recommended for documentation or knowledge base content.

5. Community-developed JIRA importer

A community-developed tool, the OpenProject JIRA Importer provides additional import capabilities. It supports importing JIRA issues into OpenProject and is available as open-source software.

Refer to the JIRA migration community development blog article for background information and usage guidance.

Recommended migration workflow

1. Preparation

Document your existing JIRA and Confluence configuration (projects, issue types, workflows, fields, spaces).
Identify which data to migrate and which to archive.
Clean up legacy data before starting.