Why am I having trouble moving my project from one risk model to another?

This page applies to Risk Register for Jira Data Center and Jira Server

The Risk Register app synchronises custom field configurations with risk models. In so doing, it has to create custom field configurations, update them, and delete them. The question arises: what happens to custom field values, and therefore risk assessments, when custom field configurations change, perhaps as a result of risk model changes?

In this matter, the Risk Register app exhibits the same behaviour as Jira itself: changes to custom field configurations do not automatically result in changes to custom field values. Here is an excerpt from the Jira Administration Guide:

“When you edit the values in your custom field configuration, you should manually update the values in existing issues. If you don’t do that, then as soon as you edit an issue the custom field values will revert to null or the default option on the issue page.

* If the field is optional, the field will be set to 'None' on the Edit screen.

* If the field is required, the field will be set to the first available option, and not the default option, on the Edit screen.”

The Jira Administration Guide provides these instructions for manually editing the custom field values in bulk:

“To find and edit the issues:

1. Search for the issue or issues that use the custom field value you have changed.

2. Bulk edit the issues to set them to the correct value in the new field configuration (even if that value matches the default field config).”

Implications

Whenever you change the assignment of projects to risk models, you should adopt the approach prescribed by the Jira Administration Guide: manually update the values in the corresponding custom fields. In the context of risk assessment, those custom fields are Inherent impact, Inherent probability, Residual Impact, and Residual Probability.