Merge an Issue into another Issue

The same problem often gets reported more than once, so the tracker ends up with two or three Issues that are really one. Merging settles that: it folds one Issue into another so the team works a single record instead of chasing the same thing in several places. The Issue you keep becomes the main one; the other leaves the backlog and points at it, and every conversation the merged Issue carried is added to the main one, so no reporter is left waiting on an Issue nobody is watching.

Merging takes issues.manage. If you only hold issues.view, the merge controls aren’t offered — you can still read the Issue and its possible duplicates, but not fold one into another.

From the Possible duplicates suggestions

When the tracker spots another Issue whose title reads like this one, the Issue’s detail page shows a Possible duplicates section listing the matches, each with how closely it matches and how many conversations it carries. If one of them is the same problem, use Merge into this on that row.

A match that has already been merged into something else isn’t offered — it shows where it went instead, so you don’t start a chain that sends the next reader to an Issue that was itself merged away.

Merge with another issue

The suggestions compare titles only, so two Issues about the same problem can be missed when their titles read differently. For that, or for any other pair the scan did not suggest, use Merge with another issue, next to the Possible duplicates section.

1. Open the Issue you want to fold away — the one that will be merged into the other.
2. Choose Merge with another issue.
3. In the picker, search by title and narrow by state with Open / Closed / All. The search runs across the whole tracker, not just the Issues already on screen, and Load more pages through a long list.
4. Pick the Issue you want to keep — the main one. The Issue you started from is never in the list, because an Issue can’t be merged into itself.
5. Confirm with Merge. The confirm step names both Issues (Merge #A into #B?) and says what happens: the Issue you picked takes over this Issue’s reporters and gets a note, and this Issue leaves the backlog and points to it.

The button is offered only if you hold issues.manage, and not on an Issue that is already merged. Issues that are already merged into another one are left out of the picker’s list, so a merge never starts a chain. If someone merges the Issue you picked into another one while your picker is open, Atender refuses the merge and asks you to merge into the Issue that one now points at.

There’s no way to flip the direction at this step — it always folds the Issue you opened into the one you pick, the same way the suggestions do, so there’s one way to think about a merge wherever you start it.

What a merge does

• The Issue you kept becomes the main one and stays in the backlog.
• The other Issue leaves the backlog, shows a banner saying it was merged, and links to the main one. From then on it follows the main Issue’s status, close time and owner, so it closes only when the main one does.
• Every conversation the merged Issue carried is added to the main one, and stays on the merged Issue too, so each reporter’s thread now hangs off the Issue the team is actually working. The reporter isn’t sent a status notice by the merge itself. A merge does count as a change to both Issues, so an automation on An Issue changes can run on it.
• A note is added to the main Issue recording what the merged Issue had reported: its number, its title, and its report text (the first 4,000 characters of a very long one).

Undoing a merge

A merge can be undone, and undoing it also takes issues.manage. Open the Issue that was merged and choose Unmerge on its banner, then confirm: it stops pointing at the main Issue and returns to the backlog on its own. It keeps the status it had at that moment; change it as usual if it needs a different one. The conversations it had handed over stay on the main Issue, and so does the note — unmerging separates the two records again, it doesn’t rewind everything the merge moved.

See also

• How to Link a Conversation to an Issue — attaching and detaching the conversations a merge adds to the main Issue.
• Report an Issue from a Conversation — where most linked conversations come from.