Ability to import date and datetime fields at the same time

Issue Summary

Currently, the CSV file import wizard allows specifying a date format (this could be Date e.g "dd/MM/yyyy" or Datetime e.g "dd/MM/yyyy h:mm a".

• If you specify the DateTime format: It will work for Datetime fields, but fail to import Date fields, and
• If you specify Date format, it will import both Date and DateTime fields but the DateTime fields will be stripped of the time digits. For instance, when "dd/MM/yyyy" is specified and you have a column with values like 25/12/2020 and another with 23/12/2020 9:15 PM.
  • 25/12/2020 will be imported but,
  • 23/12/2020 9:15 PM will be imported at 23/12/2020 00:00:00 (23/12/2020 12:00 AM)

Suggested Solution

Allow the ability to specify how both Date and Datetime fields will be imported, so that they can work at the same time.

Why This Is Important

When importing a CSV of issues into Jira, a customer could have both Date and DateTime columns on the same CSV. Since the fields can't be imported correctly at the same time, the customer will have to run the import twice (see workaround). It will save time if it can be done in one go.

Workaround

Import the values with 2 imports (first import for the date fields and the second for the DateTime fields, or vice versa).

To avoid duplicating the issues, the CSV file for the second import needs to contain a column that maps to Issue Key so that it will update existing issues (created from the first import). If an issue exists for a given key, it will be updated.

So steps to complete after the first import (assuming Date fields were imported first):

• Export all the imported issues from Jira to a CSV: 
  • Filters > Advanced Issue Search.
  • Once you have filtered the issues, export using the Export button on the top right corner of your Filter page.
  • Important fields are Project, Issue key, and Summary
• Once exported, update the CSV file with the Datetime field.
  • You can update the values by doing a VLOOKUP in Excel on the Summary column. Note: this assumes that the Summary column is the best match between the 2 CSV files - CSV used for the first import and the CSV exported from Jira) 
• Once the CSV is ready, run another import to update only the Datetime fields.