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Merge Assistant

Overview

Merge Assistant for Jira helps teams identify and merge duplicate issues in a simple, safe, and intelligent way. It is seamlessly integrated into the Jira issue view, automating tedious copy and closure actions while keeping a full audit trail.

What's new

  • Mark as duplicate — one-click. From the Suggested duplicates list, the new kebab menu (⋯) on each row offers a quick action that links the source as a duplicate and closes it — no data is copied. Ideal for support cases where the issue is clearly redundant.
  • Merge options grouped by intent. The seven toggles are now organised into three clear groups — Copy from source, Merge data and Forward— eliminating the repetitive “Copy …” prefix and making the panel much easier to scan.
  • Visual direction tiles. The merge direction is now picked through two large tiles — Into and Here — with explicit explanations and a clear blue selection indicator, replacing the previous small radio toggle.
  • Auto-recompute on mark/merge. After a mark-as-duplicate or a merge, the suggestions list is recomputed automatically so the closed source disappears from the panel right away.
  • Permission-safe behaviours. Watcher and permission-sensitive actions degrade gracefully when the current user lacks the required project permission, never bypassing Jira permission checks.

Where to find the app

Merge Assistant is available directly inside the Jira issue view. It appears:

  • Automatically, when a new issue is detected as a potential duplicate.
  • Manually, through the side panel labeled Merge Assistant.

Duplicate suggestions

When a new issue is created or updated, Merge Assistant automatically analyzes its summary, description, labels and participants. If similar issues already exist, they are displayed as merge suggestions in the panel. From there, you can:

  • Review suggested duplicates with their confidence score.
  • Mark as duplicatedirectly from the row's kebab menu (⋯) to link and close the source in one click — no merge, no data copied. The list refreshes automatically once the action is processed.
  • Choose a suggestion to load it as the merge target and configure the full options.
  • Open the preview before confirming the merge.
Merge Assistant issue panel — suggested duplicates, grouped merge options and visual direction tiles
The Merge Assistant panel inside an issue: suggested duplicates list, target selection, merge options grouped by intent and visual direction tiles.

Manual merge

You can also launch a merge manually from any issue. Click Merge Assistant → Merge into… to open the panel.

Selecting issues

  • You can select one or multiple issues to merge.
  • When multiple issues are selected, only the option Merge here (merge into the current issue) is available.

Merge options

Before merging, you can decide which data to combine. Options are organised in three groups so the panel stays readable as it grows:

Copy from source

  • Description — append the duplicate's description to the target.
  • Comments — transfer comments (public and internal, preserving visibility on JSM).
  • People involved — add the reporter, watchers and request participants from the duplicate.
  • Attachments — copy or link attachments to the target issue.

Merge data

  • Labels — combine labels from both issues.
  • Sub-tasks — clone or re-link sub-tasks from the source issue.

Forward

  • New comments — automatically forward any comment added later on the closed duplicate back to the target. Visibility (public / internal) is preserved.

Merge direction

Two directions are possible:

  • → Merge into… — the current issue is merged into another one.
  • ← Merge here — other selected issues are merged into the current one.

Preview step

Before execution, Merge Assistant displays a preview screen summarising what will happen:

  • fields and content to be merged,
  • number of comments transferred,
  • people added,
  • subtasks or labels affected.

This helps you verify the merge before final confirmation.

Merge Assistant preview — direction summary and per-field counts of what will be merged
The preview pane: clear merge direction and per-field counts of everything that will move to the target.

Executing the merge

Once confirmed, Merge Assistant will:

  • Copy all selected elements to the target issue.
  • Automatically close duplicate issues with the resolution Merged.
  • Add a relation link is merged into.
  • Post an audit comment summarising the operation.

All changes remain visible in the Jira issue history for transparency and tracking.

Best practices

  • Always review the preview before confirming the merge.
  • Test on a non-production project if you're new to the app.
  • For Jira Service Management projects, enable comment syncing to ensure clients remain notified.

Support & feedback

Need help, want to request a feature or report a bug? Visit our Support page.

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