Template Structures and Projects

Template structure is a structure that you copy & clone to get the real, "workable" structures.

Technically, template structures are ordinary structures, containing ordinary issues. It is up to you to designate a structure to be a template and configure it accordingly.

Configuring Template Structures

Here are some suggestions about configuring template structures:

Clearly designate them as a template - for example, have "[Template]" marker as a part of the structure's name.
Give permissions to change the template structure only to those users who really need it. If needed, create another JIRA group for them (or ask JIRA administrator to do so).
Do not install any synchronizers on the template structure (unless you want the template to change, of course... which would be a quite unusual case).
Do not mark template issues as template in the issue summary. If you need to mark template issues somehow, use a label, which you will be able to remove from cloned templates via Bulk Change.

If you need to remove template issues from a JQL search, you can add to JQL: AND NOT (issue in structure('template structure name')). See structure() JQL function.

Creating Issues and a Structure from Template

Once you have a template structure, you can use Copy action from the Manage Structures page and turn on Clone Issues option. For details about configuring and running cloning operation, refer to Copying Structure and Cloning Issues article.

After you have created a new structure with new issues from template, you might want to:

Rename the new structure and give it a meaningful name.
Assign permissions for the new structure, if they are different from template structure permissions.
Open the new structure to make sure it looks good.
Do a Bulk Edit on all issues - for example, to remove a template marker.

Template Projects

In the same manner, you can create a template project with template issues, and put them all into a template structure.

When you need to create a new project based on the template project, do the following:

Manually create an empty new project.
Create new structure and issues from template structure, as advised above. When configuring cloning parameters, specify the new project in the Create in Project parameter.