Canarys Migration Hub

Bugzilla to Azure DevOps Migration Tool: Modernizing Legacy Bug Tracking with Confidence

Many organizations continue to rely on Bugzilla, a legacy bug tracking system that has served development teams for years. However, as engineering practices evolve, teams increasingly adopt Azure DevOps to benefit from integrated work item tracking, agile planning, CI/CD pipelines, and enterprise-grade governance.

To support this transition, Canarys has developed a powerful Bugzilla to Azure DevOps Migration Tool that enables organizations to modernize their tooling while preserving data integrity, relationships, and historical context.

Problem Statement

Organizations using Bugzilla often face challenges such as:

  • Outdated user experience and limited collaboration features
  • Difficulty integrating with modern DevOps pipelines
  • Complex reporting and governance requirements
  • High risk of data loss during manual migrations

Migrating from Bugzilla to Azure DevOps manually is highly complex, particularly when dealing with large datasets, historical changes, dependencies, attachments, and audit requirements.

A structured, automated migration approach is essential to ensure accuracy, compliance, and business continuity.

Solution Overview

The Bugzilla to Azure DevOps Migration Tool by Canarys is an enterprise-grade migration solution designed to seamlessly move bug data from Bugzilla into Azure DevOps work items.

The tool supports two powerful migration modes, allowing organizations to choose between speed and historical completeness based on their business needs.

Supported Data Migration
  • Bugs and metadata
  • Comments and discussions
  • Attachments
  • Bug relationships (depends on, blocks, duplicates)
  • Users and assignments
  • Status, priority, severity, resolution, and custom fields

Migration Modes

Tip Migration (Current State Migration)

Tip Migration focuses on migrating bugs with their latest and current state.

Best suited for organizations that:

  • Do not require full historical audit trails
  • Want faster migration for large datasets
Key Characteristics:
  • Migrates current field values, comments, attachments, and relationships
  • Maintains current status and assignee information
  • Relationships are migrated after all work items are created
History Migration (Full Audit Trail Migration)

History Migration recreates the complete lifecycle of each bug, from creation to its current state.

Ideal for organizations with:

  • Compliance and audit requirements
  • Need for historical traceability
Key Characteristics:
  • Preserves who changed what and when
  • Recreates all field changes in chronological order
  • Migrates comments with original authorship and timestamps
  • Attachments are linked after history recreation to ensure consistency

This makes the Canarys solution one of the most comprehensive Bugzilla history migration tools available.

Migration Workflow

The migration follows a controlled and predictable workflow:

  1. Bug retrieval based on configured filters
  2. Work item creation in Azure DevOps
  3. Field, user, and status mapping
  4. Comment and attachment migration
  5. History replay (for history migration mode)
  6. Relationship migration after all items are created
  7. Validation and reporting

This approach ensures accuracy, traceability, and reliability at every stage.

Key Features of Bugzilla to Azure DevOps Migration Tool

  • ✔ Dual Migration Modes: Choose between Tip Migration for speed or History Migration for complete audit trails.
  • ✔ Advanced Mapping Capabilities:
    • Field-to-field mapping with transformations
    • User email mapping with fallback handling
    • Status, priority, severity, and resolution mapping
    • Support for custom Azure DevOps work item types
  • ✔ Relationship Preservation: Bugzilla relationships are accurately mapped:
    • depends_on → Predecessor
    • blocks → Successor
    • dupe_of → Duplicate Of
  • ✔ Secure & Configurable Execution: All migration settings are configurable via JSON, enabling controlled, repeatable migrations.
  • ✔ Real-Time Tracking & Logging: Extensive logging, progress dashboards, and detailed reports provide full visibility throughout the migration.

Case Studies

  • Case Study 1: Legacy Enterprise Platform Modernization
    A large enterprise migrated years of Bugzilla data into Azure DevOps using history migration, preserving full audit trails for compliance and regulatory needs.
  • Case Study 2: Product Engineering Team
    A development team opted for tip migration to quickly move active bugs while retiring legacy systems with minimal downtime.
  • Case Study 3: Distributed QA Organization
    Bug relationships, comments, and attachments were migrated across multiple Bugzilla components into Azure DevOps with consistent mappings and validation.

Limitations

While the Bugzilla to Azure DevOps Migration Tool is highly capable, some limitations exist due to platform differences between Bugzilla and Azure DevOps.

🔹 Partial History Constraints
  • Historical migration is limited primarily to field-level changes.
  • Certain Bugzilla constructs do not have direct equivalents in Azure DevOps.
🔹 CC Users & Personal Tags
  • Bugzilla CC users and personal tags do not have native equivalents in Azure DevOps and cannot be migrated.
🔹 Attachment History
  • Attachments are not part of historical replay.
  • They are migrated and linked after history processing to ensure integrity.
🔹 Comment & Change Grouping
  • When a user updates fields and adds comments simultaneously in Bugzilla, they may appear as separate entries in Azure DevOps due to platform behavior.
🔹 Notification & Watcher Data
  • Bugzilla notification settings and watcher lists are not migrated.
Important Note

These limitations arise from Azure DevOps platform constraints, not from tool deficiencies.

Canarys ensures:

  • No active bug data is lost
  • Relationships and structure are preserved
  • Organizations can confidently move forward with Azure DevOps

Conclusion

The Bugzilla to Azure DevOps Migration Tool by Canarys provides a robust, flexible, and enterprise-ready solution for organizations modernizing their bug tracking and development workflows.

With:

  • Dual migration modes (Tip & History)
  • Advanced mapping and validation
  • Secure, configurable execution
  • Detailed reporting and dashboards

Canarys ensures your transition from Bugzilla to Azure DevOps is accurate, compliant, and future-proof.

👉 Contact Canarys today to learn how we can support your migration journey.