Import and export

Workflow templates in Aura can be saved to a JSON file and loaded back into the same site or a different one. The feature moves the design of a workflow, not the work in flight: snapshot a template before a risky edit, copy a finished workflow from staging to production, or hand a template to another team to adapt.

Where the buttons live

Both actions sit on the workflow list, reachable from Apps → Aura Workflows → Workflows at the global level or from a space’s settings for space-scoped templates. Hovering a workflow card reveals a toolbar with Export workflow alongside View workflow, Duplicate workflow, Edit workflow, and Delete workflow. Clicking the export icon downloads a .json file named after the workflow.

Importing happens from the same page. The Create workflow button has a chevron next to it; that menu reveals Import from file. On a space’s workflow page the same menu also offers Import global workflow, a separate path for copying a template that already exists at the global level — not the same as importing from a file. Picking Import from file opens a file chooser; selecting a valid Aura workflow JSON creates a new workflow on the current scope. The new workflow appears in the list, ready to edit or apply.

What the file contains

The exported JSON is a complete description of the workflow’s design. It includes every state and the transitions between them, the actions configured on each state, the approval transitions with their reviewer lists and thresholds, the email templates attached to those approvals, the workflow-level variables, and the metadata field definitions. Workflow name, description, icon, color, and initial state are all preserved. Open the file in any text editor and the structure is human-readable, which is occasionally useful for diffing two versions of a template — but Aura makes no promise about the shape of the JSON across versions, so don’t build tooling against it.

What is not preserved

Export captures the template, never the runtime. Pages currently running the workflow, their current states, their per-page metadata values, their pending approvals, and their history are left behind. Importing the same workflow on a different site does not migrate any pages. To move live workflow instances along with their templates, use the migration tool, not import/export.

Default-workflow status and the set of spaces a workflow is applied to are also not in the file. After importing, mark the workflow as default again and reapply it to the spaces or pages where it should run.

Each import creates a new workflow. There is no overwrite mode. To replace an existing workflow with an imported version, import the new one and delete the old one — taking the usual care that comes with deleting a workflow that has live instances.

Users, groups, and cross-site imports

The riskiest part of moving a workflow between sites is the references to specific people and groups. Reviewers, action recipients, and email To/Cc/Bcc lists are stored as Atlassian account IDs and Confluence group IDs, both scoped to a single site. A user from your production site does not exist on staging under the same ID; a group only exists where it was created.

Caution

When Aura resolves a reviewer or recipient at runtime and the user or group ID does not exist on the current site, the entry is dropped silently. An imported workflow with a hard-coded approver from another instance appears configured normally but runs with that reviewer missing. After importing across sites, open every approval, action, and email template and reselect reviewers, recipients, and groups against the new site’s directory.

Workflow variables sidestep this problem. A reviewer set to @page_owner_group resolves per page on the importing site and works without touching the template. For workflows that travel between sites often, prefer variables to hard-coded users and groups in the source template — the import then needs no rework.

Versions and compatibility

Aura imports the file format used by the version that produced it; older versions cannot read JSON exported from a newer one. If a download fails to parse on import, an Import failed dialog appears and nothing is added to the list. Re-export from a site running the same Aura version or newer, then try again.

For more on what’s inside the file you’re moving, see the Workflow Builder. For applying an imported workflow once it lands, see Applying workflows.