Guide · App shutdown

Acceptance Criteria for Jira by HeroCoders has shut down: find and keep your criteria

If your stories carried acceptance criteria from HeroCoders' Acceptance Criteria for Jira, here is where the criteria are now, how to check that every list made it into the backup field, and how to move them without losing the done and skipped marks.

What happened

HeroCoders shut the app down completely on 10 November 2026. Their notice asked admins to back up the data before that date (HeroCoders documentation), and since that day its Marketplace listing no longer counts any installs.
It was a Connect app: its last cloud version was 2.0.11-AC (the -AC ending marks Connect), released on 20 May 2025, with about 1,100 installs in early November 2026.

Your stories and their history stay in Jira. What needs care is the criteria list on each issue, with its done and skipped marks.

Step one: find the backup

The app had a setting, Sync checklists to custom fields, that copied every list into a Jira field called Checklist Text. HeroCoders asked admins to keep it on before the shutdown. That copy is what both ways below start from.

Find the field's ID: Jira settings → Work items → Fields, search for "Checklist Text", and pick the one whose description says it was created by Acceptance Criteria.
Count the issues that have a backup:
Terminal
```
cf[10418] IS NOT EMPTY
```
Replace 10418 with your field's number. Open a few results: the criteria are there as lines like [done] Login works or [] Error shown.

If the search finds nothing

Then the sync was most likely off and there is no copy on your site. Ask HeroCoders support (support@herocoders.com) as soon as possible whether the criteria can still be recovered.

Whichever way you choose, the field is now your only copy: don't delete it, and don't let a cleanup of unused fields remove it, until every list you need has moved.

Way 1: HeroCoders' own Checklists for Jira

HeroCoders recommends moving to Checklists for Jira, which they describe as essentially the same app with the same interface, built on Forge. Their guide copies the old Checklist Text field into the new app's field with a scheduled Jira Automation rule, about 500 issues per run, and covers a CSV route for Jira Free. Templates and settings are not migrated and have to be recreated by hand. This is the shortest path if you liked the old app and want a general checklist tool; check the item and template limits of the edition you pick.

Way 2: a dedicated acceptance criteria app

If what your team really used was acceptance criteria rather than checklists in general, look for:

Built on Forge (look for "Runs on Atlassian" or ask the vendor), so you don't face another move.
Done and skipped as separate states, so "not needed" doesn't look like "not finished".
A workflow validator that keeps a story out of Done while criteria are open.
JQL to find stories with open criteria, and templates per project and issue type.
Given/When/Then if your team writes criteria as examples, and a way to hand them to your tests.

FeatureBridge Lite – Acceptance Criteria (made by us, YTI Digital) is one option that does all of the above and reads the Checklist Text format directly. It keeps the criteria in a property of the issue, so nothing leaves Atlassian.

Install FeatureBridge Lite
It adds an Acceptance criteria panel to issues; the old Checklist Text field stays where it is.
Recreate your templates
The old app's templates went with it. The quickest source is an issue that was created from a template: copy its Checklist Text value and paste it into a new template on the FeatureBridge Lite settings page. Add default templates per project and issue type if you used them.
Move the lists of open work
On each story, copy the value of the Checklist Text field, click Paste a list in the Acceptance criteria panel and paste it as it is: [done] stays done, [skipped] stays skipped, descriptions join the item above, headers are skipped. Details in Paste a list.
Point the workflow at the new validator
Replace the old transition check with Acceptance criteria are done (see Workflow validator), and update saved filters to acceptanceCriteriaStatus = open.
Keep the old field as history
Leave the Checklist Text field on the issue screens, read-only if you like, as the record for closed issues.

Moving is per issue

FeatureBridge Lite has no bulk import from the field, so this way suits teams that move the lists of open stories and keep the field as history for the rest. For thousands of open issues, HeroCoders' Automation route is less work.

Questions about either way: support@yti.digital. For writing criteria that both people and tests can read, see Given/When/Then acceptance criteria in Jira.