Automating cross-repository issue tracking and milestone synchronization in GitHub Projects

[girishlade111]

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Our engineering organization has recently adopted GitHub Projects (the new Projects experience) to manage work across 40+ repositories within our GitHub organization. We're looking for strategies to automate and streamline our project management workflows, particularly around cross-repository coordination.

Current setup:

• Single organization with multiple teams (Backend, Frontend, Mobile, DevOps, Data)
• 40+ active repositories, each with their own issue trackers
• Organization-level GitHub Project boards for quarterly planning and sprint management
• Mix of feature work, bugs, and infrastructure tasks
• Teams use different issue labeling conventions

Challenges we're encountering:

1. Cross-repository milestone tracking: We have milestones defined at the repository level (e.g., "Q4 2025 Release"), but there's no native way to aggregate or synchronize these across repos in a single Project view. How do teams handle release planning across multiple repositories?

2. Automatic issue routing: When issues are created in various repositories, we'd like them to automatically appear in the appropriate Project board based on labels, repository, or other criteria. What's the best approach for this - GitHub Actions workflows, Project automation rules, or third-party integrations?

3. Field synchronization: We've created custom fields in our Projects (Priority, Team Owner, Sprint, etc.), but these values aren't reflected back to the source issues. Is there a recommended pattern for keeping Project metadata in sync with issue labels or custom properties?

4. Status workflows: Different teams have different development workflows (some use Kanban, others use Scrum). How can we support team-specific columns/statuses while maintaining organization-level visibility?

5. Rollup reporting: We need to generate reports showing progress across multiple Projects (e.g., "all Backend team work" regardless of which Project board it appears in). What approaches work for aggregating data from Projects?

Questions:

• What GitHub Actions workflows have you found most useful for Projects automation?
• Are there GraphQL API patterns that work well for bulk Project item operations?
• How do you handle the scenario where an issue needs to appear in multiple Projects with different field values?
• What's your strategy for archiving completed work while maintaining historical visibility?
• Are there recommended tools or scripts for migrating data between Project boards?

Looking forward to hearing how other large teams structure their Projects workflows!

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• I have read the above statement and can confirm my post is relevant to the GitHub feature areas Issues and/or Projects.

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