Bitbucket cleanup of free unused workspaces: what you need to know

[omir85]

I'm trying to access my bitbucket workspace but it's not working at all, due to a certificate error ?

Common Name (CN) deswugateway.accivalores.com

What is that ?

[Bram]

Hi @Yana , We got an email about the possible deletion of workspaces at the end of last year. As far as we can see our workspace isn't marked for deletion but we only just added an Atlassian company to the repo after the 15th of January. Is there an easy way to check and be 100% that the workspaces and repo's aren’t marked for deletion?

[Yana]

@Bram  

We are implementing UI features that will allow users to identify if they are impacted or not.  I'll be updating this community post with new screen shots, once the functionality is rolled out.  

However looking at your workspace activity, your workspace is Active and shouldn't be impacted by deactivation and deletion. 

[marcuscf]

People have been complaining about this for a while but I still have to voice my opinion because the user experience has been so terrible.

Why do you have to send an e-mail a month in advance when we can't take any action at that time? I had to set a reminder to check again in January or February because there was nothing I could do then.

Now I have to click a button that may not appear. How am I supposed to know if I can't see the button because my workspace has been "active enough" in the last months; or if I simply missed the button because it's on a very specific page I didn't navigate to?

Then there's the whole concept of Atlassian account, BitBucket account, workspaces, and repositories. I only care about my repositories, I didn't even know what a workspace is. Why isn't there a page or link called "Click here to check if you need to reactivate your workspace → Your workspace is active, you don't need to take any further action!"???

The FAQ is the only thing that helps a little, but why can't the main message be as clear as the FAQ? Yet it also contains silly things like «Where is the “Reactivate workspace” button [...]? You will only see a “Reactivate workspace” option [...]» that doesn't answer the “where-question” at all. Why can't you share a screenshot?

Now I've been to my home page, my workspace main page, my workspace settings and I think I'm fine because I can't see that reactivate button anywhere but the experience is terrible.

[ssokolow]

I just migrated all of my repos to GitHub so I don't have to think about it.

[Yana]

@marcuscf 

Thank you for sharing your feedback. 

To learn what is the Bitbucket workspace, you can refer to this page https://support.atlassian.com/bitbucket-cloud/docs/what-is-a-workspace/

I will soon be updating the main post with the screen shots and what customers can expect, and how can you tell if your workspace is impacted by deactivation, that should help in terms of user experience.  

In the mean time, you should know that we are not deleting any repositories or workspaces  without giving you a self recovery option post deactivation. 

Thank you 

[Paulius Danėnas]

I have also not used my personal Bitbucket account for some time. After reading this notice I decided to log into it today and my repos are all gone, including my personal workspace (https://bitbucket.org/pauliusdan). And naturally, there are no repos, no workspace, no workspace reactivation option, nothing - everything is simply wiped out. Please restore my workspace so I could at least migrate everything to GitHub and get rid of BitBucket once and for all

[squdle]

@Yana this forum has poor feedback because it is a poor policy decission on Atlassian's behalf. Ultimately this can only be fixed up by a policy U-turn not a UX-turn.

I previously would have recommended atlassian's suite of tools in a professional capacity having had good work experience with them, complimented by a good free personal use option. Now I would direct professionals elsewhere, despite an okay (if sometimes stagnant or less shiny compared to alternatives) professional offering.

[Yana]

@Paulius Danėnas 

We have not deleted any workspaces or content. If you do not see your content, it is possible you logged in with a different profile. 

[photo3dlab]

@Ron L.I think I am in the same situation. How did you solve this problem?

[photo3dlab]

@Paulius Danėnas did you solve this problem?

[Paulius Danėnas]

@photo3dlab No, unfortunately, I did not solve it. 

@Yana I am sure that used the correct profile or workspace (pauliusdan). I had it's reference in documentation, and it was previously working without problems. Actually, after clicking that link it even led to the wiki of a project which was made public (but the project itself was not), but it did not show any files (but the at least that project was shown in the list of projects). And no any recovery options

For now, I have imported the versions of the projects that I managed to recover to GitHub. And I am very disappointed (to say the least) with the Atlassian service which simply decides to delete old code instead of archiving it or providing any working options to preserve it

[Yana]

@Paulius Danėnas 

The workspace you mentioned in your comment is active, accessible and no content has been deleted. 

However it is associated with a different profile from the one you used to make this comment. 

As long as you remember the correct email address the workspace is associated with, you will be able to access the content. If you need help, please create a separate help comment on community and our community support team will work with you to help.

[Paulius Danėnas]

@Yana Well, it is surprising then, because I have used this email for logging in since starting to use all Atlassian products very long ago, and it worked before.

At least it is good to hear that the workspace is still available.  I will try community help then, maybe something has changed or broken in the authorization process

[Ron Laws]

@photo3dlab Unfortunately, I was not able to resolve it. I worked with Atlassian support and they couldn't figure out the weirdness I was seeing. I basically gave up since it was mainly test code. But, was disappointed as I wanted to reference it for another project.

[Yana]

@Ron Laws  if you have your old remote repos URL, it shouldn't be hard to figure out the profile they are under... but if you do not and that code was associated with the email you do not remember, then yes, not much we can do to help. 

[photo3dlab]

@Ron Laws I fixed the problem by creating a random temporary workspace. This triggered my previous workspace to reappear with a re-enable option. All my repos are now fully restored.

[axeva]

I appear to be having the same issue as @Paulius Danėnas above.

When I login my account has no workspaces attached, so there is no Reactivate workspace button available.

I have the email from Atlassian telling my that my workspace (axeva) will be deleted. That notice was sent to the same email address I'm logged in with, so I'm not clear why I can't see my workspace. As far as I know, this is the only Altassian account I've ever had.

@Yana are you able to assist?

[Yana]

@axeva  I have reactivated your workspace and its content, please try now and confirm you can access it! Cheers

[axeva]

@Yana That works, thank you!

[Piotr Kostrzewa]

I have the same issues as @Paulius Danėnas and @axeva

I don't see any reactivate button on my old workspace and I was asked to create a new one. 
I had 3 repositories there that I needed to use for my thesis and I was using my college account.

My alternative - private user account is a paying account and it was connecting to these repositories via api. 
I'm quite dissapointed in Attlasian to not even sending me an email that something like this may happen.
My collage email does look like a throwaway account since my Uni attaches numbers to our email address instead of name and surname so I guess the system must have flagged it as spam account or something because those repos were definitely used by me on the 10th of Feb which is less than 6 months before.

Can you please help me retrieving my repositories and the entire workspace @Yana ?

[Yana]

@Piotr Kostrzewa 

We did send emails to all workspace Admins, so if your other workspace is associated with your university email , then the email was sent there. 

I need more details for your other workspace to check the status. Since you already have a paid Bitbucket workspaces, I suggest creating a support ticket and working with our Support team and share with them the API path you used to connect to the workspace and repos. Our support team will be able to help you from there. 

Thank you

[oreh911]

I’m experiencing the same issue. I log in with the email that received the "your 3 workspaces are about to be deleted" notification, but no workspaces appear. Could someone look into this?

[Yana]

@oreh911 

Are you able to share a screen shot ? The blue box  in the UI should have a link to take you to the list of workspaces that are deactivated and when you click into one of them, you should be taken through a flow to recover it ... 

I was able to look into your profile and have now reactivated your account. You should be good to go! 

[oreh911]

Now I see the list of workspaces! I think the problem was that I did not have an Organization.
I have created a new workspace and it created an Organization for me. I am sure about that because the name of the Organization is the same that the the new workspace has. And now I see the list.