Assets for Jira Service Management cloud will have a limit of 2 unique constraints per object type

[#1]

Hello Atlassian Community,

We have an important update to share regarding the ability to enforce unique attribute values on objects within Assets for Jira Service Management cloud.

At present an object type in Assets for Jira Service Management can have an unbounded number of unique constraints applied to its attributes. After 31st of October 2024 we will be introducing:

• A limit of 2 unique constraints per object type.
• Removing support for unique constraints on attributes with cardinality > 1
• Removing support for unique constraints on Text Area attributes

This is part of our effort to offer a more scalable, performant and reliable experience as we make major enhancements to the underlying platform that powers Assets. We believe these new limits will be sufficient for the vast majority of use cases in which Assets is utilised.

For customers with any existing object types that breach these limits, we are asking these customers to please modify them before 31st of October 2024. Not doing this will delay our ability to migrate you to the new Assets platform.

Effected public Assets REST API endpoints are:

• POST /objecttypeattribute/{objectTypeId}

• PUT /objecttypeattribute/{objectTypeId}

Both of these endpoints will begin to return a HTTP status code of 400 if there is an attempt to add a unique attribute constraint (via the uniqueAttribute property) and the limit has been reached or the attribute type is not supported.

If you have more than 2 attributes on an object type that you need to ensure are unique, a potential workaround is creating an automation rule to check the number of objects that can contain a particular value after an object is updated. You could then raise a Jira issue to resolve the duplicate or notify the relevant schema administrator.

By making these changes we can ensure your site can begin to utilise our improved Assets platform when it is completed and reap the vastly improved the scalability, performance and reliability it will offer. We’ll be announcing more about this soon.

Please don’t hesitate to reach out and give us your feedback. We will be listening carefully to help us understand how we should evolve the unique constraint feature and our limits in future.

All the best

Justin King
Senior Product Manager, Jira Service Management

[Dave Mathijs]

I'm only seeing limits, guardrails and restrictions in Assets these days. Don't know how exactly this improves scalability... 🙁

[Kevin Thibeault]

I agree with Dave about seeing a lot more limits, guardrails, and restrictions lately. I'm guessing they are doing this to make the migration to the new Assets platform more efficient.

The question is, will these restrictions remain after the new Assets platform is live? 

[Justin King]

Hi Dave and Kevin,

I understand it might seem that way. The reason is we are heavily re-working the underlying platform that drives Assets. It will allow us to offer greater reliability, much larger scale and better performance. However the shift to a different architecture means that a small subset of features need to be modified to ensure we can still offer them in a reliable and scalable way. 

Don't worry, we have big plans for Assets that extend beyond introducing limits and restrictions!

[Rune Rasmussen]

I just got an email stating that "We’re reaching out because your site, https://SITE.atlassian.net, currently exceeds the 2 unique constraints per object type limit in Assets. This is preventing us from rolling out further updates to your site."

Firstly, it sure would have been nice to have gotten the information from this post ahead of time. But alas...

But now that I have gotten an email about it, it also would have been incredibly handy to have listed the object types (and maybe even attributes) that are causing the conflict.
Atlassian must know what they are, otherwise how could they know there is a conflict?

[Olivier Voortman]

Same here, we got the email, saying "action required".

But no information about how to identify and fix the problem.

So we'll just do nothing.

[jeff_sutton]

Rune, I 100% agree. Also got this email and everything about it is confusing. This is the third time in the last 6 months where we received an email about something that was being taken away.

Atlassian, please elaborate or show us what the conflicts are all about.

[Jason Schwoerer]

I am glad that Atlassian is going to release a more robust Asset platform.  However, for us it is a day late.  We will not be making any changes to the constraints, for we're already in the process of migrating to ServiceNow.

While Jira has enabled us to deliver better service to our clients in a short period of time, we have been all too often met with the lack of features that just make ITIL sense, hence the shift to a more costly robust solution.

[murilossoria]

You need to provide us with clear guidance on identifying and correcting this situation.

[Rune Rasmussen]

@Olivier Voortman @jeff_sutton I've submitted a support ticket asking for information about which Object Types and Attributes are breaching this limit. PCS-386072.
I'll make another comment here when I know if they can give me this information or not.

[jeff_sutton]

Great, thanks Rune!

@Jason Schwoerer probably the right move. We are a small company and if our assets are already violating some rules for scale, I can't imagine what a large company would have to change.

[jeff_sutton]

This comes hot off the heels of another terrible email about migrating off Opsgenie. The email was so confusing, and we spent a few hours sorting through our configuration only to find that everything actually moved properly into Service Desk.

[Fabrizio Magistrelli]

Can someone define "unique constraints per object type"? We have so many schemas and object types so it is hard to see what is a constraint exactly 

[Kevin Thibeault]

At least give us more information in the article on how to accomplish the following,

"a potential workaround is creating an automation rule to check the number of objects that can contain a particular value after an object is updated."

Show us an example, please. 

Also, what is considered a unique constraint? You list this, is the the second and third the only unique constraints?

• A limit of 2 unique constraints per object type.
• Removing support for unique constraints on attributes with cardinality > 1
• Removing support for unique constraints on Text Area attributes

UPDATE: It finally clicked, unique as in an attribute that is marked as unique. Let me know if that is wrong. 

[Pier-Olivier Tremblay]

Hey guys I made a quick script that finds object types hitting those limits. Nothing fancy but it did the job for a couple of customers. Feel free to use it! If you find bugs in it please let me know

https://github.com/pihodi/jsmAssetsNewLimitsCheck/blob/main/checkNewAssetsLimits.ps1

[Kevin Patterson]

Thank You @Pier-Olivier Tremblay ! I appreciate you sharing this with the community and helping save countless hours of lost productivity for those that have been impacted!

[Adam Janecke]

I got the same email and Atlassian has given no information on how to find the specific object types and of course we created most of our Asset Schemas/object types before the new unique constraints enforcement policy. 

So @Justin King is someone at Atlassian going to put out a new Jira Assets feature so that Admins will be able to easily identify which  object type that has more than 1 unique constraint? 

[Rune Rasmussen]

Just got a response back from Atlassian Support.

They have provided me with a quick list of:

attribute_name	unique_attribute	object_type_id	object_type_name

And then they list the various attributes and object types.
luckily only one Schema is affected for us, and I recognize the object types, but other people should probably request to get the list with the Schema mentioned as well.

[Adam Janecke]

@Rune Rasmussen thanks for that advice, I did the same thing.

Everyone should do this so they can feel the pain of not having a solution in place for customers to easily find what object types in their schemas have more than 1 unique constraint when Atlassian sends out unhelpful emails.

[Rune Rasmussen]

@Justin King A question.

We use a Schema to track out end user hardware assets. The phones and laptops issued to users for example.

In this schema we can't have the same device appearing twice, which means that we must ensure that the Name, Serial Number, and IMEI of any device never appears twice. So those attributes are marked as Unique.

With the new limit of only two unique attributes pr. object type we'll have to figure out some process to ensure that we don't get any duplicate devices registered.

How long will this limit be in place?
Will it be until after the update on the 24th of March 2025? 

[Birger Robrecht _avono AG_]

I have the same scenario as @Rune Rasmussen

(Okay, in our case it's the MAC address instead of the name that should not be a duplicate.) It is easy to find scenarios with servers (IP, Hostname, Serial) which require more than 2.

[Alan Rowe]

Might I suggest a change in Atlassian corporate policy regarding email notifications of major changes? Notably, that said emails occur alongside the initial announcement, in addition to the one sent with only 2 weeks to spare. 🙏

[Alan Rowe]

Also, the Automation section of Jira has had an announcement banner for its changes in the relevant configuration screen. Perhaps adding such a banner in the assets management screens would be a good idea. 🙏

[Rune Rasmussen]

@Alan Rowe 

Might I suggest a change in Atlassian corporate policy regarding email notifications of major changes? Notably, that said emails occur alongside the initial announcement, in addition to the one sent with only 2 weeks to spare. 🙏

The lack of (or in best case fragmented) communication from Atlassians side has been an issue for at least as long as I've been an Atlassian Admin, so at least 6 years.

They keep getting shit for it, and the keep doing nothing about it.

[Sean Kraft]

Support case created. Poor communication and guidance from Atlassian, and short timeline.

[Sean McConnell]

Great job Atlassian yet again you are destroying your tool to make them utterly worthless. I have 40,000 Object do you real expect us to go through each one to determine the one that is broke? You folk have no insight or vision to assist customer. How about put a tool in please to determine which ones are broken?