Jira Image of the Day: Searching for Deleted Items

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Concept Relates To

Application Type	Jira (Jira Work Management and Jira Software), Jira Service Management, Jira Core
Deployment Type	Jira Cloud, Jira Data Center

What is shown?

Using JQL to search for a deleted item.

Visit: Jira > Filters > Search work items (Cloud)
Visit: Jira > Issues > Search for issues (Data Center)

What can we learn?

In my own Jira applications, and when helping clients, I like to start with the most transparency possible and add restrictions slowly as needed. There’s one project-level permission that I feel strongly about restricting, however. It’s the “Delete issues” permission. Here’s why.

Risks of Deleting Issues

• No restore function

• Few change records

• Creates a numbering gap

When an item is deleted, there’s no way to restore it. It’s gone forever. Was the issue deleted on purpose or by mistake? There are few records and nothing that records why an item is suddenly missing. Also, deletion creates a numbering gap in the index.

In the example, when querying for CUST-19, CUST-20, and CUST-21, only two items are returned. CUST-20 isn’t returned because it was deleted. While a numbering gap won’t cause Jira application errors, and doesn’t break this type of query, it bothers me that expected data is silently ignored.

It’s obvious in this example, but if there’s a long list of items, will users realize some are missing? Probably not.

Direct query error message

A direct query for a deleted item does break, however. The error message shown indicates a permissions error, which is not the real problem. As an administrator, you’d likely waste time troubleshooting permissions when the root cause is a deleted item. I prefer to avoid this mess entirely.

Instead, here’s what I recommend:

• Disable the ability for anyone to delete items. Do this by removing all users, roles, and groups in the “Delete issues” line of your permission schemes. The “Grant to” column should be entirely blank. If you have multiple permission schemes, you’ll need to make this change to all of them.

• Instead of deleting, encourage users to re-purpose unneeded items or close them with resolutions like “Won’t Do”, “Duplicate”, or “Cannot Reproduce”.

More information about deleting items and alternative suggestions are available in the Why should deleting issues in Jira be restricted? article on my website.

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[Dr_ Anja Wolter]

Hello Rachel,

thank you for the article.

I have one annotation.

Unfortunately in Atlassian cloud, Atlassian grants the "delete issues" permission on a regular basis and automatically to the addon-user and hence also to the Automation for Jira User.

This change in permissions is not shown in the audit log and is not logged.

So in addition to not granting the "delete issues" permission to any user, you have to check every permission scheme every week and reject the permission for the addon-user again and again when it is showing up again.

Best regards
Anja

[James Rickards _SN_]

In addition, consider upgrading to Jira Premium, as it includes an Archive feature, allowing users to hide the clutter of completed work items as well as those pesky deleted items.

This lets you disable delete for all users whilst leaving archive enabled.

You'll need to be mindful of this for every newly created project (soon to be called spaces).

IMO, it would be great if we had a global org controlled "disable delete" feature as part of the security policies that enterprise customers get.