Deleting an Issue Type which has no matching issues

[Debbie Jolley]

Hi I'm hoping the collective wisdom of the Atlassian Community can help.

I've inherited a Jira system which has never had any proper management/governance, with a mix of Team-managed and Company-managed project.  I'm a Site Admin, so should have all the permissions I need - and we have Jira Premium.

After a bit of digging last week I found we have 65 different issue types (an impressive number if it weren't such bad practice) so as a background task I want to streamline this.

I chose an Issue Type which I knew was 'safe' for me to delete as a trial (to ensure I wouldn't inadvertently break anything).

Per this screenshot the Issue Type (Discovery) is only present in the Default Scheme:

When I go to delete the Issue Type it confirms that there are no Issues with that Type, BUT I then get an error which preventing me from deleting this Issue Type ("Alternative issue type does not exist")

Can anyone please suggest how to find what else in the system is using that Issue Type that's preventing me from deleting it?

Thanks in advance

[Debbie Jolley]

An update in case anyone else experiences the same...

I had to reach out to Atlassian Support - who located an Issue with the type I was trying to delete in one of our Archived projects (would be useful if Atlassian could include that info in the error message...). 

Restored the project; updated the issue type on the 'offending' ticket; deleted the Issue Type; re-archived the project.

And apparently there's no way for a user to find this for themselves (other than restoring all projects from archive) as it requires backend database interrogation.

[Trudy Claspill]

You've got to love those stealth errors! :-D

Did support mention if there are any change requests to make the message more informative?

[Debbie Jolley]

stealth errors are my favourites - not :D

there wasn't a change request as far as he was aware - but he has raised one - so feel free to vote on it (not sure if the votes really help or not but it's worth a try I guess :-) )

JRACLOUD-81701 

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @Debbie Jolley 

When you initiated the deletion of this issue type were you prompted to select an alternative issue type to which issues should be changed?

That prompt should definitely occur if there were any issue currently of the type you were trying to delete.

I created a brand new issue type in my Cloud instance and then immediately deleted it, so I know it was never used. In that case I did not get a prompt for an alternate issue type.

Another thought I've had was to wonder if this might occur if the issue type had been used at some point in the past, but all the issues were changed to another type.

And another thought I had was to wonder if you are deleting an issue type that is at the standard level or the subtask level, or at another level specified in the Issue Type Hierarchy configuration. If the last, is there any other issue type at that same level?

And another thought I had is, looking at the REST API, try executing this API endpoint for the issue type you are trying to delete, and see what it returns.

https://docs.atlassian.com/software/jira/docs/api/REST/1000.729.0/#api/2/issuetype-getAlternativeIssueTypes

Then check if the types of issues returned do exist in your environment. If they don't exist, or if no results were returned, then you may need to reach out to Atlassian Support for assistance.

[Debbie Jolley]

Hi Trudy

Thanks for your response.

There are currently no issues of this type in the system.  I'd changed their type prior to trying to delete the issue type we don't require - deliberately chose an issue type in a project I'm close to.
It's a level 0 issue type, so we still have plenty of issue types at that level.

I'm not great with anything to do with API so will reach out to my more technical admin for help with that query.  If that doesn't unearth our issue then it looks like I'll need to reach out to Support.

Thanks for your suggestions and input.