Does issue numbers matter?

[salome gogolauri]

I have a few questions about the issue numbers.

First, I use them for easy searching and when communicating with coworkers to easily know what issue I'm talking about.

So:
1. Do issue numbers have other uses and purposes?
2. Can I delete issues (that don't contain data) without it damaging anything? - maybe I can use them for any kind of data, or just it's more comfortable to have three-digit numbers than four-digit ones
3. Does Jira have issue number limits?

Thank you in advance!

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

1. Not really, they're just a unique identifier for the issue.  They can be used to construct URLs for external systems to link to, as well as being the unique identifier, but that's about it.
2. No.  If you delete an issue, you have damaged that issue.  Or rather destroyed it.  Deleted issues are completely gone - "damaged" to the point where you would need to go restore a backup in order to get any part of them back.  Jira does not reuse numbers for deleted issues, the hole in a project's numbering is the only indication that there used to be an issue there!
3. Technically, yes, but they're so high, your system will have eaten a server farm's worth of disks before you reach them.  I've seen projects with hundreds of thousands of issues, and Jira systems with over ten millions issues.

[Nikola Perisic]

Hello @salome gogolauri 

To answer questions:

1. This depends on your company and how much of issues does it need to have, from Jira side, there are no limitations when it comes to number of issues

2. You can delete issues if you have permissions for this - permissions are based on project roles, groups and individual users

3. Jira doesn't have issue numbers, however you can set the limitation of issues on a board:

• Three dots on your board in Jira
• Configure board -> Columns
• Set a constraint -> Issue count - here you can define both minimum and maximum of issues that you want to have within certain columns