How do I set-up my automation rules to clear issues correctly?

[Eliot Hong]

Hello!

I am trying to set-up different types of automation rules to help clear the clutter off our board. What I want to do is when we start a sprint, if an issue has a REMOVED status, to delete the issue.

I get a Incompatible components warning in the IF (status) when I set it up as such:

When: Sprint started

Status if one of
REMOVED

Then: Permanently remove this issue

What are the issues preventing me from running something like this (and is there an alternative to cleaning up our board automatically)?

[Walter Buggenhout]

Hi @Eliot Hong and welcome to the Community!

While I cannot imagine why you would want to set up a process like this (having a status to mark issues for permanent deletion, deleting issues altogether, in your current setup even Done issues, ...), but that would be an extensive, different discussion ...

After your sprint started trigger, you need to add a branch first on related issues > issues in sprint.

Right now, you are trying to check the status of the issues in your sprint, but your automation rule is looking at the sprint you just created rather than the issues in it. Then move the status condition and the subsequent actions into that branch.

Just be careful when you start thinking about deleting stuff from Jira. When an issue is gone, it's gone forever and you won't be able to recover it.

Hope this helps!

[Eliot Hong]

Hi Walter, thanks for the response!

Is there a better way to archive and keep issues around then than removing them from our board that we can reference back to? Or does it need to sit in backlog purgatory unassigned...

[Walter Buggenhout]

When you use sprints, these are designed to select work that yo will be working on for (typically) the next two weeks. That may be a different period, but it should be a short iteration.

At the end of that period, you should close your sprint. All issues that are at that point in the rightmost column of the board, automatically disappear from view. By mapping your Done (and even removed, although I would rather call it Cancelled or something like that) statuses to that rightmost column, all issues in there will no longer appear in your backlog or next sprints.

You can always retrieve those issues by searching for them from the issues view in your project or through Filters > View all issues, using status as a criterion for your search.

That way, you don't throw everything away you've ever done, but keep your board clean and focused on things you still need to do at the same time.