Plans do not include archived versions – is there a workaround or roadmap?

[Svetlana Risteska]

We are running into a limitation with Jira Plans (Advanced Roadmaps):

• If versions are archived → their issues are not visible in Plans
• If versions are not archived → the Fix Version dropdown becomes unusable (100+ versions)

Current situation forces a workaround:
Since versions are archived only to keep the Fix Version dropdown usable, this breaks Plans visibility; as a result, versions are often kept unarchived indefinitely, making the field effectively unusable at scale.

This creates a trade-off between usability and completeness of planning.

Questions:

1. Is there any way to include issues from archived versions in Plans?
2. Is this a known limitation with a planned improvement?
3. Are there recommended best practices at scale (100+ versions)?

Feature gap:

It would be helpful to have either:
- a Plan setting to include archived versions, or
- the ability to exclude released/archived versions from the Fix Version dropdown without archiving them

Any guidance or roadmap insight would be appreciated.

[Germán Morales _ Hiera]

Hi @Svetlana Risteska, this trade-off is a known limitation of Plans: archived versions are excluded from issue sources, but unarchived versions all show up in the Fix Version picker.

A few workarounds I've seen work at scale:

• Don't archive, label instead. Add a label like stale-version to versions you'd otherwise archive, keep them unarchived, and exclude them from the Plan's issue source by basing the source on a saved filter that excludes those labels. The Fix Version picker still shows them, but at least Plans includes their issues. Useful when you need history visible.
• Custom field as a "version status". Create a single-select custom field on the work items (Active / Released / Deprecated) and filter the Plan by it. More flexible than labels and clearer for stakeholders, but requires populating the field via Automation when versions transition.
• Scope the Fix Version context per project. If the picker is unusable because it aggregates versions across projects, check the Fix Version field context configuration and limit which projects' versions are visible there. It won't hide archived ones individually but reduces the noise.

For tracking whether this becomes a native option, the Atlassian public tracker at jira.atlassian.com is where feature gaps get raised. Searching for "Plans archived versions" surfaces existing requests you can vote on if any match your case. Worth doing since vote count drives prioritization.