Proper Way to Delete User Created "Unresolved"

[carlos andrade]

Our Jira has an user created "Unresolved" option for the resolution field. I know this violates the first rule of Jira Administration, so I need to delete it. Now, there are a lot of issues with these resolution. Do I need to do something with them before I delete the "Unresolved" option? 

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

Hi Carlos,

You do not need to do anything with these broken issues.  When you delete the resolution, Jira will ask you what you want to swap them all to, and handle it for you.

But, this is likely to leave you with a load of unresolved resolved issues.  I would very strongly recommend setting aside some time to do some reading and correction (I've had to do this many, many times over the years).  

• Run a search for all issues that have "unresolved" set
• Include their status in the results, to get a feel for how badly damaged your data is
• Change the search so that it excludes all issues that are an in an "end" status - if they are closed, ended, cancelled, done, etc, the "unresolved" is not going to be a problem if you are going to move them all to "fixed" or "won't do" or any other resolution.
• With the remaining "resolved but not resolved" issues, use bulk-edit to move them all back to any status that means "needs more attention from the team", and hope that someone has put a "clear resolution" post-function on all the transition.  As a nice admin, you could then re-close them all, via a transition that sets the resolution.  As a lazy admin, you could just tell all your users to expect to see a load of stuff they need to re-close to get them off the to-do list

[carlos andrade]

Thank you so much Nick! I will definitely make sure all necessary transitions have the right post function. 

Now I noticed that we might also have user created "None" and "Null" Should I get rid of those too?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Absolutley, yes, you need to get rid of all the false resolutions here!

I would delete all but one of your broken resolutions right now.  This will also simplify the task of removals -  having to look for several different broken resolutions is harder than looking for one!

[carlos andrade]

Makes sense! Thanks Nic!

[carlos andrade]

When I try to delete the user created "unresolved" option from the resolution field, it asks me to replace with another option. The default option is "Fixed" so I am not sure if I should do that. What is the right way to clear the resolution field?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

You will need to push all of them through a transition that takes them to a "not done" status, which has a post-function of "clear resolution" on it.

Or look at an automation or script that could blank the resolution.

There is no way to blank out the resolution via editing issues.

[carlos andrade]

Got it! We just got ScriptRunner in house, do I am going to write a script to clear the resolution field that way. Thanks again!

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Scriptrunner (for server/DC) has a built-in version of the script you need to run!  I'd look at using that first!

[carlos andrade]

:) And I wasted sometime coming with my own. I should have looked in there first.

"Bulk Fix Resolution"

Thanks so much again!

[carlos andrade]

Sorry to be such a pain but I am running into a different problem deleting the user created "None" option for the resolution field. When I tried to delete the "None" option, Jira tells me there are currently 500 issues that would be affected and must be changed to a new resolution, but when I do a regular search for issues with the filter "resolution = None", I get 0 issues as result. Not sure how to proceed. 

(extra information: and when I try to set the resolution field with a post function in a transition , it gives me to "None" options. I imagine one is the user created "None' and the other must be a Jira system "None')

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

You're not a pain at all!  I only find people a pain when they don't bother to read the answers and ask follow-up questions that they don't need to.  Jira is not something I describe as easy to administrate, especially when you've inherited a bit of a mess, so I'm very happy that you're asking more questions when you're not sure.  That's what we're here for!

Jira's security can make this sort of thing a bit of a pain too.  You have admin rights, but those do not mean "can see/do everything", they only give you the rights to administrate the system.

"resolution = None" will only return issues where the resolution is set to None (not empty, which displays as "unresolved" but really does mean that there is nothing in the field in the database), but also, it will not show you issues that you do not have the *project* permission to see, or ones that have a security level set that does not include you!

Your admin rights let it report that 500 issues have "None" on them when you are preparing to delete a broken resolution, but your ability to see them is probably limited - you don't have "view" rights in every project, or you are not included in every security level.  So while the admin rights warn you about the change, you, as a "normal" end-user, can't see all of them!

I'm afraid the only way to fix that is to go through every active permission and security schemes and make sure you have "browse project".  It is not uncommon to see administrators add the Jira-admin group to everything, especially when they are working on stuff like this. 

I try to avoid that, because I've worked on large sites where, as an admin, I don't really want to see all the noise in the 4,000 projects that are not the "Atlassian Admin" projects, but yes, as an admin, you can grant yourself the rights you need.  Start with a quick look at the list of projects you get when you try to create an issue, versus the list of projects you can administrate (admins can always administrate, even if they can't see issues within a project)

The "None" in the resolution drop-down is a pain too, but there are an easy couple of tells:

• In the post-function setting, the system None (meaning empty) always appears at the top of the list.
• In the resolutions list, the system None will not be listed, because you can not remove it.  Nor will the system display of "unresolved" - if you see either of those in the list, you want rid of them. 

My usual housekeeping trick is to delete all but one of the unwanted resolutions (none, unresolved, needs more work, etc), telling Jira to swap them to one that is clearly renamed to something like "Broken resolution, do not use me"

[carlos andrade]

Thank you so much Nic! Finally our database is working as it should. Really appreciate your advice!