Watching updates work item?!

[Rebekka Heilmann _viadee_]

I just found out that watching a work item changes the "last updated" date without updating the history. I find that very odd, as you cannot reconstruct what triggered the Update in the work item.

Has that always been the behaviour in Jira Cloud? If so... WHY?!

I double checked DC: watching is a seperate action that doesn't mingle with the issue meta data - as expected.

[Jasmeet Kaur · Accepted solution]

Hello @Rebekka Heilmann _viadee_ 

The behaviour you are seeing is expected. 

I understand unwatch operations should be recorded in the history but there are a few events in Jira that are not recorded in the Issue history but change the "Updated" field:

• Updation by Jira External Import
• Adding/removing of a Vote
• Adding/removing of a watcher
• Editing an existing comment on the issue
• Performing a CSV import just for attachments

We already have the following feature requests in place: 

• Add site-level audit log or issue history log when the watcher is added/removed
• Request to Save History When Issue is Shared or Watcher is Added

Please be sure to watch it, and vote on it, so that you're notified if this is implemented in a future release. For your reference, you can find our policy on how we prioritize feature and improvement requests at this page. You can also add a comment to the feature request to explain your specific use-case to the developers.

[Rebekka Heilmann _viadee_]

Thanks for the reply.

That feature request is 12 years old so watching it will only result in "this affects me and needs to be worked on" comments from others in my inbox and probably no implementation after all.

Why would watching an issue change the Updated date though? Does that have architectural reasons? Why do we see different behaviour in DC and Cloud in such a basic feature?

[Rebekka Heilmann _viadee_]

Also - is there a feature request for NOT changing the date on watch/unwatch actions?

[Jasmeet Kaur]

Hello @Rebekka Heilmann _viadee_ 

This behaviour is due to how Jira's architecture handles different types of changes:

• "Updated" Date Logic: The "Updated" field in Jira reflects the last time any change was made to the issue, including changes that are not user-visible or not considered significant enough to be logged in the issue history. Adding or removing a watcher is one such change—it updates the issue metadata but is not treated as a core field change.

• Issue History Logging: Jira's issue history is designed to track changes to fields that are relevant to the workflow or audit trail, such as status, assignee, summary, or custom fields. Actions like watching/unwatching are considered peripheral and are not logged in the history tab. 

I was not able to find any feature request for not changing the date on watch/unwatch actions, but I would advise you to add your use case to the existing feature requests. 

Thank you!

[Kurt Liu]

I check the issue's Updated time to find out if the issue has been updated recently. I find that when I add myself as a watcher, sometimes to a batch of issues, the Updated time changes. This is frustrating because the issue was not actually updated (e.g. no comment added or status changes etc.) Now I have no way to see when the batch of issues were actually updated in the Filter view, and I'll have to open each ticket and check the history one by one.

On top of that, the issue History does not record this event (that I started watching the issue), so it was a mystery why the Updated time changed but there is no change in the History, until I figured out it was due to watcher changes.

I'm not sure what is Atlassian's designers' logic behind changing the Updated time but not recording it in History when watcher is added. It seems inconsistent / contradictory to me.

[Rajat Pratap Singh]

Hi @Rebekka Heilmann _viadee_ 

Exactly, I am observing the same behavior.

It might be worth raising this with Atlassian Support to confirm if this is a known issue.

Regards
Rajat