When creating an issue it's crossed like it's done, but the resolution is"unresolved" in the backlog

Question

Hi,

for the last couple of days we have an issue that causes great confusion.

When creating a new issue in our projects, the issue is in status New or Backlog (depends of the Workflow) the resolution is "unresolved" as it is set by default, but

when in the backlog we see the issue crossed like it is done with appropriate resolution.

Any ideas why's this happening? we haven't touch any settings, the "unresolved" resolution is set as default.

Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Answer

You have done the right thing, and then run into my poor guidance.

I should have said that when Jira looks at the value of the resolution field, it displays "unresolved" when the value is empty (or "null") in the database.

This empty/null value cannot appear in the list of resolutions, because there is nothing there.

What you describe as "the other unresolved resolution" is actually Jira translating "nothing there, but as displaying nothing can confuse humans, let's display unresolved instead"

You can ignore those, they're working ok.  You can move on to removing the resolution field from screens, and then looking at how to move your "Un-resolved" issues to a better resolution.

Gloria Landsberg · Answer

thank you very much for the detailed answer and suggested resolution.

I totally agree with all that you said what might be happening or why it has happened.

so far following your suggestion I have recognised the broken and the actual resolution - see screen grab-->

as you can see - there are 2 resolutions - I have renamed the one I see in the admin panel to Un-resolved as per your suggestion. Unfortunately I don't see the other Unresolved resolution in the list of resolutions.

so I really don't know what to do next :(   - when querying by resolution I see 761 issues with the broken resolution, but I don't quite understand wha you suggest to fix this.

Please advise.

Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Answer

My best guess is that an inexperienced admin has added a resolution called "unresolved" to your list of possible resolutions.

Any value in the resolution field means the issue is resolved (and hence struck out).  Open, Closed, Purpli, "£^£, unresolved, not done, etc - absolutely any value says "this issue is resolved".

This is usually caused by an earlier mistake where the admin put the resolution field on a create or edit screen - if you do that, the issue takes a resolution as soon as you commit the change, irrespective of whether you want it to.  And the instinctive (but wrong) "fix" is to add "unresolved" so people use that.  But, it is of course, resolved.

To fix this (breifly)

* Rename "unresolved" to something like "broken resolution"
* Go through your screens and find out where resolution is on them.  Remove it from any screen other than a "resolve issue" screen (these should only happen in workflow).  Do not worry about "view" screens - they don't need it to enable display
* Now report on "resolution = 'broken resolution'" and status - you will need to assess how many issues are in an open or in-progress status, as you'll want to work out the best way to clear the resolution from them
* When you've cleaned up, you can delete the "broken resolution" and swap issues that still have it to "done" or something.