Sort Backlog by Date Created

Question

Hi! I am pretty new to Jira and have inherited a hefty Backlog I'd like to groom. I've been given the green light to delete any To Do Backlog items created prior to 2021. Is there a way to sort the Backlog by date created that will preserve the ability to manually rank the Backlog and not have effects elsewhere?

Ideally, a sort, deselect by issue number or Epic name, and then Bulk delete sequence would be magical (similar to bulk delete options in Gmail). I'd love to blanket bulk delete but there are a few Epics and Issues that will fall into the deletion criteria that I have been told to preserve in the Backlog.

Any suggestions are welcome, thank you!

Daniel Ebers · Answer

Hi @Patricia Izquierdo

ordering by Epic Name it showed to work in an example on my instance successfully like this:

project = DEV AND "Epic Name" IS NOT EMPTY ORDER BY "Epic Name" ASC

Edit: Now seeing you asked for ordering by created date but not by Epic Name ... well, it works similar:

here an example:

type = "Bug" ORDER BY created ASC

A word of caution for the delete - this is destructive (what is deleted cannot be restored without huge effort) and therefore it could be an option to "just" close those issues, probably even creating a resolution of "postponed" or "canceled" (if not existing already). Probably also setting a labels for those matches could make sense.

I especially emphasize on that one because I seem to have understood that you do not want to delete all issues from 2021, but there are exceptions if I got it right.
Imagine a scenario when some weeks later someone finds out one of the issues would still be needed.
This is just my opinion - and based on some experience.

The basic concept of gathering relevant issues, sorting and then to take some action upon them looks right, though.

Regards,
Daniel

Del Jensen · Answer

Hi @Patricia Izquierdo

As @Benjamin  mentioned and also might want to make sure it hasn't been assigned to a sprint.

project = "project-name" AND created < "2021-01-01" AND Sprint is EMPTY

Regards
Del

Benjamin_tmh9yg · Answer

Hi @Patricia Izquierdo

You can go to the issue navigator and run a jql query for your project like so. Keep in mind, you can by default delete 1000 at a time.

project = "project-name" AND created < "2021-01-01"

project-name will be your project name.

After you get your output of issues, then just bulk delete if you are granted that option. If not, please check with your admin to grant you or they can help you bulk delete the issues.

Hope this helps.