Deleting an Issue Type which has no matching issues

Debbie Jolley_vo7os5

Hi I'm hoping the collective wisdom of the Atlassian Community can help.

I've inherited a Jira system which has never had any proper management/governance, with a mix of Team-managed and Company-managed project.  I'm a Site Admin, so should have all the permissions I need - and we have Jira Premium.

 

After a bit of digging last week I found we have 65 different issue types (an impressive number if it weren't such bad practice) so as a background task I want to streamline this.

I chose an Issue Type which I knew was 'safe' for me to delete as a trial (to ensure I wouldn't inadvertently break anything).

Per this screenshot the Issue Type (Discovery) is only present in the Default Scheme:

When I go to delete the Issue Type it confirms that there are no Issues with that Type, BUT I then get an error which preventing me from deleting this Issue Type ("Alternative issue type does not exist")

 

Can anyone please suggest how to find what else in the system is using that Issue Type that's preventing me from deleting it?

Thanks in advance

Trudy P Claspill

Hello @Debbie Jolley 

When you initiated the deletion of this issue type were you prompted to select an alternative issue type to which issues should be changed?

That prompt should definitely occur if there were any issue currently of the type you were trying to delete.

I created a brand new issue type in my Cloud instance and then immediately deleted it, so I know it was never used. In that case I did not get a prompt for an alternate issue type.

Another thought I've had was to wonder if this might occur if the issue type had been used at some point in the past, but all the issues were changed to another type.

And another thought I had was to wonder if you are deleting an issue type that is at the standard level or the subtask level, or at another level specified in the Issue Type Hierarchy configuration. If the last, is there any other issue type at that same level?

And another thought I had is, looking at the REST API, try executing this API endpoint for the issue type you are trying to delete, and see what it returns.

https://docs.atlassian.com/software/jira/docs/api/REST/1000.729.0/#api/2/issuetype-getAlternativeIssueTypes

Then check if the types of issues returned do exist in your environment. If they don't exist, or if no results were returned, then you may need to reach out to Atlassian Support for assistance.