How to Automate Status Transition for Archived Issues in Jira?

Question

Hi all,

I’m trying to create an automation rule in Jira where an issue transitions to a new status in the workflow when it’s archived. However, I’ve encountered a roadblock: once an issue is archived, it can no longer be edited, which also prevents it from transitioning to a new status.

Have you ever faced somethign similar and found a workaround for this? Any suggestions or ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

Tomislav Tobijas · Answer

Yeah, I know the feeling of having to-do list/backlog 'overcrowded' 😅
In these situations, it's good to have a person who would be the owner/driver of the Epic so they would be in charge of checking everything that's within the Epic and 'cleaning' those items up.

So, basically, we're talking more about the organization or team process rather than twisting the system.

Anyway, good luck and feel free to reach out if any additional help is needed 🙂

Mermaidcoder · Answer

i just started in a project that has hundreds of issues in epics that are staying forever in to do or in progress just because people dont see that these "to do" issues are actually archived. I guess, i will try to transition first into my status Archived and then add automation to archive it. 
thank you for your answer Tomislav!

Tomislav Tobijas · Answer

Hi @Mermaidcoder ,

Personally, I didn't encounter this, but I would say that the question here would be "Why do you want to do this?". What would be the reasoning/use case for it?

The main idea when it comes to archiving issues is that they are non-editable/read-only so the data is not lost, but generally, you wouldn't want to to any changes to those.

Cheers,
Tom