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Jira autonomously overwrites child issue descriptions with parent description. Bug report?!

Patrick_n4mvgm

Hi community,

Pretty sure I encounter a bug repeatedly, but can not report it directly since I use the free plan.
I am using Jira in the browser.

My issues on Jira have short descriptions. Then I have several child issues within. The child issues have longer descriptions often containing a to-do list with check boxes [].

Bug: While a am looking at the description of a child issue, maybe after editing and saving it (but with several seconds delay), it is (without any further interaction from my side) replaced with the description of the main (parent) issue! Happens instantly in front of my eyes, the parent description out of nowhere replacing my child description.

This happens seemingly random, once a week, sometimes twice a day. I feel it started happening this year, or at least happening much more recently!

Since there is no "undo" button (or rather the description being probably overwritten and saved by Jira within miliseconds) the only way to fix this for me is by going to the history log and copy pasting my actual description back to where it belongs, loosing the entire layout/checkboxes in the process!

I have no other users in Jira and don't use any automation.

In a closed bug report I spotted a recent comment describing the same issue, so seems I am not the only one:
https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRACLOUD-76134

Clare Kaluzynski added a comment - 2 days ago

"This is affecting me, but it's that the description of the parent ticket has overwritten the description of a child ticket. I'm not sure how it happens. I think possibly having both items open in separate tabs has something to do with it. It's also happened mostly on a ticket that has [] checkbox markup in it.(...)"

I don't have multiple browser tabs open with Jira, but this still might be related.

If somebody please can open a bug report for this, that would be helpful. Thank you.

--------
Edit to add info here from my reply further down this thread:
I am pretty sure there are no automations since I am the sole admin/user/creator of this account and never touched automation so far. There are no recently run automations, the audit is completely empty and when I go to "manage automations" that list is also empty.

I always checked the history log of the child issue after this bug happened, since that is the only place I could get my child description back from. The log always indicated that I made the undesired change myself.

the issue where it happened today:

PEG-162 (issue)
PEG-1438 (child issue)

The (long) description of child issue PEG-1438 was autonomously (against my will) overwritten with the (much shorter) description of PEG-162 approximately > 2h ago from now: UTC current time is 14:52:02 current date is 27th Thursday February 2025.

Accepted answers

Jack Brickey

Hi @Patrick , welcome to the community.

The very first thing I would check here is that you do not have any automations that might be the culprit. It could be that an automation is running post creation that copies from the parent. You can look at the history of the issue and see if there is anything that gives you a clue as to who or what is doing the overwrite. If you rule that out, then I would definitely contact support. If you can identify one or more issues where this occurred, then they can look at the logs to see what happened.

Andy Heinzer

Hi @Patrick

Sorry to hear about this problem. There is a different bug ticket where we are tracking this problem, please see https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRACLOUD-92168

This bug appears to be affecting some issues views, wherein the subtasks have checkboxes in their description. I would recommend watching that bug ticket for updates to this.

Andy

All comments

Jack Brickey

Hi @Patrick , welcome to the community.

John Funk

Hi Patrick - Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

It sounds like there might be an automation rule running that copies this down.

When you look at the History for the child issue, who does it say is updating the Description field? Can you share a screen shot of that?

Also, as soon as it happens, you can click on the Automation Rules section of the child issue and see what rules have run recently.

Patrick_n4mvgm

Hi Jack and John,

Thank you for your quick answers.

I am pretty sure there are no automations since I am the sole admin/user/creator of this account and never touched automation so far. There are no recently run automations, the audit is completely empty and when I go to "manage automations" that list is also empty.

Screenshot 2025-02-27 at 15.40.15.png

the issue where it happened today:

PEG-162 (issue)
PEG-1438 (child issue)

The (long) description of child issue PEG-1438 was autonomously (against my will) overwritten with the (much shorter) description of PEG-162 approximately > 2h ago from when I post this reply. (UTC current time is 14:52:02 current date is 27th Thursday February 2025.)

Unfortunately I don't remember the other issues/children where it happened previously, but I will write it down from now on and comment it back on here.

Thank you and best,
Patrick

John Funk

Thanks for the info, Patrick. What's the time difference between the creation of the ticket and when the Description gets updated?

Have you checked the workflow for the Create transition to see if there are any post functions there?

Jack Brickey

Adding to John's questions, I wanted to ensure it was clear that neither John nor I work for Atlassian.based on the details of your last post it led me to believe you might assume otherwise.

this is certainly perplexing and short of stumbling over something I think you will require Atlassian support assistance. It certainly could be related to the bug you referenced in your initial post.

Patrick_n4mvgm

Hi John,
Are you asking when I created the issue (=ticket?) and child issue initially? The issue is from last year, the child issue from January. The descriptions were edited by me meanwhile several times over and over. But between the initial creation and the bug happening the time difference is many weeks. I hope I understood your first question right..

There are no rules (= functions?) there:

Screenshot 2025-02-28 at 10.13.49.png

Patrick_n4mvgm

Yes, I assumed you have at least some sort of connections to Atlassian and hoped you could get in touch with a Jira dev once I convinced you there is a bug and not a user error on my side ;-)

When I go to the Atlassian support page it tells me the only things I can do with the free plan is to talk to the community or check out some guides.

As per my screenshot "Support staff and developers from Atlassian check in regularly to help answer tricky or highly technical questions."
So I guess the only thing I can do is wait and hope that Atlassian staff stumbles upon this. If you have any idea on how to summon them, please do so.

Thank you

Screenshot 2025-02-28 at 10.22.15.png

Jack Brickey

Ah yes. I missed that you were on Free. I will see if I someone can confirm if it is a bug (the mentioned bug or something new). I tried to reproduce but could not.

Andy Heinzer

Hi @Patrick

Sorry to hear about this problem. There is a different bug ticket where we are tracking this problem, please see https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRACLOUD-92168

This bug appears to be affecting some issues views, wherein the subtasks have checkboxes in their description. I would recommend watching that bug ticket for updates to this.

Andy

Patrick_n4mvgm

Hi Andy

Thank you for this link. If checkboxes are really the culprit, I will simply stop using them for the time being, as a workaround.

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