Confusion with statusReference when creating workflows via REST API

Question

Hi Community, I’m working with the Jira Cloud REST API v3 to create workflows using: POST /rest/api/3/workflows/create The workflow payload requires statusReference for each status, for example: "statuses": [
{
"id": "Done",
"statusReference": "6b3fc04d-3316-46c5-a257-65751aeb8849"
}
] The problem:

When creating a new status via POST /rest/api/3/status, Jira returns a statusReference, but in numeric form: "statusReference": "10003" However, when creating a workflow, Jira expects a UUID format (e.g., 6b3fc04d-3316-46c5-a257-65751aeb8849) for statusReference, not the numeric one.

f the status already exists, fetching it with GET /rest/api/3/status or GET /rest/api/3/statuses/search does not return any statusReference at all (the UUID form).

This leads to two blocking issues:

We cannot reuse existing statuses in new workflows (since their UUID-style statusReference cannot be retrieved).

If we try to create a status with the same name, the API rejects it because it already exists. My questions:

Is there a way to fetch the correct statusReference (UUID form) for existing statuses?

Why does Jira return a numeric statusReference on creation, but expects a UUID when creating workflows? Is this a bug or by design?

Is the only workaround really to maintain our own mapping of status → statusReference when creating statuses, or to delete/recreate them just to get the UUID? Why this matters:

Without access to the correct statusReference values, it’s impossible to automate workflow creation with existing statuses. This creates major problems when:

Some statuses are pre-existing in Jira.

We need to reuse them across workflows.

We cannot recreate them because of name conflicts.

Right now, we’re blocked because /workflows/create requires statusReference, but Jira provides no way to fetch it for existing statuses. Has anyone else faced this? Any workarounds or insights from Atlassian would be hugely appreciated.

Thanks!

Mohamed Benziane · Accepted Answer

Hi,

Welcome to the community

You can define the uuid yourself, even for existing status
Feedback: Bulk create workflows - Jira Development / Jira Cloud - The Atlassian Developer Community