Rovo in Real Life: Can Rovo export archived Jira work items?

Arkadiusz Wroblewski

During a Community discussion about archived Jira work items, @Tomislav Tobijas suggested a test: could Rovo retrieve them and create CSV?

Mission accepted. Playground opened. Horse ready. 🤠🐎

The setup

I created three synthetic Tasks in my Playground. Two were archived; one stayed active. All three had the same label.

The active item gave me something to check: would Rovo distinguish archived items from everything else carrying that label?

What I asked

Find the archived items in project PLAT with the test label and create a downloadable CSV containing Key, Summary, Status, Priority and ArchivedDate. Include only verified archived items, explain access limitations, and don’t change anything.

The result

Rovo created a downloadable CSV containing both archived items and excluded the active control.

I downloaded the file and checked it against Jira. The keys, summaries, statuses, priorities and archive-event timestamps matched.

Rovo explained that its archive dates came from the item histories. The workflow status remained “Zu erledigen”—archiving and workflow status are separate things.

The important limitation

Rovo said it couldn’t list archived items directly through its available tools. Its normal search returned only the active control, and it couldn’t read the archive page attached as context.

It found the archived items by checking nearby keys and verifying their histories.

It also explicitly warned that the list might be incomplete.

That matters. I knew my test contained exactly two archived items. Relevant keys in a real archive could be much further apart.

The follow-up

I supplied the exact keys and asked for issue type, status, priority and archive verification. Rovo returned the correct values and again excluded the active control.

This was a follow-up in the same conversation. Both archived items were Tasks. I haven’t tested a larger archive or different permission levels.

What I would use in practice

Rovo handled these test items and CSV creation correctly. For a complete archive inventory, I would start with Jira’s dedicated archive-export API:

PUT /rest/api/3/issues/archive/export

The official documentation describes the permissions, plan requirements and supported fields. I didn’t execute that native export during this experiment.

The CSV was correct in this test. Rovo’s warning about completeness was just as useful.

Thanks for the challenge Tomislav. 🙂 What would you add to the next test?

Best

Arek🤠🧙‍♂️