JQL for updated custom field?

Question

I accidentally deleted values under a custom field. Field itself is there but I deleted a context i had, under that field. I was able to retrieve those values from unrefreshed page and re-created that context with values exactly as they were before. However, since I deleted that context all issues lost those values and they show value as "empty". I was hoping JIRA would catch those values again but unfortunately that is not the case.

I am thinking if I can pull list of issues where custom filed was updated or made empty in last 24 hrs, I can manually update each issue. Please help me with JQL query to pull that list where custom field was made empty or updated. I tried few scenarios but i get JQL error that history search is not supported by custom field. Please help

Andy Heinzer · Answer

Hi Srikanth,

Sorry to hear that this behavior has caused problems for you.  There is an open feature request that I think applies to this situation in https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRASERVER-36801 - Issue migration dialog and avoiding custom field data loss due to changing context

I would recommend voting and watching that issue.  I agree, Jira could do more to prevent users from inadvertantly losing data in situations like this.

In the mean time, I would recommend the KB Change Context for an existing custom field without losing old data.  This article provides steps on how you can maintain the data in that custom field context before changing the context itself.   And it looks like there is an incidient on our documentation site right now, so if that link doesn't work, please try this google cache of that KB.

srikanth Gutlapally · Answer

Hmm ok thank you. May be it is time Atlassian concentrate on putting a pop up message before we delete anything permanently. It's so annoying that things just delete without giving any pop-up are you sre message

Andy Heinzer · Answer

Since this is a custom field, and you have changed the context of that custom field, I don't think you will be able to use JQL to retreive this old data.   JQL does have the WAS operator as described in Advanced Searching: Operators  But this operator does not work for all fields.   I know it works for status, or resolution, but this isn't something that works for custom fields.

Since the field context was changed, you can be sure that JIRA would immedately request a reindex because a custom field has been changed.  And once the reindex is complete, both the database and the index files would be wiped clean of those old values.

You might be able to look at the issue history directly to see what value was in that field previously.  But this isn't something you can do via JQL, you instead would need to open the issue details view and click on the history tab.

If the issue history doesn't help, or proves to be too tedious to locate this information for the issues, then I would recommend exploring another way to restore this data, such as from a SQL backup or an XML backup.   If you can take this backup and restore it to another new JIRA server instance running the same version, you could then use that system as a means to reference the old values there.  By default JIRA is creating XML backups every day or so and storing these in the JIRA_HOME/export/ folder as a .zip file.