Delete Old Data

[Jony Gurfinkel]

We are using Jira Server v. 8.14 and expecting to upgrade soon to 8.20.

In the system I found very old data since 2008! 

Its related to old projects and unused issuetypes, but the data is still in the system.

As in server we cant use the archive mode, thinking to create a clone of the production environment for backup and to start to delete the issues in production.

What is the best practice to delete such information? I would like to keep only issues from the last 2-3 years.

[Brant Schroeder · Accepted solution]

@Jony Gurfinkel 

We have a process in place where we backup and delete projects that are no longer being used and over a year old.  We do the following:

1. Twice a year we contact the project owner and make sure that they no longer need the project.
2. Sync our staging instance with production.  This gives the project owner six months to view the project before it is really gone.
3. Backup the project by exporting the project issues to a pdf document.
4. Delete the project, and custom issues, workflows, schemes, etc.

This has worked well for us without any issues for years.  It keeps our instance clean and makes reindexing quicker.

[Ivan Lima]

Thanks for sharing it. Even with the ability to archive projects, I like the broader cleanup approach, especially the configurations, to keep the environment clean. It's interesting your strategy of exporting project issues to a pdf document. Do you use any app to do that or out-of-the-box functionalities only?

[Brant Schroeder]

Just delivered.  It has all the issues and comments, no attachments.  It has been handy when looking at what occurred or looking for details on something.

[John Funk]

Hi Jony,

I actually like the idea of deleting really old stuff. I would run a filter, then export the issues to a CSV file. And then you can run the query again, but do a bulk change and then delete them. 

Double or even triple check it before you pull the trigger though.