Can JIRA issues be edited by 2 users at once, and lose data?

[Lesley Jones]

Hello,

How does JIRA protect against 2 users editing a single JIRA issue at the same time and for some data to be lost? ( I have been asked the question and can't find anything about it in the JIRA documentation ).

Many thanks, Lesley

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

A three part answer here...

1. Jira does not lock issues in any way. If Alice edits the issue in her session, then Bob can open and edit the same issue in his session.

2. It does not lose data in simple edits. If Alice commits her changes and then Bob commits his, the issue will end up looking the way Bob intended. Alice's previous edit will be recorded in the history. If Bob commits first, then it'll be the other way around - Bob's edit will be in the history and Alice's will be the end point.

3. Transitions are different. If Alice and Bob both try a transition, then it's first-come, first-served. Whoever commits first will do the transition, and the second will get an error saying "not in that state any more". Sadly, the second person will then lose their entered data (this assumes that the transition went through some form of edit screen. If not, then there's no data to be lost).

The bit I can't remember (because it's never happened to me), is what happens if Alice opens the issue, Bob transitions it and then Alice commits her changes.

[Lesley Jones]

Thank you Nic - that is a good explanation. I thought there wouldn't be anything. Presumably it is a rare occurrance or else JIRA would not be a popular tool!

Regards, Lesley

[MattS]

There is usually only a problem when two users are modifying the same field. As Nic pointed out in (2), the eventual value is the person who saves last. For the Status field and transitions the new value may no longer be valid (3). Where I see this occasionally occur is with an issue's description.

If Alice edits the description but doesn't save, then Bob edits the description and saves, when Alice saves the Bob's changes will be deleted. They will remain in the History though.

[Florin Manaila]

For more info, see this issue: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRA-6146

There are many issues regarding this problem. See the linked ones from above.

[Renjith Pillai]

And something which is very specific if you have a scenario in which two people would have kept the edit window open without being aware of each others' edits.

https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/26726/how-to-prevent-concurrent-update-on-same-jira-ticket

[MattS]

More info at https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/5525/how-to-avoid-issue-edit-conflicts-in-jira