↺ How to revert changes made to the description of Jira ticket?

[#1]

Hello community members! Have you ever made some changes to your Jira issues and needed to revert to the previously saved version? We have. Multiple times! The most recent accident happened to our PM, who erased the description of the task and, after some time, realised he still needed this description for another task. Today, we want to share our experience and how our SaaSJet team solved this problem. 

What can you get from Jira issue history?

A description is the heart of the task. It provides all the essential information about the assignment expected from the specified employee/employees. You can add as many details as needed, including tables, links, images, etc. So, the assignee will know what should be done, when and how.

What our PM says:

“The most important part of any issue for me is the description. I describe the technical requirements and all possible details there. I can work on the task for several days, constantly updating the description, changing the requirements, and adding new information. Therefore, I am a little concerned every time some of my colleagues make changes to my description. 

In my practice, there were times when I mistakenly deleted important data in the description, or one of my teammates decided to "improve" the requirements for the task and changed/added a new description. The result of these actions was wasted time restoring the previous version.”

♻️ How is it possible to recover deleted data in Jira Cloud?

Jira has a wonderful option to keep any changes in the history log. You can always find what updates were made, by whom and when. This information is available at a single-issue level: open a task → scroll down → select History under the Activity section. 

So, you can check the issue history and find the previous version of its fields. But the formatting, which is especially important for the description field, would be lost. This applies to text formatting, tables, and color changes.  

Compare how the description looks in the task VS how it looks in history.

Even though you see the changes, it is quite problematic to restore them in a well-looking form or copy them into the task description.

Revert changes with Issue History for Jira

“It would be very useful to allow for changes in the description field to be rolled back to the previous state.” – Our team received many similar requests from our Issue History for Jira users. So, we decided to implement it for our users, team members and everyone who wants to revert description changes to the previous version easily.  And the most important – formatting will be saved 😉

How does the Revert option work?

1. Open the Issue History for Jira app. If you haven’t installed it yet, a free 30-day trial is available on the Marketplace.
2. Add a description to the table columns.
3. Select the project, sprint, assignee, date range, etc., to narrow the issue list.
4. Find the required issue. If you know what issue you exactly need to revert to, you can select it in the issue filter.
5. Review the changes you are about to revert in the pre-revert window. Click “Revert”✨

As a result of the revert operation, you will roll back the changes to the moment in time that you chose to restore the changes. Text formatting (bold, color, lists, tables) will be preserved. The only exception is attachments. As Jira does not store attachments after removal, you can only return the name of the removed format. 

Doesn't it look cool with the dark theme? ♥

There are several options to test how it works:

• Start a free 30-day trial and play with all add-on options.
• Schedule a live demo, and our expert will show you how everything works.

In Summary

We created this option to revert changes made to the description, but it’s also possible to revert updates made to any issue field. Imagine you can revert the whole task (with priorities, due dates, assignees, etc.) to the previous version. Would it be helpful for you? Let us know in the comments.

[Tim Baverstock]

Wouldn't it be better if the description were like the Atlassian wiki, and multiple editors could update it at the same time?

Or if it noticed you had an old version of the descrption open, and insisted on refeshing it before letting you edit?

Or if it noticed someone had saved a new version underneath your edits, and presented a 3-way diff to merge the changes?

The current approach seems very 1980s.

[Yuliia_Borivets__SaaSJet_]

@Tim Baverstock thank you for your ideas. We will think about ways of implementing if possible.

[Leonid Work]

It's really annoying and stupid. It's very disrespectful to customers. So many basic things are still not implemented in a product that's been developed for decades. It's crazy. And I encounter so many bugs in the UI every day. 

[Jonathan Risi]

Directions like "Open the Issue History in the Jira app" are confusing. The gif moves too quickly for me to parse what's going on.

Has this functionality been integrated into Jira cloud the place where I do all my work and am currently having the problem?

[Yuliia_Borivets__SaaSJet_]

@Jonathan Risi, thank you for the remarks. With gifs, we have some size limitations here in the community, that's why we cannot load large files.

To answer your main question:

This option is not available with built-in Jira Cloud functionality; the word "app" refers to an additional plugin available on the marketplace. The sentence "If you haven’t installed it yet, a free 30-day trial is available on the Marketplace." aims to explain that.

I understand that you and other Jira users might be disappointed that it's not possible to revert changes natively in Jira. My team has also faced this issue, and that was the main reason we decided to develop and launch it ourselves. Also, we had users who requested it for our app. This post aims to explain our case; we are only responsible for our app development. 

[Jonathan Risi]

@Yuliia_Borivets__SaaSJet_ 

I had no idea that Alassian had it it's own marketplace with apps. This seems like a no-brainer type of feature to bring into the main product. My organization controls what Atlassian apps can be used, so I had to just make a request for it. 

Thank you very much for taking a minute to answer my questions.

Another suggestion would be having a link to the app in the market place in the word "Marketplace" instead of the word "30 day free trial".