Jira Plugin Data

[Allison Hangge]

We were looking into possibly deleting plugins we have in our PROD environment that are not being utilized in an effort to improve performance of Jira. We have a few questions regarding this. Any information is appreciated!

1. Is there a way to see if a plugin is being used by users. Perhaps we could pull some report or there is some plugin data showing when it was last accessed, or how often, by whom, etc.
2. What is the proper process for getting rid of a plugin? Is this just simply deleting it?
3. What will happen to the data from the plugins if they are deleted? Can we delete all the data from the server to free up space?
4. Is there a way we can save this plugin data elsewhere before deleting so we can access it later if needed? We do have another server used for archived data if this would help.

Thanks!

[Thorsten Letschert _Decadis AG_]

Hi @Allison Hangge ,

if you're mainly interested in 3rd party app usage within your workflows, e.g. custom conditions, validators and post functions, I'd like to recommend Admin Toolbox for Jira and its built-in workflow report.

FYI - I belong to the vendor of the aforementioned app.

Cheers
Thorsten

[Mike Rathwell]

Thanks @Thorsten Letschert _Decadis AG_ ... I shall be putting in a request for that tool. Could solve me no end of pain.

[Matt Doar__ LinkedIn]

1. It varies by the plugin. For example, for custom field types you can count the number of customfieldvalues rows in the database to see whether fields are being used. Less accurately you can also search with JQL for "mycustomfield is not empty order by updated desc" to look for recent issues that use a field. But no general way

2.  Document what the plugin does and any alternative approaches. Announce that the plugin features are being removed. Disable the plugin. Delete it a week later

3. The data is unchanged. If you re-install the plugin the data will reappear. Unless the plugin data is very old

4. Sure, take a backup of the current server and restore it to the backup server. Keep the plugin running in the backup server

[Mike Rathwell]

HI @Allison Hangge 

All the things @Matt Doar__ LinkedIn suggested are viable options. The other thing I've done is rather more painful but did let me root out a app that wasn't being updated any longer and was blocking a Jira upgrade:

1. Do a XML backup of your system
2. Grep the giant XML file for the app key in question

While that sounds painful, one does find all the places a given app occurs in your environment and can either a) just know or b) clean it out. This was especially helpful for workflows in the nether regions of the environment that time forgot but where still active. The place the key appeared in the XML told me which workflow to look in and whether a validator, condition or post function.

[Matt Doar__ LinkedIn]

Agreed. But my entities.xml is 50GB. So I just search in the DB table for workflows that contain that plugin key usually. It is an operational pain in general.