Spring Cleaning for Jira

[Tanya C]

Cleaner for Jira is now called Optimizer for Jira.  It's great!  They've added board activity/last used and it's really helpful for killing boards.  :)

Also - of note when cleaning/deleting projects.  There are often filters and agile boards that are left not functioning. The Configuration Manager app has an integrity checker that finds these.  Some can be fixed easily - others take more time.

[Amanda Kirk]

Thanks for this awesome checklist!

[Tanya C]

For those watching this...

We are using the version of Jira Data Center that allows you to archive projects.  (We have about 1500 projects - 1.7million issues at this time) When house keeping you SHOULD NOT remove/delete custom fields that appear to be unused via the Optimizer (Cleaner) for Jira display.  The Archived projects are blocking the issues from being see in the issue cache and Optimizer appears to only show cached issues and projects information.  Please be careful.

I have an archive cycle:

1. Find projects that are inactive for 90+ days
2. Configuration Manager 'snapshot' them (one by one)
3. Change the Permissions scheme to a global admin only view/manage permission
4. Archive the project (this part is new)
5. Start a 30 day clock in case customers discover they want to unarchive we can get it back online quickly

... now the 'fun'

While the projects are locked down/archived I can't do any 'house keeping' AT ALL - using Optimizer or not - because I don't know if the archived projects use the scheme/field/workflow etc.  

1. When the 30 days is up we now have to unarchive the project and:
2. Export the issues to CSV
3. Delete associated Agile boards (so they aren't 'beheaded')
4. Delete the project.

Unarchiving requires you re-index the project.  This adds time and delay the final desire to delete the project.  

I'm struggling to decide if we do the Project Archive or not.   It keeps issues (in our case 20k-30k) out of the overall re-index which makes it faster but the overhead in unarchiving, reindexing the project before I can delete it along with the limitation of no housekeeping is frustrating.  I'm not sure Project Archive is worth it.

If you think this comment should be a separate thread let me know and I'll elevate it to one. ... or write up a full article. 

Cheers - Tanya

[Nadia]

Awesome article! 

[Richard Bone]

Anyone have any ideas on how to avoid orphaned database objects like personal filters, dashboards, and other object references when someone has left the confines of my Jira domain? Since I use AD for authentication, the only thing I can thing of is to try to get an early warning before the user is actually removed from the AD group, and subsequently gets the [X] after their username in Jira. 

TIA

[Kristin Lyons]

I know this post is old, but it's been incredibly helpful for me!  I already have a process I go through, but to have everything organized like this is a lifesaver.

[Daniel Eads]

@Kristin Lyons I'm glad this has been helpful! In the years since this was originally published, I've joined Atlassian and helped review a more comprehensive "official" Atlassian cleanup guide, based largely off this article. You can check out the official guide here as it goes into more detail and covers Confluence and Bitbucket Server, in addition to Jira.

[Dave Liao]

Loving this blast from the past - surprised I've never encountered this article! 🧼