Archiving a project in JIRA Cloud

[Deleted user]

Hi, I am trying to archive/hide a project that has finished in JIRA Cloud and any documentation I find to action this is void as there are elements of the instructions provided that I can not follow as I do not see the areas that they are guiding me to? I have full permissions

Any help would be much appreciated!

[Ben Jackson · Accepted solution]

Hi Everyone,

Thank you for your support for this feature and patience as we prioritise all the needs and requests for Jira Software. The voice for this feature has been somewhat muted as demand has been spread across a number of different JAC tickets.

As many have mentioned, Project (and Issue) Archiving has been shipped to our Data Centre product.

I am happy to say we are bringing this into Jira Software and Service Desk Cloud initially as part of our new Premium offering. We will start with Project Archiving and look at Issue Archiving in a subsequent milestone.

This was announced recently as part of our new public roadmap and our What’s New in Jira webinar. Both of these resources showcase what’s new and what's planned for Jira Software.

The existing permissions based option will continue to exist (nothing changes there).

Whilst I understand there may be some frustration that this is a Premium feature, it is part of a broader package of Premium Admin features which we have a team allocated to now. In the case of Archiving like many things on the surface this feature seems simple but there are actually many touch points across the product that need to be addressed to ensure it works correctly which has contributed to this not being tackled until now.

We are also investigating a ‘project recycle bin’ to stop accidental deletions which we would be making available in Standard edition.

We will reach soon out to ask for your feedback on additional use cases around Auditing and compliance for Archived Projects and issues and as part of that work we may define requirements that will ship to Standard and Premium.

Thanks,
Ben Jackson & Ritesh Ranjan
Jira Software Product Managers

[cindi.baker]

Thank you for this response.  Very helpful.

How do I know if the version of JIRA that I'm working on is 'Premium' or not?

I do not have admin rights...just know I'm on JIRA Cloud.  I'm looking for a way to archive projects in a manner that they can be retrieved later if necessary.  

[Ben Jackson]

You would need to check with your Admin for which edition you are on.

We will provide an update on the timeline early next year for when it will be available. In the meantime we are keen to talk to anyone who is open to it to get your feedback on Archiving beyond the use case of 'hiding and not deleting dormant projects.

I'd love to hear from anyone here. You can book some time in my calendar here: https://calendly.com/jira-software/meeting

[cindi.baker]

Appreciate the response. We are primarily interested in the use case of 'hiding and not deleting dormant projects', but I do also appreciate the challenge to think of other use cases.  I'll schedule time with you if I come up with some good ones.  Thanks! :)

[Ben Jackson]

We have plenty of questions we can ask @cindi.baker  :) 

[Kunjan Shah]

From a product owners perspective archiving projects shouldn't mean that I have to unarchive to get reports. I just want to declutter the UI so that I can focus (and help focus the entire team) on what I need to do.

Archived projects access should require a separate permission type to access for the auditing/compliance team. 

Access to archived projects should be paused to 3rd party apps and addons, slack notifications etc unless specifically unpaused for an application.

[Saqib Sheikh]

The work around is here: https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiracloud/hide-or-archive-a-project-1001820079.html

[Sean Still]

Really disappointed and can't even begin to understand why the ability to archive a project has been removed???   Adjusting the permission scheme is an option but it's a work around. 

[Ben Jackson]

Hi Sean this capability hasn't existed in Cloud apart from the published permission workaround.

It has been implemented in the Data Centre product and we are about to start work on bringing it to cloud (See my answer below)

[Susan McNerney]

Over and over I'm finding basic features seem to be "premium".  This is basic. You shouldn't make it the default that customers must delete or create an endless pile.

[eren]

yet another classic JIRA BS. Why on earth, but why on earth, would you not allow people to archive a project....??!!!??? 

It's 21st century JIRA. Even Trello allows this. It's fundamental UX now. 

[joel.andrews]

Because they seem to focus on the overall look, from new and improved, to new and improved and reverted because new and improved was aweful.

[Corey_Tabb]

this is actually a joke you have had this feature beeing asked for since 2003 that's 16 YEARS for the most basic functionality that everyone needs why has this not been done for cloud you have it in two of your other services it surely can't be that hard to take the code from the edit it so it will work with a cloud-based system Atlassian could be so much better so much better then it actually is it costs a fortune to use for a company and they don't do any improvements ever at all ok latest Jira cloud version you added a new layout view which I'm sure that was the least asked for change considering you have features like this 16 years old with nothing done about them and probably never going to do anything about them.

as a Large company your self, you must understand how important it is to be able to have this feature as you CAN'T DELETE RECORDS due to you might need this information for future references and projects come and go and get completed I don't see why you make your users who pay you hundreds of dollars a month and you make use scroll though all our closed project because there simply is no option to archive a project.

if there is an addon that you have to pay for from an external company I will understand why you haven't made this change available in cloud  but considering your Total revenue was $874.0 million for the fiscal year 2018 I just pulled this from your website you earn more than enough money to add these most basic features.

I'd love to see some serious change in how you choose what features are required or wanted because new issue layout form is at the bottom of the list when core functionality is missing or have to spend hundreds of more dollars to get for a one time use.

I know for a fact if it wasn't so difficult of migrating to a new system that has the basic functionality and adds it quicker then 16 years then we would but the fact you have made it next to impossible to move the information to a new system and don't add any new feature is a bit a kick in the teeth considering how much you earnt and how much we pay for your product with MISSING FUNCTIONALITY.

@atlassian 

[Mouli]

Honestly.. this is not the only one thats a Joke..

Lack of a stock way to get Cycle Times (KANBAN REQUIREMENT for CRYING OUT LOUD)..

No Archival policy

No way to hide done epic titles (Again - SIMPLE COMMON SENSE FEATURE)

Just to mention 3 off the top of my head!

And they call themselves an Agile board! @Atlassian 

[Elizabeth Jones]

How do we request this feature for Jira Cloud? I am creating projects quickly and the permissions scheme workaround is not preferred. 

[Burt Gordon]

JSWCLOUD-20833

I created a ticket to get it in standard plan. Please vote it up.

[Ren]

Looks like there's at least one ticket open for this: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JSWCLOUD-17064

Maybe more votes would help.

[Taryn]

Not much more I can add as everyone else has touched on the issues of this not being a feature of the cloud version.

The only thing I did not see mentioned is that some of us MUST keep old projects for auditing purposes, so deleting them is not even an option for us. And the work around is just that, a work around and NOT a solution. This really needs to be implemented as quickly as possible.

Please & Thank you!

[Hanchul Kim]

Hi, this might help you.

https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiraserver071/archiving-a-project-802592917.html

It's trick by hiding project with permission scheme.

I can't understand why this feature is not implemented for Jira Cloud. I don't know how much hard to implement, but... it is just hiding!

[Alexey Matveev]

Archiving was never enabled for Jira Cloud only for Jira Software and Jira Service Desk for data center

[Andrew Dent]

"It's not available because it's not available" isn't really an answer....

[Sylvain Bernard]

damn! I just spent an hour looking for an answer... it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever that Cloud version does not have an "archive" feature! another pain to deal with.

[Debbie Heard]

I totally agree.  this seems such an obvious feature to include.  On any given month we manage 5-10 different projects for different clients.  so in a years time our projects list is going to be huge!  is this feature being considered for CLOUD?  thanks

[Kevin Campbell]

This is a big deal and it should be simple to implement, yet people have to talking about this for years and still nothing. I'm already looking at other options, Atlassian is starting to fall off in my opinion. They don't seem to be customer centric. 

[hannah.worsley]

Creating a new permission scheme for Archived project assigned to one person will do the trick for team members but not an admin sadly. 

i can still see the projects but now can't access them so was a bit of a bomb in terms of a workround.

[Memo]

This is a big issue for us too... Already have around 40 projects in the list and only 6 of them is active. I have just started considering other alternatives to Jira only because of a bunch of this kind of simple yet distracting glitches.

[Aarthi Venkata]

You have taken away basic and core functionality! This is beyond ridiculous, and I can't believe the ticket for this request hasn't been worked on in over a year! @Atlassian

[Aaron Geister]

At my company we have started with Jira early this year. We are now on our way to 5k tickets in our service desk alone. It is getting slow. I have read the options to archive. 

1. open a service desk migrate tickets in bulk and set as read only. But then everyone who needs access will get charged for that with a license from my understanding. 

2. export, in .csv to another place

3. use a security scheme or security level to hide them from the environment and give access to admins only. 

All great ideas but not very helpful for needing to get to information fast in case of issues. I think we need archiving for all cloud projects and we need it now not just in nex-gen or another place but in our instances now!

[Jason Maye]

Like everyone else here, I need this feature. I'm about to delete some projects that I would really rather archive. 

[Clayton Mathis]

Visit https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JSWCLOUD-17064 and upvote

[Jason Maye]

Done. thank you for the link.

[Jay Sayers]

I agree with everyone above. How is a company that creates a Project Management tool to help manage one's projects satisfied with the clutter and messiness of a long list of old, not-in-progress, no-action-required project list???

I need a shortlist of projects that NEED TO BE VISIBLE!

Pay attention Atlassian - we users need to archive our projects.

[Zhou JIANG]

Is that possible to create a ticket for this new feature?

@dmyaho1 

@jira 

can someone help AT the right contact?

[hannah.worsley]

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JSWCLOUD-17064

[Alexey Matveev]

Hello,

Project Archiving is not available for Jira Cloud. It is only available for Jira Data Center

You can find this info here:

https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiraserver/archiving-a-project-938847621.html

[Levi Sorenson]

I am with Atlassian after 2 years away. I really thought I remembered being able to archive projects. Maybe I am confusing my memory with every other similar app i've used in the past. 

Thank you Alexey for posting the link. 

[tpherr]

Alexey,

When will Atlassian add the Archive Feature to the Cloud? I have a list of 80 some projects in our instance and about 30 are old projects that we would like to archive. This feature is needed. 

Thank you

[Adham Al Khuli]

it is a basic feature and you are adding it to the premium plan?

be a bit more creative and just create a new feature for the premium plans and leave the basic features to the basic and standard plans as it is, before it is too late!

[Danilo Alberto Santos]

Yes. I completely agree with you. This is a simple feature to be in a premium plan.

[istricesrl]

can't believe that such a basic feature isn't available in Jira Cloud... we were considering to upgrade to a paid plan, but without this feature I don't think we will.

[Peter Trang]

When is this going to happen?

[Guillaume]

We want this option please !

[david]

this would be a good feature in cloud

[Greg Schaffer]

Count us as another voice that hopes this is available for cloud soon.

[Tevan_Alexander]

+1 archiving is an essential and useful feature.

Upvoted this suggestion that Clayton Mathis posted: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JSWCLOUD-17064

[Ben Jackson]

Hi @Tevan_Alexander  thanks for your post.

We are actively working on this now per my other response however we are looking to speak to as many people as we can to understand the deeper level use cases beyond just hiding projects.

As part of that work we may define requirements that will can ship to Standard and Premium if I can get your help. So book some time in my calendar https://calendly.com/jira-software/meeting let's chat so I can better understand your perspective here.

[Susan McNerney]

"beyond just hiding projects". I mean, it's so basic, it's obvious. The idea of having thousands of projects over time is just unmanageable. It feels like Atlassian is being obtuse here. 

[Clayton Mathis]

Look at https://jira.atlassian.com/plugins/servlet/mobile#issue/JSWCLOUD-17064

Support engineers recommend we create individual support tickets to get visibility on this issue. No one is looking at this community page. 

[Hamit Gurakar]

Unbelievable guys..I don't wanna believe that I can't archive projects.. 

[Noel Rocha]

up!!!!!!!

[Seng Liang Ng]

Wow this is a long thread an nothing happened? 

[Adham Al Khuli]

• Go into "Project Settings > Access"
  • Ensure that the appropriate admins are listed for the "Administrator" role.
  • Remove all other users from all other roles.
  • Click on Change project access and choose "Private"

If you want to be the only one who can see the project, then remove all Administrators group from access list and keep yourself as administrator.

check here:

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-Software-questions/How-to-archive-a-team-managed-Project-in-Jira-for-Standard/qaq-p/1722671#M144695

[Michael Smith]

And if I don't want to see the project?

This seems like a rather awkward work around to what a lot of people think should be a basic feature.

[Adham Al Khuli]

unfortunately, Atlassian got this basic feature back and featured it as premium feature!
and since that, people are facing too much problem to archive or hide project without deleting.

[Steve]

From a startup perspective, and having been a customer for 6 years on a range of small projects, I'm a bit dismayed with these pricing tiers being imposed on simple requirements like hiding a project, or the slightly more complex 'archiving' feature. Connecting to repos (github) and having links to commits in tickets was a given, and now a paid feature. The premium pricing tier doubles the cost to me, and I can't see the benefits + the user costs of app add ons for providing fundamental features place Atlassian out of reach for growing startups.

At least take the 'Archive' tab out of 'Projects' so that we small fish don't assume that moving a project to 'trash' somehow allows it to be available at a later date.

[Jay]

Any update on this feature for Cloud?  

[Aaron Geister]

Currently,

On our service desk projects we have moved to creating a archive project after projects get to a high level of ticket flow. We then set that archive project as read-only and name it to the same as the other project with the Archive after it. Then set an automation so after so many months an issue is closed we move them to that project so we can archive the issues. I know this is not the most likely situation but it beats not having the ability to archive. It also allows you to set issue archiving rather then full project archiving. If you need to archive just the project and open a new one you can set the project to read only strip permission and workflows set users to read-only. 

There is more work involved here but maybe after some time this will not only be common in the Atlassian platform but more granular to issue archiving and not just the up coming project archiving. 

This also eliminates the idea of having to set a security scheme issue security type to hide the issues as that only moves it from view.  

Hope this helps if you need any help to set this up please reach out.