How can I change the time at which an issue was resolved?

[Jeff Terrell]

I am in the process of evaluating Jira for my organization. I like it on the whole, but one thing that frustrates me is that I can't figure out how to change the time at which an issue was resolved.

When I mark an issue as resolved, it marks the resolution time as the current timestamp (i.e. "now"). I want to change that to be sometime in the past. (Ditto for closing issues.) How can I do this?

Thanks for your help.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Dieter is correct - the date is pulled from the real data, and represents when the user did the resolve (or close)

There is a problem here - the fact you're asking to change the "resolution date" tells us that you're really asking for "real life resolution". Part of my work is in incident management - our Jira resolution date represents when the users closed the incident, but we actually ask them for a "date/time that incident was declared to be over and service restored". Which is totally different from "resolution date" and really does need a custom field that you need the users to enter. It's no good asking Jira (or any other software for that matter) to magically know what the "end of thing" date actually is - you *must* get the users to enter it.

If you were on your own Jira, I'd look at writing a plugin that overwrote the change date with the data from that field too, which would enable you to do resultuon date reporting. But that's a bit ugly, and can't go into on-demand.

[Jeff Terrell]

Thanks for the response, Nic. I appreciate the idea of separating the "resolution date" from the "real life resolution". But I really do want to change the resolution date.

If it helps, here's why I'm asking. I'm entering data from a past sprint, to get a feel for what the GreenHopper burndown chart and other reports look like. Incidentally, I can't import the data in some digital format because it's coming from (physical) index cards.

Writing a plugin sounds like way more work than should be necessary. Is that the only way?

[Dieter]

The problem i see in case of a new plugin is Atlassian's restrictive plugin policy on the OnDemand platform. Please check this http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/AOD/Atlassian+OnDemand+Plugin+Policy I doubt they'd accept such a plugin since it let's you change audit relevant data.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

I don't think there's any way to do it without a plugin that will deliberately damage your issue/audit history, and as Dieter says, the policy is quite restrictive.

[Jeff Terrell]

Thanks again, Dieter and Nic. That at least explains why this seems impossible.

I'm still searching for a way to do this, so let me know if you discover anything later. Thanks.

[Dieter]

AFAIK the time is taken from table changegroup. For good reasons there is no API to change that time programmatically. You would need to change the database directly and afterwards reindex JIra. At least the issues that you changed. There is docu at http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA043/Change+History

[Dieter]

Ah just saw, you are an OnDemand customer. i guess you won't get direct database acess to do that, so i have no solution for you :(

[Jeff Terrell]

Thanks anyway. :-)

[Dieter]

i don't know if Jelly is available on OnDemand but if it is and the jelly:sql tag is available it maybe could be done. Though i warn you, this could easily destroy your data!. Test it carefully on your own instance before