Opened and Reopened?

[m@]

Why is there a difference between opened and reopened issues?

When I reopen an Issue I would expect it to go back to Open. When I make changes to my workflow and add transitions to the Open state, I need to remember to add them to the Reopened state as well, because its always the same.

Are there any benefits to having two versions of the same state?

[Penny Wyatt (On Leave to July 2021) · Accepted solution]

In JQL, you can search for status history but not transition history. So if you want to track metrics on how many issues get rejected, you can only do so if it goes into a different state.

Also, it's not unreasonable that issues that were previously marked as complete and later found not to have been complete would be treated differently from new pieces of work sitting on the backlog - for example, it could have code committed that doesn't do what was originally thought - hence somewhat riskier.

[CharlesA]

Reopened means "We thought we fixed this, but we didn't." This is a reasonably important thing to track because it indicates some failure of process. Too many issues in the Reopened state means that issues are being closed before they are being verified properiy as being fixed.

Unfortunately, JIRA doesn't allow you to search for transitions, so you can't search for "Issues that were Open, then Resolved, then Open again." The only way to make this information accessible is to have Reopened as its own status.

I generally work around this by keying my searches on Unresolved issues rather than Open ones.