Why are some JIRA issues missing entire workflows after they have been created in JIRA?

Mustafa Shah August 13, 2012

We have some Users in our environment that have reported that after they create new issues in JIRA, the workflows disappear from the issue's and then they are unable to close or cancel those issues. What is causing this to happen in JIRA and how can it be resolved? Please advise.

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Ruchi Tandon
Atlassian Team
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August 13, 2012

From the desription of the problem it looks like a Worflow permission problem to me. If it happens to only few users then you need to check the membership groups for those users.

I would also suggest checking workflow transition conditions and step properties for your workflow. One of these will be able o tell you th eroot cause of the problem.

Mustafa Shah August 13, 2012

Hi Ruchi, we have checked the workflow permission schemes, the step properties, as well as the workflow transitions and everything seems to be normal but some Users are still encountering this issue. Could something else be causing this issue?

Natalie Hobson
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August 13, 2012

Were all the issues created manually, or were some imported using CSV?

Natalie Hobson
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August 13, 2012

I've run into a similar problem before; this has happened for some issues that were imported using CSV, and also issues that were being transitioned by more than one person at a time; it kind of "locked" it and messed it up. I'm wondering if your issues were already there, though, and you upgraded, maybe there were some errors with those isuses that affected them during the upgrade? In any case, let's troubleshoot a bit:

Since the upgrade, have any newly, manually created issues had the same problem?

Can confirm that the particular issues that seem to have this problem are broken for all users in your instance or just a particular set of users?

Have you tried cloning the issues and attempting the transition on the clone instead?

Mustafa Shah August 13, 2012

Hi Nat, the issues were already their. We upgraded from JIRA 4.2 to JIRA 4.4.4 and also upgraded our database from Oracle 10g to 11g. This is not occurring across the board but so far we have had Users report at least four such issues where the workflow drop down went missing after most of the issues were created manually in JIRA. After the issues were created, the Users wanted to progress by clicking on the workflow drop down which disappeared altogether and when the Users tried to cancel or close the issue, they could not because JIRA stopped responding altogether, the Users did not see an error message or anything of the like.

Mustafa Shah August 13, 2012

Hi Nat, these were newly manually created issues and were created after the upgrade. When I logged in to JIRA, I saw the same thing as well and I am one of the Administrators for our system. My Senior Analyst was able to transfer the issue and then close it but even she did not see the workflow transition and could not initially close the issue until she re-indexed the entire system. You are saying that more than one person tried to update or progress the issue at the same time and that might have caused the issue to lock up. Please advise.

Natalie Hobson
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August 13, 2012

Hey, when I had the problem with issues that essentially locked up, I had to clone them and the cloned ticket would always working properly (I then just deleted the original ticket since it was a duplicate). Have you tried doing this yet?

Mustafa Shah August 13, 2012

Hi Nat, yeah we tried what you suggested and it worked. We are just trying to identify the root cause and if we can take some precautions going in to the future regarding this issue.

Mustafa Shah August 14, 2012

Thank you for your help Nat, I really appreciate it. You gave me some really good suggestions and I am going to pass them on to my Senior Analyst.

Natalie Hobson
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August 14, 2012

Yeah, sorry I don't have more info...I've run into it quite randomly and (thankfully) rarely. I'm glad the bandaid works; hope you don't run into it more frequently, and maybe someone else will be able to answer with a concrete solution. :)

1 vote
Cyril Egan
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August 14, 2012

If you still have issues without workflow actions...

Try running the Jira Integrirty Checker from the administration area. Choose "Check Workflow Integrity". Choose to 'Fix' any issues that report an error. The workflow actions should re-appear on the problem issues.

David Morse June 24, 2021

thank you I had re-indexed the project and had no luck.. .This did find an issue with the exact issues I was working with

0 votes
Marisa Petty September 24, 2014

One other option, though a little nuclear, is to use the "import from external system" function to change the status value in the database.  So, you would create a spreadsheet with one row, and the following columns:

issue key (ID of the issue whose status you want to change - required so the import knows which issue to update)

summary (required to do any imports, just copy paste from the ticket itself)

issue type (required to do any imports)

status (the target status for the issue)

Then save this as a csv file, go to the import from external system menu in the System section of the admin console, and import.  The fields will be updated with the values in your csv file. 

It doesn't fix the problem, or address a root cause, but it does update the status.  So if you've only got one or two problem issues, this can be a good way to get them through the workflow without cloning (and losing comments, continuity, etc.).

0 votes
Martin Ruppelt September 24, 2013

Unfortunately I have now the same problem. Cloning and deleting of tickets is not allowed in our instance. There seems to be a date after which the problem exists. Newer issues have all actions, older don't.

A re-index did not work (JIRA 5.2)

0 votes
Cyril Egan
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August 14, 2012

If you still have issues without workflow actions...

Try running the Jira Integrirty Checker from the administration area. Choose "Check Workflow Integrity". Choose to 'Fix' any issues that report an error. The workflow actions should re-appear on the problem issues.

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