When using "Calculate" in Portfolio, all my releases are badly assigned. What can I do?

[François Eric]

I guess my first problem is that when I hit Calculate, all the changes are auto-committed. I can't undo them. If it were possible, I could simply go and revert the "release" changes to get the rest of the calculations. I don't understand why this is. I've looked at a few posts with people having the same issues but there was no solution...

Now if we assume this is normal behaviour, is it possible to have Jira not modify my releases?

If you're wondering why the releases are not correctly calculated...This is because my Jira software projects are for many clients. So for each client I have different set of releases (ex: clientA-1, clientA-2, clientB-1, clientB-2, etc.). Not all issues are released to all clients. Therefore this allows me to specify to which clients the issues will be released.

But when I hit "Calculate", JIra goes and changes those releases...which screws up everything because Jira can't possible know in which release an issue is supposed to go (Jira might assign an issue that was in clientB-1 to clientA-1...which makes no sense).

Ideally I would like to configure Jira to tell it not to manage releases automatically...or that if a release was manually set for an issue, not to modify it...

Is any of this possible? Or am I not using Jira properly?

[Dave]

Hi François,

Thanks for asking this question. I just wanted to verify the behaviour that you're experiencing - I think what you're saying is that there is no way to "undo" changes made to a plan after you click the calculate button?

(Portfolio won't ever automatically commit any of the changes to Jira issues until you manually commit them)

One option you might want to consider is to use multi-scenarios to experiment with the plan - the calculation will only apply to the current scenario you are working with.

It is worth remembering that you don't have to bring all issues into a plan - when importing projects you have the option of excluding issues from the plan.

It is also possible to manually assign an issue to a release - and once an issue has been manually, assigned Portfolio should not re-assign it - take a look at the scheduling automatic and manual assignments in the documentation for more information.

Another option that might be relevant to you would be cross-project releases - although I'm not 100% sure this fits your requirements as it's not completely clear from your question how your projects and releases are managed. It might even be that you need a combination of these solutions - i.e. maybe you want a cross-project release for a subset of customers that cherry picks a issues from multiple projects?

I hope this helps to resolve the problem, please let us know if you need further assistance.

[François Eric]

Hi David,

Thank you for your very complete answer. I didn't know about the cross-project releases but I'll definetely look into that! It's not my current problem but It'll help in the long run :)

This being said, my problem is that the calculate button does commit the changes. As soon as I click it, my whole team receives 50+ emails on issue changes... Ideally those changes would be in the "uncommitted changes" and would only be deployed when I click on "Commit changes".

I'm surprised you say that: (Portfolio won't ever automatically commit any of the changes to Jira issues until you manually commit them)...because that's exactly the behaviour I see with "Calculate". If I modify them manually they do appear in "Uncommitted". 

I don't understand what's different with my setup.

Thanks for your help and time.

François

[Thomas]

Hi @François Eric,

This sounds highly unexpected, can you share which version of Portfolio you are using? Portfolio 1.x "classic plans" behaves very differently from the Portfolio 2.x live plans.

Overall I'd advise reaching out to support if possible https://support.atlassian.com/contact to help you solve the situation faster.

Cheers,

[François Eric]

Thanks, @Thomas

I use the Jira Cloud version so no clue on what the version is. I'll contact support for my problem.

[Björn Ramsell]

Hi @François Eric,

Did you get any feedback from support regarding this issue?

I've read other threads and it looks like it’s an open issue from 2016…

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Portfolio-for-Jira-questions/How-can-I-revert-changes-done-by-hitting-quot-calculate-quot-in/qaq-p/729989

[François Eric]

Yes I did get an answer from support. What they recommended Is that I exclude all releases from portfolio for all my projects. That way when hitting calculate, no release assignment is made. 

To do so, you click on the releases tab in the upper right, check all the releases and click exclude.

It's not ideal as we need to be careful to exclude any new planned release before clicking calculate but it's an acceptable workaround for now.