Question on Archiving old issues and projects

[Dave Hattig]

I have been given the task to clean up our system for unused workflows/projects and issues older than 3 years old. I have a few questions about archiving and my searches were bringing up mixed information. Using Jira Server. Thanks for any help!

1) Are archived Jira issues searchable and reviewable by anyone?

2) Is archiving completed at project level or ticket level?

3) Can an archived issue/project be activated again?

4) If a workflow is deleted, will that delete archived projects?

[PD Sheehan]

I do not believe there is any real archive option for Jira Server. This is a datacenter functionality only.

What we do is "archive" (big air quotes) at the project level. When a project is no longer used, we apply a special permission scheme that will hide the issues from everyone but administrators.

But the issues are still in the system, still using up space, still being indexed. But at least they don't clutter the user's experience.

The next step (which I've never actually taken) is to do a full xml backup of your instance and archive the XML with some attribute indicating that this xml is to archive that project. Then you would delete the project completely (all the issues will be gone and can't be searched). Should you need to view that project data in the future, you should be able to reimport just that project from your full instance xml.

As for workflow cleanup... just delete all "inactive" workflows. Those are backup and old copies of workflows that are not loner associated with any issue/project. Those are safe to delete.

You can't delete any workflows for projects archived using the fake permission-level archive as I described. Only after the project has been fully deleted (and the workflow is not shared) can you consider deleting the workflows.