Problem with Autofill dates - cannot force 'refresh'

[jbrowne]

In JPD, we have multiple autofill dates that are linked to delivery tickets are they are generally working well.  All of these autofill dates are project fields, not global fields in case that matters.  I ran into one problem that I cannot find a work around for.

I'll compare the behavior of two of these autofill dates.

Development Starts:

In the Idea edit UI the Development Starts field looks like this:

When the user hovers or tries to click on the Jan 1, 2025 date, they are unable to edit it (which makes sense since it's a linked date).  This data is being pulled from Jira Software issues.

The next field is GA Target - This data pulls from a work mgmt project:

In the Idea edit UI, the GA Target field looks like:

and

For this field, in the Idea edit UI, the user is not blocked from editing the date.  The linked data originally pulled through properly but when I was testing out the configuration of the linked dates, I messed up one of my ideas by accidently deleting the date by clicking the little normal 'x' icon to delete a value in the UI.  Now I don't know how to get the date back.  

Things I have tried:
- clicking 'Load data' from the "Some formula fields require extra data to be calculated. Load data" at the top of pinned fields
- unlinking and relinking the delivery tickets on the messed up idea
- unlinking the delivery ticket, picking a [wrong] date, relinking the delivery ticket
- waiting overnight to see if there was an overnight process to refresh

I recreated the GA Target field but it also allows the user to manually edit the date field so even though I messed up my 'testing' idea I know that we will eventually run into this problem on a real idea with my team.  I want to know how to lock down the editing of this field (if possible) and whether or not that's possible I need to know how to force a "refresh" of the data in this field for when my team runs into this issue.

[Bill Sheboy · Accepted solution]

Hi @jbrowne 

Perhaps there are multiple fields with that same name and the linked one is not displaying...or, something got broken in the project configuration due to the changes.

I recommend working with your Jira Site Admin to submit a ticket to Atlassian Support for them to take a look: https://support.atlassian.com/contact/#/

When you hear back from them, please post what you learn to benefit the community.  Thanks!

Kind regards,
Bill

[jbrowne]

@Bill Sheboy - It looks like we'll have to go that route. Thanks for taking time to post.  I'll respond back with their answer/resolution when we get it.

[jbrowne]

We figured out the issues.

1 - I am a JPD project admin but not a global Jira admin.  Because of this, in the JPD Date Field -> Linked Delivery Ticket options I was not able to see the correct due date field.  I was able to see a "Due Date" option but not "Due date" (lowercase 'd' in date) which is what we needed.  Once this was corrected we ran into a second issue.

2 - Our JPD project can have linked delivery tickets into 4 possible other projects.  "Due date" was only present on issues [screens] in one of those projects, which was the project that we were wanting the linked delivery field to be pulled from.  However, "Due date" was apparently connected some of the issue types in the other projects (although not on the screens) and the built-in Atlas project integrations were updating the "Due date" fields when our teams were making Atlas project updates.  So, the "Due date" field was getting populated with data although we couldn't see it within the application (unless we dug through the history log which we ultimately did).  In the end, everything was "working as designed" but didn't allow us to do what we wanted.  So we changed the name of our target field to something unique so that we could confidently pull data from it into the linked delivery field.

[Betany Riley]

Hey @jbrowne and Hi Again @Bill Sheboy !
I was just working on something similar and had a question about read-only fields on JPD.  Here is a theory to what you are experiencing based upon what I just saw in my own org. 

Use Case 1:  A JPD user is working on an Idea that has a linked delivery ticket.  The delivery ticket does not yet have a GA Date, so the GA Date on the Idea in JPD is blank. 

Output: The user is able to edit the GA Date field on the Idea.  

Use Case 2:  A JPD user is working on an Idea that has a linked delivery ticket.  The delivery ticket has a GA Date, so the GA Date on the Idea in JPD sync'd and read-only. 

Output: The user is NOT able to edit the GA Date field on the Idea.

I am betting that your user was experiencing Use Case 1, and you were able to edit the field.  IMO, if it is a field that autofills, it should be a read-only field from the get go in JPD.  Otherwise, folks are going to enter data in that field which will be overwritten once the delivery ticket field is populated. 

[jbrowne]

@Betany Riley - This is not the behavior we are experiencing.  For the field that is linked to Due Date, which in our setup exists in JWM, it is editable whether or not it pulls data.  The field will correctly pull data. 

The problem is that you are able to change/delete the data when it should be read-only and once you do that I haven't found a way to get it back "refreshed" or "syncing".