How to see the last time a workflow was used.

[Dave Hattig]

Hi, I am looking through our workflows which there are a lot. And hoping to find an easy way to see which ones are active, but have not been used for some time. Are there any simple ways to query this search? Thanks

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

It is not directly recorded.

The best you can do is rather convoluted process and it's 1-by-1, so slow as well.  For any given workflow,

• Pull up the diagram for it and write down every possible status change as a "from x to y" statement
• Look at the list of projects and issue types if you want to refine it configured to use that workflow
• Create a search that starts with clauses:
• project in (list of projects and issue types using it)
• and status changed from x to y
• order by updated asc
• Now look at the first issue on the list it returns.  That is likely to be the issue that last actively used the workflow, but you probably want to check the full history of the first few in the list because "updated" is for all updates, not just transitions

So, that's the way to do it in the UI.  You could probably automate most or all of that with some hefty pile of scripts that grab the issue data over REST.

However.

It might be easier to look in the database here.  I don't usually suggest using the database for queries as it's a complete mess and almost always the worst way to ask questions of a Jira system (I mean, 40 joins for a single issue?  Or a single REST call?  Which one sounds easier to work out?)  But in this case, it might be easier via SQL.

Next question is "why?" I suspect the answer is that you're a good admin who is trying to make life easier for other people by doing some housekeeping - removing unused status from Jira makes searches and reports easier, faster and more clear.

To remove old status though, you have to remove them completely.  This means issues in those status will have to be moved to another one. You can't just delete a status if it is in use - you'll need to harmonise your old projects on to a shared but "known to be dead now" workflow that carries status that are ok for the old projects first.

[Hector.Hood]

There is no query that I am aware of that can do that. I do recommend the following because I inherited an instance from a Corporation.

First thing to go to is your inactive workflows. These are definitely not in use. The next thing would be to see which workflows are actually associated with an active workflow scheme. The next thing would be to look in each project and just check the last ticket submitted. I do recommend to properly label workflows from original to backup to prevent the clutter from happening in the futures. I also recommend going through and purging your system regularly and keeping only what is in use, back ups from major updates, and standardized templates set by your organization.

Yes the work initially will not be fun. Still once you clean it up and have a rythi8m is makes you life so much easier.

I hope this can give you some ideas on how to approach this. Good luck!

[Gökçe Gürsel {Appfire}]

Hi @Dave Hattig ,

Enhancer Plugin for Jira has a custom field called "Status Exit Date" that records the last time an issue is transitioned from a status.

Status Entry Date also works in your use case. Just don't forget to select all the statuses that the workflow has in the configuration screen and select last occurrence in the configuration in both JEP custom fields. 

You can define different JEP custom fields for each of the workflows or just use one Status Entry or Exit cf but in that case, you should select all statuses (active) in your Jira instance

After adding this field to necessary screens, you can add this field as a column in the search screen and use ORDER BY feature of the JQL to see the last time an issue is transitioned.

If you're interested in a specific WF, just include the projects that use that WF in your JQL query.

This search should give you an idea that which workflows are actively used in the recent days/months/years. Based on the results, you can manage the not-actively-used workflows.

Let me know if you have further questions.

Cheers,

Gökçe

I'm one of the teammates in Snapbytes so there might be other solutions out there and I might not be impartial.