Jira Custom field context bugs

[Sara Lam]

Please be aware that creating a new custom field context for existing projects will loose data that were entered in the existing issues.  

In theory, the custom context (besides global context) is a great idea.  But it has a few bugs that are not resolved.  I wish Jira would show some warnings about the bugs before I confirmed to create new context for the existing projects.

Here are the bugs:

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRASERVER-62455?_ga=2.89386392.2001213427.1549308848-666324539.1548436046

https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirakb/custom-field-in-issue-search-columns-not-exporting-to-excel-703399851.html

The 2nd bug defeats the purpose of having custom field context.

[Andy Heinzer]

Hi Sara,

Sorry to hear that you have encountered this problem.  Changing the context on existing custom fields can be a frustrating process to follow.  I saw your comments on the bug ticket as well.  You mentioned not having a backup from before this change.  I am curious if you are aware that Jira is automatically creating XML backup .zip files and storing these in your $JIRAHOME/export/ folder.

I would recommend checking in that folder for a zip file created before this change.  If this is a backup file it will contain two files in that zip (entities.xml and active_objects.xml).   If you can locate one of these, you could then potentially recover this lost data that way.  I would recommend creating a new Jira installation with an empty database and then restoring the backup to that instance as a means to access that data without overwriting your other production Jira data.

Also we have a separate KB on how you can make changes to custom field contexts without losing data contained within them over in Change Context for an Existing Custom Field Without Losing Old Data

I hope this helps.

Andy

[Sara Lam]

Hi Andy,

Thank you so much for your reply and suggestions.  I asked our IT to check on the backup .zip files.  Unfortunately, he wasn't able to find the back up for the day that I changed custom field context.  He was able to find a back up back in December when we did an upgrade.  So, we lost about a full month of data for that particular custom fields in affected projects.

My biggest upset is that there's no warning before I committed the changes. I didn't know to check history data when we could easily recover from our daily back ups.

Sincerely,
Sara