Disabled Custom Field items still showing in Automation

[Cody Clements]

Hello,

I was recently tasked with taking over our Jira instance and so am trying to get my Jira admin legs underneath me so I appreciate anyone answering what may be a very dumb question.

I got a ticket to update a custom field with some new entries (new business units) and make them available in all projects. I went through the list and disabled the items in the custom field that were no longer valid and added the new items. However, when adding that field to a step in an automation, the disabled items are still visible.

Is there a way around this? Should I just delete the items that are no longer valid or should I create a new custom field and deprecate the old one? I did see a ticket from 2023 but didn't have any updates on it since Feb 2023 (https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JSWCLOUD-22931)

Thanks for helping out a Jira admin newbie. 

[John Funk · Accepted solution]

Hey Cody - Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

Based on the JAC ticket you cite, it's most likely a bug and one that Atlassian is not going to fix. That being said, here is the impact of your other options. If you delete the options that you have disabled, all of the historical information will be gone (cleared out). If it is a mandatory field, you will most likely have to choose another available option, which is not good because it's not accurate either. 

You could create a new field with new options and deprecate the old one, but again, you lose the historical data (if it is needed). 

Finally, what is the harm of them showing up in the Automation rule? Besides just being annoying? Just don't include any of the disabled options in your rules. 

[Mikael Sandberg]

Hi @Cody Clements,

Welcome to Atlassian Community!

Just to add to @John Funk answer, if you try to delete the option you will be asked to migrate existing work items that have the value you want to delete. So if you want to keep the historical data your only option is to disable the option and then just make sure that the automations are updated accordingly to make sure that the disabled value is not selected. I would also add a note about it in the description of the automation to make sure that in the future to look at the field context to get active values for the field. 

[John Funk]

Yes, thanks for the clarification @Mikael Sandberg  That's what I meant by the mandatory field comment, but I forgot that it is actually for all fields when you delete the option. 

[Cody Clements]

Hi @John Funk  and @Mikael Sandberg ,

Thanks for all the info! Much appreciated. I think what I might do is just prepend something like ZZZZZZ to the front of the disabled items and sort alphabetically so that they drop to the bottom of the list. Hopefully that doesn't break much. Just to clarify further, this is where I'm seeing the disabled items still. Is there somewhere to omit them from the "Value" dropdown?

[John Funk]

I think that is a good solution. I have done something similar before. And no, you can't omit them from the dropdown according to that bug.