What is the impact of deleting custom field context?

[Jyoti Mane]

We have some custom fields that were being used in few projects. But they are no longer required for those projects.

What happens to old issues data if i delete the context ?

What is the best practice when we create custom fields ? should we be selecting 

• Global context. Apply to all issues in Jira. ?? or 
• Apply to issues under selected projects

Reason I am asking this because, when we "Bulk Change all issues", all these fields which are not used shows up in Operation Details screen.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Hi Jyoti,

If you delete a project or issue type context for a field, then all the content of that field is deleted from Jira (I strongly recommend backing up before deleting or changing where a context is)

The best-practice for context is "use global fields when you are likely to want to report across projects, existing and ones you may add in the future.  Use local contexts when a field really is only for that project or issue type"

Note you'll see a lot of advice about always using limited contexts as much as possible, for performance reasons.  This does not really apply to Cloud, and changed a lot with Jira 8, it's of little impact on performance now.

[Jyoti Mane]

Thanks @Nic Brough -Adaptavist- Appreciate your response.

WHat should i do in my case then ? Those fields are no longer required in any project. 

How should i get rid of those fields from "Bulk Edit Operation Details " then ??

[Matt Doar]

What Nic said.

Plus in Jira DC the existing data for a custom field in an issue is not deleted. But once a context is gone, you won't see the data again for that issue, not even in an XML dump (I think). This could be different in Cloud, but I would expect not.

I have definitely deleted a global context before and then just added a new global context and seen the data reappear. It's contexts with projects and issue types that I don't think are easy to restore. So be careful deleting those