Why did a small number of DONE issues suddenly appear in the backlog? How can I get rid of them?

[shawker]

I made a change to the workflow. Now I have 20-ish issues marked DONE appear in the backlog. They were all >2 years old. I can't move them to a completed sprint, I can't even find a setting for showing/not showing DONE issues.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

I would suggest that someone changed a board config, project, or workflow in a way that made the old issues no longer "done"

Open one of them up, and check the status, its resolution, sprint,  and what boards it might be appearing on to start with.

[shawker]

Thanks for responding.

I changed the workflow to actually be a workflow, instead of all statuses can move to any other status. There were no transitions until I added them.

The status is DONE. There's no resolution field. Some had been in sprints but some never were. I don't know what board it would appear on.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

I would focus on this bit:

>The status is DONE. There's no resolution field

Status is DONE looks totally right.  Status is oddly simple (but still manages to confuse people a bit).  The resolution "field" though matters to most of the rest of Jira.

Could you open up one of the issues that looks wrong, check the status, its resolution, sprint,  and what boards it might be appearing on?

[shawker]

Thanks again but this version of JIRA that I've inherited is such a mess I'm just going to roll back my changes, hope things go back the way they were and look really hard at getting away from JIRA.

[Mikael Sandberg]

Hi @shawker

Welcome to Atlassian Community!

Is the resolution field set on those Done issues? If the resolution is not set Jira will consider the issue to be unresolved, no matter what status it is in, and therefor show up on the backlog. 

[shawker]

Thanks for responding.

So we go further down the rabbit hole....

There is no resolution field shown in the issues. I don't even know how to enable it, if it can be enabled.

[Mikael Sandberg]

If you go to the detailed view of the issue, if the resolution is set you should see this

The status is on the left and the resolution is on the right. If you do not see the resolution it explains why the show up on the backlog. Please have a look at this KB for best practices on using the resolution field.

[Mikael Sandberg]

The KB mention that you can fix the resolution by changing your workflow, but you can also do that using an automation similar to this

[shawker]

Thanks again for trying. I really do appreciate your effort.

Nothing in the KB helps. I can get to edit the workflow but after that nothing mentioned in the KB shows in my JIRA.

for example, in the first Solution, once I get to editing the workflow:

5. Select the transition to the "Done" status;
6. Click post functions;
7. On your right corner, click Add post function;

Click post functions isn't an option so neither is adding one. The remainder of the Solution requires this step. 

the second Solution:

1. Type the g key twice on your keyboard (gg) or, as alternative, your period key ( . ), then Screens;
2. On your top right corner, click Add screen;

gg or period do not offer me "Screens" so I have no option to add one.

This is always my experience with JIRA. It's just too bloated to be useful. Too many configurations and settings. Help articles never relate to what I'm seeing, just some fantasy version of JIRA I can never experience.

So I'm just moving these issues to the bottom of the backlog and ignoring them.

And see if I can persuade people to dump JIRA and use something like youtrack.

[Mikael Sandberg]

If you look on your left-hand side when you are in the project, does it say "You're in a team-managed project" or company-managed project?

[shawker]

It's a team managed project

[Mikael Sandberg]

Okay, so in a team-managed project you cannot set the resolution, in those projects it is set when you move the issue to the far right column. So I would check the configuration of your board. Have the board changed lately? Was the done status moved to a different column? Was a new column created? Did the workflow change? Did someone create an automation that removed the resolution by mistake?

[shawker]

I added a new status which is now in the Kanban board (and in the far right column too)

So does this mean that we will have to move everything to this state to close them?  Can I delete that column without it affecting the workflow?

[Mikael Sandberg]

Yes, you need to move the done ones to the far right in order to set the resolution. Yes, you could remove that column, just note that you would then have to map the statuses in that column to one of the other columns.

[shawker]

So thanks for trying to help me. I've also found a bunch of other things that are now broken just because I added a new state to the workflow. I now officially give up.