MISC-42: JIRA: Allow Closed Issues to be Edited

Issue Information

Issue Type: Task
 
Priority: Major
Status: Closed

Reported By:
Ben Tasker
Assigned To:
Ben Tasker
Project: Miscellaneous (MISC)
Resolution: Informational Only (2020-09-07 11:44:38)

Created: 2020-09-07 11:24:08
Time Spent Working


Description
Putting a copy of the procedure into MISC as the Atlassian documentation keeps moving.

The default JIRA workflows do not allow closed issues to be edited. Whilst (somewhat) logical, it's a serious annoyance when you're trying to retrospectively tidy issues into Versions and Components (for example).

Bulk re-opening, editing and then closing is one option, but almost always means you lose important information like

- The correct resolution reason
- Timeline reports get skewed as the close date becomes "today"

It is, however possible to edit workflows so that issues can be edited once closed, allowing you to assign versions to closed issues


Issue Links

Atlassian Documentation
Toggle State Changes

Activity


2020-09-07 11:30:55
The process to do this for a single project is as follows

- Go to the projects "homepage"
- Click Administration
- Click Workflows
- Click the pencil under Operations to Edit

At this stage, if the project is still using the default JIRA Workflow (jira) workflow you'll get a prompt saying the workflow is read-only and a copy will be made. Proceed

Once that's completed (takes a while on a big project), click the pencil again

- Scroll down to Closed
- Click View Properties (in the Operations column)
- In the row jira.issue.editable click Delete
- Add a new property, Key: jira.issue.editable Value: true

Logically, you'd expect this to be live, but it's not - the workflow is in draft state, JIRA just doesn't tell you in this view.

- At the top click Back to project
- Click the pencil to edit again

At the top there's now a Yellow notification: You are editing a draft workflow - click the Publish Draft button. Don't bother saving a backup copy (as the "backup" is identical to the system default)

It's now live on that project, you should be able to go into a closed issue and edit it.

2020-09-07 11:42:55
Once you've followed the above steps, you can then look at renaming the workflow to something more generic (it'll currently be named after whichever project you edited)

- System Settings
- Issues
- Workflow Schemes
- Set a name like Allow Editing Closed
- Click Add Workflow
- Find your workflow in the list
- Tick to assign to all issue types
- Click Finish

When you go back to Workflow schemes it won't be visible because the Inactive tab is collapsed by default.

Now, for each project you want to use the new scheme

- Go to the project homepage
- Select Administration
- Select Workflows
- Click Switch Scheme
- Choose the correct Scheme
- Click Associate
- Click Associate again
- Wait while the change is applied
- Click Acknowledge

Obviously, if your project was running on a custom workflow, you'll need to edit that (or make a copy of it) rather than using the new default-derived one

2020-09-07 11:44:38
btasker changed status from 'Open' to 'Resolved'

2020-09-07 11:44:38
btasker added 'Informational Only' to resolution

2020-09-07 11:44:42
btasker changed status from 'Resolved' to 'Closed'