How much unused information can I remove before it becomes problematic?

[Julieanne Mortimer]

I have inherited a Jira set up, and for the most part I have managed to add in new workflows, fields, projects etc that I have wanted to get everything moving in a way that reflects our current way of working

Now I am left with a LOT of things that have not been used in the 3+ years since I have been managing my teams and projects - and I want to know how detrimental it will be if I delete old/unused workflows, fields etc. How ruthless can I go before history gets deleted and the world stops making sense. Of course I am only going to delete what is not currently used, and I do not want to delete old projects, mostly just workflows and fields

Which brings me to another question - all the data held in the fields that is not currently used, can it be searched/filtered etc, used in any way when not associated with an actively used field

[Rebekka Heilmann _viadee_ · Accepted solution]

Hi @Julieanne Mortimer 

You can delete unused workflows and schemes with no issues. The history will reference Statuses, which exist seperately.

For fields, every existing field is searchable. It doesn't matter if it is currently associated with projects. If a field has or had data in it, this data will be deleted with the field. That might be an issue if the field is used in active projects. You can just check for not empty values in the field per JQL.

I would clean up in the following order:

1. Archive old projects (give them a read-only permission scheme that will keep them searchable, give them a standard workflow (all statuses transition into all statuses), maybe even delete them?

2. Delete unused configurations

3. Check fields carefully by searching for values in them. Only delete unused fields

Be aware, that filters (and boards, dashboards referencing those) will break, if you delete or rename fields and other objects. The jql query is stored in plain text and cannot be repaired automatically. In Cloud, it got much harder to edit and therefore repair other user's filters.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Most of the admin described here is quite easy - on most lists of global objects, there is a section for "inactive", meaning "not associated with anything" at the bottom of the list.  Or they have "not associated with anything" next to the entry.  A couple of them, you may need to click on the options for each entry to see if it has a "delete" option.

As @Rebekka Heilmann _viadee_ said, archive the projects and standardise their config as much as possible first, then work top-down through the schemes.  If for example, you're looking at screens, remove the unused issue-type screen schemes first, which will make it easier to see the screen schemes you can remove, which in turn makes it easier to see which screens can be delete.

I'd recommend doing the workflows before screens though - workflows may be using transition screens, so if you can remove some of them, the list of unused screens will be cleaner.

Custom fields are the painful one.  I usually have to plough through all of them because the analysis usually needs to be more detailed than just "in use" - people are often looking for "10,000 issues in that project, and this field is used twice, so we should simplify it and remove it".

It's a slog, but I work in two windows or tabs.  One has a saved filter open in the issue navigator so I can edit the filter repeatedly, and the other has a dashboard with a single filter statistics gadget that uses my filter in the other window, grouped by project.  

I then save the filter as "custom field 1 is empty", refresh the dashboard, note what I need from there (is it one project, is it very low use, and if there's nothing, then it's noted in the delete list), go back to the filter and change it to "custom field 2 is empty", refresh the dashboard, and so on.  It's dull, but it'll tell you everything you need to know.

[Rebekka Heilmann _viadee_]

@Nic Brough -Adaptavist- great idea to use a save filter to show results per project right away!

[Julieanne Mortimer · Accepted solution]

Thank you for the advice @Nic Brough -Adaptavist-  and @Rebekka Heilmann _viadee_ 

I will take this slow and carefully. But I like my chances of getting this right, as I have migrated most, if not everything to new workflows, screens and fields. I will take an extra time with the fields