Archiving in Jira Data Center and Cloud Premium/Enterprise and how it affects Tempo Reports (Timesheets, Planner)

Archiving issues is a feature in Data Center only.  Project archiving is available in Jira Cloud Premium and Enterprise plans. 

What happens to an issue after you archive it?

Here's a few things you should know about:

Issues

• Issues will be read-only and accessible only with a direct link, mentions in other issues or applications, or on the Archived issues page (Issues > Archived issues). You won't be able to modify them but for audit purposes you can view or, if you're a Jira system admin, export them to a CSV file. To export archived issues with all their data, go to Issues > Archived issues, open the Export drop-down and click to export all issues or only the selected ones.

• Issues will no longer appear in the list of issues in projects, search results, JQL auto-complete, dashboards, or reports.

• In Jira Software, archived issues will also disappear from the Scrum and Kanban boards and backlogs.

• In Jira Service Desk, archived issues will also disappear from the customer portal, queues, and all other places they previously appeared.

• Archived issues are deleted from Jira index and because of that Custom Filed Optimizer does not have the full set of information about the issues which use a particular custom field. This can result in some unwanted behaviour such as custom fields not displaying for archived issues and for the issues that have been restored. For more information, see Jira Knowledge Base.

Index

• Issue data will be ignored and removed from the index. This enhances Jira performance because Jira stores less data.

Read more here.

How does this affect Tempo worklogs? Will Tempo worklogs show up in Tempo Reports?

Archived issues with time logged against them will all continue to show up in My Work, Resource Planning view, and Logged Time Reports. These worklogs will continue to be visible after an archived issue is restored again too. 

Even if the issue is archived, Tempo still has direct access to the Jira object in the database, so that link is preserved.

In the Report, you have to click on the Issue Key to open the issue and see details because the Issue Key goes directly to the issue (eg http://localhost:8080/browse/TEST-1) The Issue Summary link doesn't work because it is a query, and issue key was removed from Jira's index when archived (eg http://localhost:8080/secure/Tempo.jspa#/reports/logged-time/?groupBy=issue&periodType=CURRENT_PERIOD&taskKey=TEST-1)

Open

Both new Tempo reports and past saved Tempo reports will show the archived issues and their associated worklogs.

Open

Archiving issues and Jira reports

Archived issues are removed from index and, as such, they are not picked up by JQL queries used in reports. That is why archived issues are not displayed in reports. For example, if you've created 30 issues in May and archived them later on, and then you run a report showing Created and Resolved issues for that month, the report will not display any results. On the other hand, when you use the archiving feature, reports tend to be faster because archiving decreases the size of the index.

That is why we advise archiving old issues which will not be used in any reporting. For example, if you do not generate reports for a period of time longer than one year, then you can safely archive issues older than that. This way, archived issues will not distort any report metric. 

Archiving FAQ

Q: I want to restore subtasks but not an issue. Is this possible?

A: No. If you want to restore subtasks you also need to restore the issue these subtasks belong to. 

Q: I want to delete a project that has some archived issues in it. What happens to these issues?

A: The issues get deleted and are no longer stored as archived issues.

Q: Is the information about archived issues included in batch notifications?

A: Yes. We inform you about every issue archived and restored. 

Q: If I archive an issue and then archive a project this issue belongs to, is it enough if I unarchive this issue to see it?

A: No. You first need to restore the project and then the issue to see it.

Archiving Projects and Tempo Reports (Tempo Cloud Premium and Enterprise)

Project archived in Jira won't appear in basic or advanced search results. You can still access these issues through direct links, but you won’t be able to edit them.  For more information on archiving Jira Projects and accessing Jira data from archived projects, refer to this Atlassian Support documentation.

Tempo will continue to report on logged time and planned time associated with issues inside archived projects.  There is no change to the appearance of the Tempo Logged Time or Tempo Planned Time reports though raw data extracts will not contain the name of an archived Jira project.

The Tempo Logged Time Report referencing an archived Jira Project

Tempo worklog data from an archived project is still available in Tempo Reports but it cannot be edited: see below.

Jira Project is active and worklogs are editable, including from Tempo Reporting.

Jira Project is archived and worklogs are available but not editable from Tempo Reporting.