Issue Activity tabs and information displayed in them

This article is for Cloud and Data Center.

When viewing Jira issues, there is a section that is marked as “Activity”. This section has several tabs, showing different activities.

Cloud:

On Cloud, none of the tabs can be disabled. Some add-ons provide additional tabs in this section, so customers might have more tabs in this section as listed here.

Comments:

This tab shows comments that users have added to the issue. Users can be mentioned by using the @ before their name. Using this option will sent an email to the mentioned user, making him aware of the comment.
This tab is provided by Jira.

History:

This tab shows changes to Jira system fields and custom fields made on the issue. This includes changes to Time spent, Remaining estimate, Workflows, Status and more. It shows also when an Account or Team were changed. Information about logged time is displayed as - being made by a user (username) when the worklog was created via Jira
- being made by Tempo Timesheets when the worklog was created in Tempo.
This tab is provided by Jira and information is loaded from the Jira database.

As a side note (status June 22, 2021):
the display of time spent (work logged) on issues, is retrieved from a different table in Jira than the worklogs. We have seen issues where the time spent on the issue in the history tab and the time logged on the issue. Atlassian is aware of this and they have a bug in their system to fix this.(https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRACLOUD-76839). The problem is connected to a race condition when more than one worklog is created at the same time on the issue (or synced from Tempo at the same time).
Atlassian says:
What happens in the backend is that once a worklog entry is created a new entry in the history is calculated based on the previous value in the history - current value in worklog + new value in worklog. So basically, this will create the old and new value entries in the history.

Work log:
(JIRA set as time tracking provider)

Provided by JIRA, data is retrieved from the Jira database
This tab is available when Jira is set as Time tracking provider. It shows all worklogs that are on the issue, dependent on the viewers permission. Worklogs created in Tempo will all be visible, showing the Author as Tempo Timesheets and the worklog comment as time-tracking
When the worklog was created in JIRA, the worklog author and worklog description is displayed. The visibility of these worklogs depends if the worklog is Viewable by All Users or restricted to a Project role

Worklogs:
(Tempo set as time tracking provider)

Provided by Tempo, data is retrieved from the Tempo database
Shows information when worklogs were Created, Updated or Deleted. It shows the name of the worklog owner, worklog description and the time that was spent in h and [seconds]

On-Premise:

On Data Center, all tabs in the Activity section are provided by JIRA. Information is provided from the Jira Database as there is only this one db.

All:

Shows all entries which are available in the Activity section. The other tabs work like a filter for this information

Comments:

This tab shows comments that users have added to the issue. Users can be mentioned by using the @ before their name. Using this option will sent an email to the mentioned user, making him aware of the comment.

Work log:

Shows all worklogs that are on the issue. When worklogs are created in JIRA, the visibility depends if the worklog is Viewable by All Users or restricted to a Project role

When worklogs are created in Tempo, they are visible to everyone, independent of the Tempo permissions that give access to view worklog of other users.
It is possible to disable this tab by doing the following:

Log in as a JIRA administrator and select Administration —> Add-ons —> Manage add-ons
Select System from the add-on filter list
Expand the modules in Issue Tab Panels Plugin
Disable the "Work Log Tab Panel" module

History:

Shows changes that were made to the issue, including worklog information, transitions, edit of customfields.
It is possible to disable this tab by doing the following:

Log in as a JIRA administrator and select Administration —> Add-ons —> Manage add-ons
Select System from the add-on filter list
Expand the modules in Issue Tab Panels Plugin
Disable the "Change History Tab Panel" module

Activity:

Shows an activity stream of comments added to the issue and worklogs that have been created, edited and deleted, including worklog description.

When worklogs are created in JIRA, the visibility of information depends if the worklog is Viewable by All Users or restricted to a Project role

When worklogs are created in Tempo, information about them is visible to everyone, independent of the Tempo permissions that give access to view worklog of other users.

It is not possible to disable this tab (except possibly with a customization) and the tab shows the same information that is also available in the Activity stream gadget on Dashboards.

It is possible to disable all activity streams in Jira by disabling the “JIRA Activity Stream Plugin” in Administration —> Add-ons —> Manage add-ons, System. (Disable the whole plugin, not individual modules).
Disabling this system plugin will cause problems when updating Tempo as Tempo has a dependency to it.