Boards tab missing after upgrade from 7.13 to 8.0

[Janno V]

After upgrading jira software from 7.13 to 8.0 there is no button with name boards on the menubar any more.

https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirakb/board-tab-in-jira-missing-jira-software-application-799801745.html?_ga=2.203812752.1266868597.1551167142-1699889403.1547728280

Said that there can be 2 problems, licens has expired or permission problem, but my license will expire 16/Jan/2020 and none of the users see boards even jira administrator account does not have boards button anymore.

[Andy Heinzer]

Sorry to hear you're having a problem here with the upgrade.  There is actually a 3rd scenario that can cause this as well which I think you are seeing.  I will update the KB to better cover this.

This can also happen when the Jira Software plugin fails to load up when Jira itself starts.  If that happens, you can get one or more dependent system plugins flagged as disabled in the Jira database.  In turn this can cause that plugin and any that depend on it to fail to load up when Jira starts.    This can happen more often for upgrades, because Jira's default memory settings tend to revert to the defaults of 768m in the setenv .bat/.sh file.

So I would recommend trying these steps to see if you can correct this problem:

1. Stop Jira
2. Review the steps in Increasing Jira memory to make sure your Jira application is set to use enough memory to load all your plugins.  If you're not sure how much that should be, check our Jira Sizing Guide reference doc.
3. In the Jira SQL database, run the following command to see what plugins might be disabled:

   select * from pluginstate;

   
   This will return all the plugins that are disabled in your Jira instance, both user disabled and system disabled.  
4. We would want to remove any/all entries from that specific table that are Jira system plugins or dependencies for Jira Software to work.   If you are unsure which entries to remove, please post the results of this SQL query and I should be able to better guide you.
5. Start Jira again.

If you still don't see the Boards tab when Jira starts up again, please let me know.  I'm sure we'll want to create a support case and gather a complete set of Jira logs from your environment to better troubleshoot this upgrade problem.

Andy

[kdickason]

I too am not seeing the Boards menu or the Create menu post upgrade.  All Jira System Apps and Application Components appear to have installed correctly. PLEASE help!!

[Andy Heinzer]

Hi @kdickason

For a missing Boards entry in the top bar navigation, I would still recommend https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirakb/boards-navigation-button-missing-in-jira-software-server-799801745.html

The lack of the Create button sounds like a different problem here.  That would actually be expected if the account you are logged in with does not have Create Issue permissions in any projects on that Jira site.  It is possible that you might have a global system permissions as a system administrator, but Jira could still be configured in such a way that your account does not have the issue create permissions.  As a system admin though, you can grant yourself that permission if needed.

If that is not helpful, then ideally we would suggest creating a support case over at https://support.atlassian.com/contact if you have support per our Atlassian Support Offerings.

And if you do not have support outside community, then the next steps would be to try to take a closer look at the logs from Jira when it starts up.  $JIRAHOME/log/atlassian-jira.log file is one file that you will want to investigate closer during Jira startup. 

[kdickason]

Thank you for your response!  We believe this may be an issue due to the fact that our license for upgrades and support expired.  We were able to upgrade the software, but I'm seeing that certain agile features may be disabled until our license is brought up to current status.  Do you think this may be causing these options to be unavailable?  

[kdickason]

I am on a 30 day trial now and we are at version 8.17.1. When we got on the trial installed, I got the Boards button and a Plans button. Still no Create button.   I'm stymied!  Nothing in log indicating a problem and we all have Create permissions.  Am I not seeing something?  There should be a Create button to create issues, right??

[Andy Heinzer]

@kdickason Certainly an expired server license can cause problems in regards to trying to perform upgrades. Jira requires valid and current licenses applied to the system before you can upgrade. But it sounds like you can at least now see the Boards.

As for why you can't see the create button, the only reason I know that can happen would be permissions related.  You could try to use the Jira Admin Helper (Permissions Helper specifically) to confirm that Jira believes your account has permissions. Alternatively, since you can also see boards now, you could try to go to a board's backlog and see if you can create new issues there on the board.  This could at least give us more understanding of the scope of the problem here.

But that said, perhaps something else during the upgrade could have gone awry.  At this point, I'd recommend that you create a support case over in https://support.atlassian.com/contact/

You can use the SEN from that evaluation license to create a support case.  I would expect that support would want to see a support zip from this environment in order to better understand if there are any problems with the upgrade itself.

[kdickason]

I see no way to create a support case in the link you provided. I can only ask the Community a question, which I have posted with no response.  To be clear, here is the latest information after we installed a 30-day trial license.  We have the Boards back, but still no Create button, although we can get to the screen when typing in the URL and we can create issues using the + option.  See below.  Can you provide info on how I submit a support ticket?

We are currently using a 30-day trial license of Jira version 8.17.1.  We upgraded from an older version, and have disabled all user-installed plug-ins.  I am a System Admin and I have made sure I have permission to Create Issues on projects.  I can do so using the + Create issue button on the bottom-left of the screen from within a project.  However, in a previous Jira version, we had a Create button in the menu bar at the top of the screen.  This button no longer displays.  If we type the URL https://[IP]/secure/CreateIssue!default.jspa we can get to the screen that the button display.  But we don’t see the button!!  How do I get it back?  There are no errors in the log indicating an issue that would prevent this button from displaying. 

[kdickason]

Never mind on how to submit request. I found how to do so. Unfortunately, our SEN is not "valid" according to the page. Possibly because it's a trial license?  What is so ironic here, is that we are a Government contractor working on a classified environment, attempting to make a $$$$ purchase with Atlassian, and I cannot get over this one stupid hurdle, which may kill this whole deal.  I have no way to file a support request. Nice.  

[Andy Heinzer]

Hi @kdickason 

Sorry to hear about these problems.  I checked our support portal and found that evaluation licenses were not allowing users to create technical support cases.  That should not be the case.  I have raised an internal ticket about this.

Looking into it further, I can see that eval licenses can now (within the last hour) create technical support cases on that portal.  Please try again. Sorry for the inconvenience here in seeking help. 

If you still cannot create one, please just let me know.  I'd be happy to create one on your behalf.  I tried to lookup more details about your SEN, but I was unable to find any SEN created by your account.  So I suspect that you might have used a different email address when creating that evaluation.

I understand that working in government environments sometimes will restrict what data you can send to us.  But I firmly believe that our support team would need to see the logs Jira created during the startup/upgrade to better understand why the create button is not appearing here.

Alternatively, if you cannot send logs to a support case, it might be worth rolling back this upgrade attempt (provided you have a backup of the database, and the $JIRAHOME/ directory), applying the updated license to the old instance, and then trying to perform the upgrade again.  This approach could work better here, since it appears that the upgrade might not have behaved as expected with an expired license applied at the time of upgrade.

[kdickason]

Andy, first off, thank you so much for your time on this and your request to allow SEN numbers for your support tickets.  We have finally uncovered the issue causing the Create button not to display.   There was a disabled component in the "Atlassian Jira - Plugins - Header Plugin" called webfragments.navigation.bar.issues.item.new.issues

 Re-enabling and refreshing brought the button back.