Is it safe to use the jira.field.resolution.exclude workflow property in JIRA Software Server v7.1?

[Sandor Krisztian Andre]

Hi,

I would like to restict the list of resolutions available in certain end transitions.

According to https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiraserver071/workflow-properties-802592825.html the use of some properties is not recommended due to to some data and operations can be broken.

Is it safe to use the jira.field.resolution.exclude property?

Br,

Kris

[Phill Fox]

Hi Sandor

I have never experienced any issues with using the jira.field.resolution.exclude property but there are no doubt some edge cases where it may cause issues. 

In cases like this you should fully test your system to make sure you are not impacted. The key areas to test include 

1. The normal workflow process within JIRA

2. Making bulk changes with transitions

3. Any automated transitions you have implemented

As an aside I tend to prefer to use the jira.field.resolution.include option rather than the exclude so if a new resolution is added it does not turn up on a workflow without my making the change.

Hope this helps

[Sandor Krisztian Andre]

Thank you Phill. How would this cause any issues?

[Phill Fox]

Hi Sandor
The issues you might experience are that the restrictions on resolutions may not be fully applied and so you would have anunexpected resolution against an issue.

As I tried to explain above the difference between include and external is associated with when a new resolution is setup. If you use exclude you would need to update each workflow to exclude the new resolution after the addition. However, if you use include you only update the workflows for which the resolution is appropriate. 

Hope this helps

Phill

[Sandor Krisztian Andre]

Yes, that part is clear. What I ment was what edge cases can I encounter in using the property in general. How can it break "data and operations"?

[Phill Fox]

Lets consider the two cases.

Data - you are possibly going to see resolutions that you would expect to be excluded. Remember that the resolutions exclusion will not be retrospectively applied to existing issues that have a resolution already recorded.

Operations - if an operation does not obey the exclusion property it may be that excluded resolutions would be applied to an issue.

[Sandor Krisztian Andre]

I see, so it is probably not possible to break any features other than those using this property.

Basically I want to make sure the the JIRA instance, other projects or the project that uses teh modified workflow (excluding the exclusion of some resolutions :) will not break.

[Phill Fox]

I would not expect any other parts of JIRA to be impacted other than the project using the specific workflow. But it is always worth checking.