Possible to remove status from active workflow? Seems so..

[Alvin Chan _Ease Solutions_]

Hi, I have been working with JIRA workflows for awhile, and the common understanding is that you can't delete a workflow status from an active workflow, also stated in Atlassian's document:

https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiraserver/working-with-workflows-938847362.html#Workingwithworkflows-editingActiveandinactiveworkflows

But by chance while working on a new customer project recently, I saw that my colleague managed to delete a workflow status from an active workflow.

It seems like this is possible when there are no issues residing in that particular status. I managed to reproduce the scenario on my test instance afterwards.

Perhaps the documentation should highlight this point if this is true. Hope someone from Atlassian could take a look.

[George G]

The real reason why you cannot do this is that Jira's workflow system was designed in a way that would require a complete rewrite to allow status removal, and Atlassian hasn't prioritized doing it.

[Olya Dayneko]

For some reason this didn't work for me, though i worked before.

I added "blocked" status and when i tried to remove it i got message that it's restricted. I have checked - the are no issues in the blocked status in whole jira (all the projects), including the project that has this workflow assigned. SO i am confused how this happened.

I have removed all the transitions to this status as a workaround but I would like to remove the status from the workflow to have everything in order.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

I know of a few ways to do this, but none I'd say were "good".

Could you tell us how you are doing it, and what version of Jira it is?

[Alvin Chan _Ease Solutions_]

Hi Nic,

My local instance is on JIRA Software 7.5, but my colleague was on 7.8.

Below is what I did to reproduce the effect:

1. Create an issue on a new project.
2. Transition to a particular status. (e.g. In progress)
3. Edit the workflow and try to remove the "In progress" workflow status the issue is in, standard message appears that you cannot remove the status as there are issues in that status.
4. Go back and transition the issue out of the status (e.g. to "Closed")
5. Attempt to remove the "In progress" workflow status (also taking care to move other incoming/outgoing transitions to another status), it works this time.

Actually, when I relooked into the message I get when doing "step 3", the message does say that we can remove the status if the issues are moved out of it:

We can't remove this status for you
There are issues in this status that need to be moved to another status or project before we can remove this status. Please contact your JIRA administrator if you need assistance.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

The "devil is in the detail" here.

On step 3 - there is no simple "edit the workflow".  Did it go into "draft" mode?

[Alvin Chan _Ease Solutions_]

Hi Nic,

Yeah, you are right, I missed to mention I am editing the draft of the "Active" workflow, and did it from the Administration -> Issues -> Workflows section :)

The article I listed does point out that even editing the draft of the Active Workflow does not allow you to delete workflow statuses, so I think that part should be changed a bit to indicate that if there are no issues in the status, you can actually do it.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Give the Docs team a chance to catch up - 7.7 can't do this, 7.8 does.

[Alvin Chan _Ease Solutions_]

yeah sure, not criticizing actually, but hoping to sound out the info I understand about this is correct. There is this "Advanced Workflow Badge" exam that I am about to take, you see :D

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Sorry, I was slightly wrong there.  Not sure exactly when it changed, but later versions of Jira do allow you to do a "full" edit on a workflow that has no issues associated with it.  It used to be that if it were used in at least one workflow scheme that was active in a project (in 6.2 which is the only one I have to hand), but now it checks "am I used by any issues".  The code in the background is different to the docs and the on-screen information!

[Sravan Kumar]

This post just saved me so much hassle kudos to all of you guys ! 
However one question I had with respect to a different scenario 

In case of multiple projects using the same workflow does this hold good ? (Provided there are still no issues with this status)

I tried this with a workflow which was dedicated to one project only and it works.

@Alvin Chan _Ease Solutions_  Thanks for all the knowledge :) :)