Unable to delete some workflow statuses in Jira cloud

Summary

It is not possible to delete some statuses in Jira cloud such as Backlog, Reopened, Deployment etc in Jira cloud.

Environment

Jira Cloud

Diagnosis

It is possible that a duplicate status with the name Backlog or Re-opened is created in the cloud instance when statuses with the name Backlog or Reopened already exist. 

In such scenarios, it is possible that the new statutes (Backlog or Re-opened) are already used in active workflows associated with multiple projects. Hence, customers may want to continue using the new statuses (Backlog or Re-opened) and delete the existing statuses (Backlog or Reopened) to avoid confusion. However, this is not possible.

Cause

In Jira cloud, in order to delete a workflow status, we need to ensure that the status is not associated with any workflow in the instance. The only way to delete a status is to remove it from all workflows (active and inactive) 

However, Jira Cloud has a couple of system workflows that house a few statuses by default:

• Builds Workflow

• Jira

These system workflows are non-editable, so it is not possible to remove any status from them or delete statuses associated with them.

In our example, the status "Backlog" belongs to the "Builds Workflow" and "Reopened" belongs to the "Jira" workflow, which is the system default. The statuses cannot be removed from the default system workflows and hence cannot be deleted.

Solution

As per the current design, it is not possible to delete the default system workflows. It is not recommended to delete the statuses via the backend database to avoid database corruption.

Workarounds:

• Use the default status instead of the custom status. That way, once all statuses are migrated correctly from the "Back log" custom-created status to the "Backlog" system status, you should be able to delete the custom status instead of the default one.

OR

• Rename the status that you do not wish to use. From the global statuses page, you can rename (for example) "Backlog" to "Backlog (Do not use)"/ "Do not use - Backlog" or a preferred status name to prevent users from adding this status to any new/existing workflows.