Recycle Bin for Jira (Cloud)

Within native Jira cloud instances, work items are typically deleted by removing them from the database. Retrieving deleted items inside a cloud instance is only possible by restoring from a backup or manual recreation of every single item.

Recycle Bin for Jira Cloud will help with minimizing the hassle of managing deletion, recycling and restoring of work items across your instance. Deleted items are collected and filed away out of view in a designated location inside each project. This way project spaces will be kept clean while maintaining full traceability of data.

First Steps & Setup

Upon setup of Recycle Bin for Jira, an admin will have to grant global and/or project based permissions to use the app and view the relevant components. Only when these settings are made correctly, the app will work as intended.

1.1 Global Permissions

Please configure your global permissions or permission schemes to account for the following aspects:

• View Recycle Bin

• Recycle/Restore Issues

1.2 Recycle Bin Config / Modus

Overlay Modus (Free Instances)

Free instances don’t support security levels, so in these environments Recycle Bin for Jira will show an overlay if any recycled work item is accessed. Upon recycling of an item, the summary is changed to “RECYCLED” and the item is added to the Recycle Bin. Upon restoring of the item, the summary will be readjusted to the original summary prior to recycling and it will not be listed in the Recycle Bin anymore.

Security Level Modus (Paid/Premium Instances)

In Premium instances, Recycle Bin leverages the built-in security level mechanisms in order to properly hide any recycled issues from the standard list views and block direct access by permalink. Upon recycling of a work item, it will be fully hidden and only visible inside the dedicated Recycle Bin view of the project.

In Free instances, only overlay mode will be available from the Recycle Bin config.

For Paid instances, we highly recommend to use the proper Security Level modus. However it is also possible to switch between modes freely, whereas we also recommend to be more cautious the higher the number of issues affected will be, because this can take an extended amount of time and produce unneccessary noise.

Using Recycle Bin for Jira Cloud

2.1 Recycling Work Items

In any Work item’s detail view you will find the three-dot menu button (“…”) that will offer all context actions. There is a “recycle” button inside this dropdown menu. Clicking this button will move the current work item to the recycle bin. Depending on the configured modus, it will either be hidden and inaccessible (security level modus), or it will adjust the summary to say “RECYCLED” and throw an overlay that indicates recycled status of the item (overlay modus).

2.2 Viewing Recycle Bin

To View all recycled issues inside a given project spaces, access the dedicated recycle bin tab. It is located in the project space overview and will probably show underneath the “more” button on the very right. However you can reposition the tab to another spot in the tab order by dragging it to the desired spot.

2.3 Restoring/Deleting Work Items

To restore or permanently delete items from the Recycle Bin, access the Recycle Bin tab from the project space overview and click the relevant action button for the desired item in the list of recycled work items.

2.4 Recycled Meta Fields

For better integration and workflow usage of Recycle Bin for Jira Cloud, we have added a special “Recycled Meta” Field. By adding this field to your work items, you can track precise data about recycle actions on the given item. By leveraging this field’s data, admins and users can create distinct JQL filters to query recycle bin usage data and track any work item’s lifecycle.