In 2017, one of the Atlassian Solution Partners (Valiantys) published a “Performance at scale: Can Jira handle 10 million issues?”. They checked how the Jira Data Center works with 10 million issues. It is probably not a standard situation to have such a large number of issues. Nevertheless, the average number of tickets on Jira instances is growing. This doesn’t only apply to Jira Server or Data Center. The same trend is taking shape on cloud instances, although the basis is much smaller.
Among the many reasons for such a large number of issues, it’s worth distinguishing three key ones:
- a lot of reported incidents share the same source of the problem,
- huge backlogs that consist of duplicate bugs (especially often found in large projects with a long history),
- requirements and test management in Jira.
A large number of issues affect not only the performance of the Jira instance. Multiplying tickets makes users work harder:
- Is it easier to remember the PA-157 or PA-2789456 issue key? We can work on both tasks at the same time.
- To find an issue quickly, it's best to learn JQL (Jira Query Language). How many employees in your company are fluent in this syntax?
- Problems are duplicating. When PA-157 and PA-2789456 refer to the same, where should I log the time?
These and many other questions surely arise in the minds of Jira users. Let's work on finding the answer to them.
How to deal with duplicate issues?
When it comes to duplicate issues, there are four techniques to reduce them. It doesn’t require much interference in the configuration of Jira and the time overhead of administrators.
Method 1: Add announcement banner
Depending on the business case, you can actively inform your clients about current incidents. This allows customers to know that you’re aware of the problem and don’t need a new incident request. On the customer portal, you can easily add an announcement banner. You can also create such a message for Jira users.
Method 2: Become Sherlock Holmes on your Jira instance
Analyze the existing duplicates and try to answer the following questions:
- Why was this ticket created?
- What was the reason for it?
- Has the user seen the announcement of an ongoing problem?
- What does the ticket creation screen look like? Do standard and custom fields have descriptive descriptions?
You may find that the process is responsible for duplicate submissions. Sometimes it’s enough to fill a process gap or write a comprehensive knowledge base article.
Method 3: Share your knowledge with others
What you can do without any major investment is user education. Provide them with data on the cost of handling duplicate issues. Show how it affects the waiting time for support when the agent has to write back the same to the next person. You can also add announcements or messages from the ticket creation screen telling you how to check for a similar problem in the backlog.
Method 4: Link issues
When you have performed all the actions above and still have duplicates in the queue, you can link them. Remember to copy all important comments to one main issue. Do the same with attachments and field values. You can close linked tasks to work only on that one issue.
Is there any better way to merge issues?
Manually linking the problems up seems to be a good option. Unfortunately, along with the scale, it ceases to be effective. It becomes time-consuming and tedious. It can also cause mistakes. To take the merger issue seriously, try our Issue Merger PRO for Jira app. In addition to allowing you to conveniently merge issues by eliminating a lot of manual clicking, it provides many advanced features.
If you want to merge issues like a pro, you definitely have to try Sync next comments and Auto-merge features provided by this app.
How to merge issues like a pro?
Automatically finding duplicate tickets when creating a new one - doesn't that sound interesting? This is how the functionality called Auto-merge works. You won't find it in any other app for merging tickets.
You surely know Automation for Jira. In the same way, you configure the rules that will allow you to combine the issues.
- Start by defining the conditions under which issues are to be checked. For example, those that include [Update request] in the Summary field.
- Select which fields to merge. You can even automatically change the status of a duplicate ticket and add a comment to it.
- Run the rule and the magic happens by itself (with the help of our app).
Another pro feature is Sync next comments. When you merge two or more issues with this option, all future comments from source issues will be copied to the issue you merged to. This allows you to focus only on one issue.
Give it a try today
Do you want to become a merger master in your company? Do you see the potential in our app? Are you already excited about a backlog or a duplicate-free queue? If you answered "Yes" to at least one of these questions, install our Issue Merger PRO for Jira. Remember that it is completely free for instances of up to 10 users!
If you are interested in a demo of our app and a discussion about your expectations, book a meeting with us via calendly 👩🏻💻👨💻
This article can be also interested for you:
Credits:
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
