Bulk archive work items in Jira Cloud with Automation

Summary

In Jira Cloud, it's possible to archive single work items, but bulk archiving them is not available. Please refer to the feature request ticket: JRACLOUD-85101

Jira Automation allows us to work around this limitation and archive multiple Jira work items at once.

Solution

Automation execution limits

For Premium plans, there is a limit of 1000 automation executions per licensed user.

Before proceeding with this workaround, make sure the automation won't exceed the monthly execution limit. Please refer to How is my usage calculated for more details.

Bulk archive issues using Automation

It's possible to archive up to 1000 work items at a time by sending a PUT request to the Archive issue(s) by issue ID/key API endpoint. This requires a user token to authorize the request. However, if we want to use the Lookup work items automation action, we will be limited to 100 work items at a time.

1. Navigate to Global automation in Jira and create a new rule

2. Use a trigger that matches your requirements

   • The Manual or Scheduled triggers are likely the best choices

3. Use the Lookup work items action to fetch a list of work items via JQL

   • Please note: This action will only fetch 100 issues at a time

4. Add a Send web request action

   • Web request URL: https://<YOUR-URL>.atlassian.net/rest/api/3/issue/archive

   • HTTP method: PUT

   • Web request body: Custom data

   • Custom data:

     { "issueIdsOrKeys": [ {{#lookupIssues}}"{{key}}"{{^last}}, {{/}}{{/}} ] }

To authorize the Send Web Request action, you must Base64-encode your user token. See the instructions here.

Please refer to the screenshot below for an example automation rule: