Issues with too many issue links
This insight checks if any of your issues exceed the limit of issue links. Child issues or sub-tasks are not included in the limit.
Why is there a limit?
Jira Cloud limits the number of issue links per issue, because adding unlimited entities often results in unusually large and complex data shapes, which in turn causes reliability and performance problems.
Migrations are exempted from this limit so they’re not blocked. However, after you migrate, we’ll automatically modify your issues, optimizing issue links above the limit in the following way:
We’ll remove excess issue links from your issue.
We’ll move them into a new issue and link it to the original one.
You won’t be able to add new issue links above the limit.
What’s the recommendation?
For active issues where you still add issue links, you can use the ideas below to reduce their number. However, it might be easier to let us remove excess issue links after you migrate and start fresh in new issues.
Delete extra issue links
Jira doesn’t have an easy way to delete issue links in bulk. Below, we’ve added some ideas so you can check which one works for you.
Identify affected issues with SQL query
When viewing this recommendation from the dashboard, copy the provided SQL query and run it on your database.
The SQL query returns:
Issues with over 2,000 non-child issue links
Issue link count for each issue
Option 1: Delete extra issue links with Jira automation (Data Center or Cloud)
You can delete issue links in bulk by using Jira automation, both in Data Center and Cloud.
Rule description
This (Data Center) rule deletes all issue links from an issue.
Before running it, you should clone your affected issues to keep the issue link history.
To create a rule that deletes old issue links:
In Jira Data Center, go to Project settings > Automation.
Select Create rule.
Specify rule details as follows:
Rule component | Type | Additional details |
|---|---|---|
Trigger | Manual trigger from issue | This lets you run a rule directly from an issue. You can choose other types, like issue type or status. |
Action | Delete issue links | You can choose whether to delete all issue links or only specific type, such as is blocked by or duplicates. |
The rule should look like this:
Delete extra issue links with API
The following pages link to APIs used to delete issue links.
Get issue link ID from an issue. To do this, you need to specify fields as issuelinks: Get issue
Delete an issue link based on its ID: Delete issue link
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