Jira Align sync fails with 400 BadRequest error for the Why field

Summary

Updates to work items in Jira Align fail to sync to Jira when the Why field or Description exceeds the 32,767 character limit. This applies to Atlassian Cloud.

Diagnosis

1. Review the audit/connector logs for the "400 BadRequest" error message.

2. Identify the specific custom field ID mentioned in the error (e.g., customfield_10081).

3. Navigate to Administration → Jira Settings → Field Management to confirm which Jira Align field (such as Why or Description) maps to that specific Jira custom field.

Cause

The issue occurs because Jira has a hard character limit of 32,767 for text and paragraph fields. If a work item in Jira Align, such as a Feature or Portfolio Epic, contains a Why field or Description that exceeds this limit, the sync to the corresponding Jira custom field (e.g., customfield_10081) will fail with a 400 BadRequest error.

Solution

To resolve the sync failure, you must ensure the character count of the affected field is within the limits supported by Jira.

Identify the affected field

1. Review the audit logs or connector logs for the "400 BadRequest" error message.

2. Identify the specific custom field ID mentioned in the error (for example, "customfield_10081").

3. Navigate to Administration, then Jira Settings, and select Field Management to confirm which Jira Align field (such as Why or Description) maps to that specific Jira custom field.

Reduce the character count

1. Locate the specific work item in Jira Align (e.g., the Feature or Epic) using the ID provided in the error message.

2. Open the work item details and locate the affected field.

3. Reduce the amount of text in the field to fewer than 32,767 characters.

4. Save the changes to trigger a re-sync.

Verify the sync

After reducing the text length, check the audit logs for the work item to confirm that the update successfully synchronized to Jira without the 400 BadRequest error.

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