Managing Attachment Housekeeper Policies

Creating a Policy

There are 2 types of policies in Attachment Housekeeper

1. Global policies are available for ALL projects to use, and can only be created by Jira admins.

2. Project policies are only available for a specific project, and can be created by both Jira and project admins.

1. Navigate to the page to create a policy.

   1. To create a global policy:

      1. Login as a Jira administrator

      2. Go to Administrator > Issue Archiver

      3. Go to the Housekeeping Policies page

         

      4. Then click on Create New Policy

   2. To create a project policy:

      1. Login as a Jira or project administrator

      2. Go to the project settings page for the project you want to create a policy for

      3. From the project settings sidebar, click on Housekeeping Policy

      4. Click on ⚙️ Actions > Create Project Policy

2. Add in the policy name and rules. If more rules are needed, add a new rule using the Add New Rule button. An attachment will be marked as long as it satisfies any rule in the policy.

Explanation of fields:

Field	Description
Policy Name (required)	The name of the policy for display.
Policy Description	The description of the policy. Use this to better describe the policy for other users.
Rule field	Description
JQL	The JQL used to get a list of issues to look at. If blank, all issues in the project are looked at. Note that there is no need to specify the Jira project in the JQL as the policy will automatically filter for issues within the linked project already. If you need some guidance on JQL, check out Useful JQLs for selecting issues for housekeeping
Size	The file size limit that the attachment must fulfill. If blank, no comparison is done and all attachments are considered a match.
Has file extension	A comma separated list of file extensions that the attachment must have. If blank, any extension (including no extension) is considered a match.
Mark attachments with no extension	If checked, any attachment without an extension will be marked. This is more useful if other extensions have been specified in the file extension criteria.
Include related zip files when removing zip files	If this is checked AND “zip” is included in the file extension criteria, then other similar zip file extensions like .z01, .z02 will also be marked. This is useful for clearing zip archives without having to specify every possible zip extension (e.g. from .z01 to .z99) in the file extension criteria.
Ignore files mentioned in issue comments and description	If checked, attachments mentioned in either their corresponding issue’s comments or description will be skipped and NOT be marked
Retain for (required)	The number of days a marked attachment will be kept until it is permanently deleted. Until then, it is possible to recover these attachments.

Note that an attachment must match all the above criteria of a rule in order to be marked.

3. Once you are ready, click on the Create Policy button

4. You will be able to see the newly created policy in the Housekeeping Policies page

Options

There are 4 action buttons possible for each policy

1. Info - for reviewing the details of the policy

2. Edit - for editing the policy

3. Run - for trigger a run of the policy on the associated projects

4. Delete - for deleting the policy

Exclude from Housekeeping is a System Policy which cannot be deleted. Hence some of the buttons are disabled.

Editing a Policy

1. Locate the policy you would like to edit.

   1. If you are a Jira admin:

      1. Go to Administrator > Issue Archiver

      2. Go to the Housekeeping Policies page

      3. Click on the Edit 🖊️ icon under Actions to edit the policy’s information

   2. If you are a project admin, you can only edit project policies that belong to projects you are an admin of

      1. Go to the project settings page for the project whose policy you want to edit

      2. From the project settings sidebar, click on Housekeeping Policy

      3. Click on ⚙️ Actions > Edit Project Policy

         1. If the Edit Project Policy option is not there, you will have to link the project policy to the project first

2. Edit the policy name, description and rules. You can also add more rules to the policy if needed.

3. Once you are ready, click on Save Policy to save your changes.

Deleting a Policy

When a policy is deleted, all projects linked to it will be unlinked. You will have to link each project to another policy if needed.

Only a Jira admin can delete policies.

1. Login as a Jira administrator

2. Go to Administrator > Issue Archiver

3. Go to the Housekeeping Policies page

4. Identify the policy which is not needed anymore and click on the Trash icon under Actions

5. Confirm the deletion of the policy

   

Designating a Policy as Default for New Projects

Only a Jira admin can designate a policy as the default for new projects

A global policy can be designated as the default policy for new projects. Any newly created projects will be automatically linked to this designated policy.
This does not change any existing project to policy links, so your existing projects will still use the policy they were using.

It is easier to implement an attachment housekeeping policy for new projects with the policy shared with the users from the start. This is how this feature can come in handy.
For existing projects, it might be more challenging to review all the existing issues.

You can identify this special global policy by the purple lozenge with the text “Default for new projects”

1. Login as a Jira administrator

2. Go to Administrator > Issue Archiver

3. Go to the Housekeeping Policies page

4. Click on the Info icon under Actions for the policy you want to set as the policy for new projects

5. Click on Set as policy for new projects

   

6. Click on the Confirm button to confirm the selection.