PCJ-Error about orphaned custom field values

Owned by Camilo Galleguillos (Unlicensed)
Nov 21, 2022

Problem

When importing a configuration, it halts with this error message:

There are issues whose values in custom field XXXX will be orphaned if custom field config scheme YYYY is deleted. Abort load.

This message  means that:

  • In the new configuration custom field XXXX does not have a config scheme (also known as custom field context) called YYYY, so this config scheme would have to be deleted in order to apply the new configuration to the target instance.
  • The app has detected that config scheme YYYY contains options that are actually used as values for custom field XXXX in some issues.
  • So, if the config scheme YYYY were deleted those issues would lose their values for custom field XXXX. In order to avoid this loss of data, the app aborts the load and shows that message.

Solutions

The fix to this problem depends really on what you want to do with the new configuration.

The straightforward fix would be to add config scheme YYYY to custom field XXXX in the origin so that the new configuration can be imported without needing to remove that config scheme. Then, export the configuration and try the load again. Configuring a custom field from Jira docs explains how to add a new config scheme (or custom field context) to a custom field. You need not worry about the options contained by this new config scheme. If the options used in the target instance do not exist in the new config scheme, the app disables them but does not remove them, so that existing data is preserved.

Other options that would minimize the occurrence of this problem: