JIRA: to close or to resolve?

Question

You can reopen both a resolved and a closed issue in JIRA. What\'s the practical difference? (besides requiring different permissions to resolve/close issues e.g. if QA is invol

Answer 1

Typical issue workflow is the person working on the bug resolves it, and the person who opened the bug is the one who decides if the resolution is acceptable. If it is, they close it. If not, they re-open the bug for further discussion/work/wrangling.

The exception to this is when a bug is a duplicate, often the person who is working on the bug realizes that it's a duplicate, and can then close the bug themselves as a duplicate. Or maybe they resolve it as a duplicate, the opener agrees, and closes it.

IIRC, JIRA has a pretty flexible (if complicated) workflow, so you can setup any process you feel is appropriate for your team and the groups who will be submitting issues.

Edit: I realize I didn't actually address reopening closed issues. In my experience, it often doesn't happen because people search the issue system for existing bugs that exhibit the same behavior as what they are seeing. And that's if you are lucky, quite often bugs get opened without any investigation into existing issues.

That being said, a QA or field person will go "I remember that bug. Dammit, they said it was fixed" some time after the original owner closed it. At this point, they may reopen the old bug, or create a new one and link to the original. My preference is for there to be a new bug and to link, rather than reopen. The reason is that the "new" issue may exhibit the same behavior, but might have a completely different cause. This is often the case when really generic error log messages get spit out.

Answer 2

• Resolved is usually "Ready for Testing"
• Closed is usually "It worked"

You may also want to see this blog post for more details about how JIRA uses the Resolved/Closed states and the system Resolution field.

Answer 3

The way we do it, against our external customers, is when we have billed the the customer we close the incident (this can be just as well a problem or a SED-task), until then, the incident simply remains resolved.

I believe you should not re-open a closed incident, that one is the books, while a resolved incident you can re-open.

By the way, it would be wise to read what ITIL says about this. As said on this page:

Rules for re-opening incidents

Despite all adequate care, there will be occasions when incidents recur even though they have been formally closed. Because of such cases, it is wise to have pre-defined rules about if and when an incident can be re-opened. It might make sense, for example, to agree that if the incident recurs within one working day then it can be re-opened - but that beyond this point a new incident must be raised, but linked to the previous incident(s). The exact time threshold/rules may vary between individual organizations - but clear rules should be agreed and documented and guidance given to all Service Desk staff so that uniformity is applied.

Answer 4

Usually, Dev/Resource should Resolve and only reporter can close.

Answer 5

I think CLOSED is a status and RESOLVED is a state.

1. An issue can be RESOLVED as DONE, NOT REPEATABLE, or CANCELED (or any statuses you choose ... it's set in the workflow rules)
2. RESOLUTION can be used in JQL pretty easily too ... e.g. PROJECT = DBA and RESOLUTION is EMPTY
3. RESOLVED Issues also show up with strike through characters when listed in other issue comments or links
4. At the DB level, RESOLUTION DATE is a separate field and also shown in the DATE section of an issue

I think there is a bunch of reporting available for RESOLVED issues as well.

Bottom line... RESOLVED can mean 'no longer active' for any number of reasons and it has special functionality in JIRA. CLOSED is just another status.

Answer 6

You (usually) cannot edit nor log work against a Closed issue, and you should take this into consideration.

My advice is: only testers Close