Summary

This document provides a few hints on how to proceed when you find the error: “Unable to create issue: Reference to undeclared entity '<text snipped>'" on a Jira Align work item audit log brought from External System (Jira)

Environment

Jira Align

Diagnosis

• The issue happens at the work item level

  • In other words, this problem may happen with a single or a few work items and not necessarily impact the whole project

• Error message detected in work items audit log “Unable to create issue: Reference to undeclared entity '<text snipped>'"

Update made from Jira By External System on 8/31/2022 9:57:35 AM 
Unable to create issue: Reference to undeclared entity 'bull'. Line 69, position 50.

Cause

This problem is generated when references to Unicode characters are not translated to their corresponding character. It means there is some character sequence that is not being well converted or understood due to bad format. fixing this character should be enough to make the sync work again

Solution

On Jira, look at the affected item and search for the word that is listed on JA audit log (like in the previous example 'bull'). Notice that this can point to a formatting issue, in this example a bullet point, that needs to be fixed to solve the problem.