Dev docs: Anonymizing users
Jira admins can anonymize users and any related personal data that appears in Jira. The anonymization includes the following capabilities:
- Changing the user key and username of an existing user
- Anonymizing user profile
- Deleting or anonymizing personal data that appears in Jira
To let your app work with these new capabilities, we've created 4 new extension points that will inform your app about a user being anonymized and the involved actions.
If you need more info about how Jira admins anonymize users and what it involves, head to Anonymizing users.
Extension points & planned workflow
The following actions will help you better understand how the extension points fit into the anonymization flow.
Getting the data
After admin chooses a user to anonymize, Jira executes the
getAffectedEntitiesmethod in all of the extension points to display occurrences of user’s data and any related entities (e.g. Component Lead). Anonymization is always triggered for a single user. The process is a background, non-blocking task.Transferring the ownership
Some of the entities associated with a user can’t work properly with inactive (anonymized) users and will need to be transferred to a different user, chosen by the admin. For example, an inactive Component lead might break the Default assignee option. To transfer the ownership, Jira executes
OwnershipTransferHandler#update.Deleting/anonymizing the data
Jira executes
UserAnonymizationHandler#updateto delete or anonymize user’s personal data and entities that can be accessed only by the user (for example, private dashboards).Anonymize user keys and usernames
Jira executes
UserKeyChangeHandler#updateandUserNameChangeHandler#updateto update the user’s user key and username to their anonymized versions (e.g.admin -> JIRAUSER10100). These properties might be stored as foreign keys in the database.
List of extension points
You can find all of the extension points listed below in the com.atlassian.jira.user.anonymize package.
| Class | Description | Javadoc |
|---|---|---|
| This method finds and displays all occurrences of user's data and any related entities. It's used in all of the following classes. | Described in each extension point. |
| This method transfers the ownership of various entities to a different user. It simply changes the user key to a different one. | |
| This method deletes or anonymizes user's data. | |
| These methods change the user’s username and user key to their anonymized versions (e.g. | |
|
Anonymization: Errors
Jira collets exceptions shown by the extension points and presents them as warnings to the admin once the process finishes. Admins then have an option to retry, or rather complete, the failed anonymization. In this case, the extension points receive exactly the same data as they received the first time — the original and the anonymized value.
For a sample implementation of the extension points, you can refer to the jira-reference-plugin and study the implementation classes, such as ReferenceUserKeyChangeHandler and the corresponding entries in the atlassian-plugin.xml file. For example:
<user-key-change-handler key="ref-plugin-user-key-change-handler" class="com.atlassian.jira.dev.reference.plugin.user.ReferenceUserKeyChangeHandler" />Anonymization: Ensuing updates
We’ll update all of Jira’s native entities, like custom fields, comments, or work logs, even if they are created by your app.
We won’t introduce any changes to your Active Objects database tables or the extensions that Jira is unable to understand without your app, for example custom workflow transitions.