Problem

After upgrading a JIRA instance that has JIRA Agile 6.3.x installed to JIRA Software 7 or newer, all issues are no longer correctly ranked. 

The entire upgrade process is logged into the atlassian-greenhopper.log.  The following entries show the Lexorank migration outcome:

2016-06-01 14:43:10,371 JIRA-Bootstrap INFO      [com.atlassian.greenhopper.upgrade] =========================================
2016-06-01 14:43:10,387 JIRA-Bootstrap INFO      [com.atlassian.greenhopper.upgrade] Starting upgrade task (buildNumber=43) : Force Sprint Marker Migration
...
2016-06-01 14:43:11,642 JIRA-Bootstrap INFO      [com.atlassian.greenhopper.upgrade] =========================================
2016-06-01 14:43:11,798 JIRA-Bootstrap INFO      [com.atlassian.greenhopper.upgrade] =========================================
2016-06-01 14:43:11,798 JIRA-Bootstrap INFO      [com.atlassian.greenhopper.upgrade] Starting upgrade task (buildNumber=44) : Migrate to LexoRank field
2016-06-01 14:43:12,720 JIRA-Bootstrap DEBUG      [com.atlassian.greenhopper.performance] [LexoRank] Created 1 custom fields corresponding to the old fields (907 ms)
...
...
LexoRank Upgrade Outcome
========================================================
Migrated Old Rank Fields  		: 1
Migrated Lexo Rank Fields 		: 1
Actual Old Rank Fields    		: 2
Actual Lexo Rank Fields   		: 1
Total Issues in System    		: 8255
Issue migrated for LexoRank CF[Rank]	: 0
Issue rank rows for LexoRank CF[Rank]	: 8255

Diagnosis

Environment

• This has so far been affecting upgrades from JIRA Agile 6.3.11.0 version (version reference in Marketplace) to JIRA Software 7.1.7. However, it may possibly occur for any Agile 6.3.x to Agile 7.x. 

• As per log entries above, the migration outcome shows that 0 issues have been migrated for LexoRank:

  LexoRank Upgrade Outcome
  ========================================================
  Migrated Old Rank Fields  		: 1
  Migrated Lexo Rank Fields 		: 1
  Actual Old Rank Fields    		: 2
  Actual Lexo Rank Fields   		: 1
  Total Issues in System    		: 8255
  Issue migrated for LexoRank CF[Rank]	: 0
  Issue rank rows for LexoRank CF[Rank]	: 8255

  In the example above, there were 8255 issues in the system, while zero issues were migrated. 

Cause

The real cause is unknown.

The upgrade task to migrate old rank values to the new LexoRank system was not completed successfully, and the suspect is that the previous version of JIRA Agile is too old, causing hiccups in the process. 

In JIRA Agile 6.4 and above, the ranking system has been changed to support cluster-safe rank operations on JIRA Data Center. The new rank system (called 'LexoRank') is stored in a lexicographical order of strings to determine the ranking of issues. Hence an upgrade task needs to be run to migrate old rank values to this new system.

Resolution

If the upgrade has already been done on a production instance, then the recommendation is to roll-back the JIRA upgrade. At the moment there hasn't been a reliable method to re-trigger the upgrade task to re-try the migration. 

To fix the problem, you will need to upgrade the JIRA Agile add-on on your JIRA instance first to the latest compatible version, before performing the upgrade to JIRA Software 7.x. 

For example, if you currently run JIRA 6.2.7 and JIRA Agile 6.3.11.0, first upgrade JIRA Agile to 6.6.80 as per the JIRA Agile versions list on Marketplace, and then upgrade the entire JIRA instance to JIRA Software 7.x.

After you upgraded the JIRA Agile add-on, double-check the upgrade tasks if the LexoRank migration was successful. You should be able to see something like this:

LexoRank Upgrade Outcome
========================================================
Migrated Old Rank Fields  		: 1
Migrated Lexo Rank Fields 		: 1
Actual Old Rank Fields    		: 2
Actual Lexo Rank Fields   		: 1
Total Issues in System    		: 8255
Issue migrated for LexoRank CF[Rank]	: 8255
Issue rank rows for LexoRank CF[Rank]	: 8255

Contact Atlassian Support if you are unsure whether the LexoRank migration was successful.