Re-Indexing after Major Configuration Changes

Once issues have been created, modifying the configuration of your JIRA instance can result in the search index becoming out-of-sync with JIRA's configuration. Configuration details such as the following can affect the search index:

• Field Configuration Schemes
• Custom Fields
• Plugins 
• Time Tracking

If you make changes to any of these areas of configuration, you might see the following message in your Administration view:

USERFULLNAME made configuration changes to 'SECTION' at TIME. It is recommended that you perform a re-index.

The above message means that configuration changes have been made to JIRA, but have not yet been reflected in the search index. Until JIRA's search index has been rebuilt, it is possible that some search queries from JIRA will return incorrect results. For example:

• If a plugin containing a custom field is enabled after being disabled, search queries which specify that the custom field should be empty will return no issues instead of all issues.
• If a Field Configuration is modified by altering the visibility of a particular field, search queries which specify that field may also return erroneous results (depending on which field is being modified and what query is being executed).
• etc

The way to resolve the discrepancy is to rebuild JIRA's search index . This can take anywhere from seconds to hours, depending on the number of issues and comments in your JIRA instance. While re-indexing is taking place, your instance will be unavailable to all users. For these reasons, it is recommended that you:

• Make all your necessary configuration changes in one go before starting the re-index process; and
• Start the re-index process in a time period of low activity for your instance.