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COMMENT HISTORY
for Jira Data Center / Server
Comment History allows you to track all changes and deletions of comments in Jira (Jira currently only keeps the last change of a comment).
Sections:
Comment Tab
A comments history can be view directly from the Comment tab. The history of a comment can be viewed by clicking on the icon of a clock surrounded by a backward arrow icon, as shown below.
History of Comment
The history of the comment will be shown in a popup, as shown below.
Comment History Tab
The Comment History tab appears in the Activity section of an Issue. The Comment History tab shows existing comments, deletions and any historical changes to those comments grouped together to provide a linear history. The image below shows an example Comment tab and the corresponding Comment History tab.
The comments are ordered by the date of the parent comment. This ordering can be changed between ascending and descending by clicking the arrow on the right hand side of the Comment History tab.
NOTE: Deleted comments (that no longer appear in the Comments tab) show an empty comment area as they no longer have a comment.
Filtering
The Comment History comments can be filtered by one or both of:
Only Show Edited Comments
Hide Comment History
This hides all current comments that appear in the Comment tab but do not have any history.
This collapses all comments with history so that only the current comment is shown. For each collapsed comment the current comment can be clicked on to expand/collapse the comment and its history.
Clicking on the current comment, for any comment with a history, will either expand or collapse the history. An example of the different filters are shown below.
View Comment Privileges
The privileges for viewing individual comment is determined when the comment is created, updated or deleted. If the user does not have privileges to see the comment then it will not be shown.
Last Comment
The Comment History plugin allows you to show the last comment at the bottom of the detail section. By default, this is disabled and can be enabled through the admin screen (see the Configuration page for more details).
If alternate renderers (i.e. JEditor) are used for comments then these will be used to render the comment. Any restrictions applied are enforced for the comment display. For example if the user is does not have permission to see the comment then the lozenge Access Denied will be shown.
The last comment can also be searched for in the Issue filtering screen using JQL. There are two fields that can be used when searching: LastUpdatedComment (the last comment that was either created or updated) and LastCreatedComment (the last comment that was created). Use the ~ operator for searching (i.e. LastUpdatedComment ~ "Closed"). This is limited to the first 255 characters of the comment.
NOTE: If values can't be searched for a re-index may be required.
NOTE: When this feature is first used the LastUpdatedComment and LastCreatedComment fields will start to be populated with values. Searches will not be able to be used on old comments created/updated before this feature was used/added.
Configuration
Configuration for Comment History is found in the admin "System" section, "Comment History" (in the top sub-menu section). This screen allows you to configure the visibility of the history tab and the displaying of last comment.
History Tab
There are three different viewing permissions for the Comment History tab. These permissions are "To Admin users only", "Always" and "Never".
The "To Admin users only" means that only project admins will be able to see the Comment History tab. The "Always" option means that everyone will be able to see the tab, although individual viewing permissions still apply for each comment. The Never options hides the tab completely, this can be for cases when viewing history from the Comment tab is sufficient.
Last Comment
The Last Comment section allows you to specify if the Last Comment will be displayed (in the details area of an Issue) and what is classified as the last comment. The last comment will only be displayed if the "Show Last Comment" checkbox is checked.
If "Show Last Comment" is checked then you have the option of specifying if the last comment is defined as the last updated comment or the last created. For the last updated comment option, the creation of a new comment is classified as an update.
If the last comment is shown then two custom fields are automatically created (LastCreatedComment and LastUpdatedComment). These fields can then be used for searching for an Issue using JQL in the Issue filter screen. The custom fields are limited to 255 characters so only the first 255 characters are in these fields.
NOTE: If values can't be searched for a re-index may be required.
NOTE: When this feature is first used the LastUpdatedComment and LastCreatedComment fields will start to be populated with values. Searches will not be able to be used on old comments created/updated before this feature was used/added. The comment is only added to these fields if the comment is viewable to all users (secure comments are not searchable).
Rest Token
The REST Token is used for accessing the REST API. This token tells the REST API that you are authorised to access it.
REST API
Comment history offers a REST API for retrieving comments and their history for an Issue. There is a single endpoint with the following details:
Method: GET
Parameters:
issueKey - The key for the issue (mandatory)
userKey - The key of the user that will look at the comments (mandatory)
token - The REST API token from the configuration page
Return Type: JSON
HTTP Status: 200 for success and 400 for invalid params
The user key is used to identify which comments are returned if there is any security level set for a comment. An example of the returned data is shown below.
The information returned is a JSON array containing objects. The object and history objects contain the following fields:
body: The text of the comment
updateAuthorName: The name of the author
updateAuthorKey: The user key for the author
updatedDate: The text (in Jira format) for when the comment was updated
updated: The long value of the updated date
commentId: The Jira comment Id
deleted: If this comment is deleted. Only true when comment has no history
updatedAuthorUrl: The URL for the authors icon
history: A JSON array of objects containing the comments history. Same objects as this
id: The comment history id for the history. Not on the top level object
Examples
A comment with history would look:
[
{
"history":[
{
"body":"<p>Comment one, two</p>",
"updateAuthorName":"Paul Clark",
"updateAuthorKey":"admin",
"updatedDate":"Today 5:10 AM",
"updated":1505365825183,
"commentId":10102,
"id":9,
"deleted":false,
"updateAuthorUrl":"http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/fef32fe5aeac22c365167cb4764554e3?d=mm&s=32"
},
{
"body":"<p>Comment one</p>",
"updateAuthorName":"Paul Clark",
"updateAuthorKey":"admin",
"updatedDate":"Today 5:10 AM",
"updated":1505365817481,
"commentId":10102,
"id":8,
"deleted":false,
"updateAuthorUrl":"http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/fef32fe5aeac22c365167cb4764554e3?d=mm&s=32"
}
],
"body":"<p>Comment one, two, three</p>",
"updateAuthorName":"Paul Clark",
"updateAuthorKey":"admin",
"updatedDate":"Today 5:10 AM",
"updated":1505365832381,
"commentId":10102,
"deleted":false,
"updateAuthorUrl":"http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/fef32fe5aeac22c365167cb4764554e3?d=mm&s=32"
}
]
A comment with no history
[
{
"body":"<p>My first comment</p>",
"updateAuthorName":"Paul Clark",
"updateAuthorKey":"admin",
"updatedDate":"Today 5:10 AM",
"updated":1505365809226,
"commentId":10101,
"deleted":false,
"updateAuthorUrl":"http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/fef32fe5aeac22c365167cb4764554e3?d=mm&s=32"
}
]
A deleted comment with history
[
{
"history":[
{
"updateAuthorName":"Paul Clark",
"updateAuthorKey":"admin",
"updatedDate":"Today 5:11 AM",
"updated":1505365861886,
"commentId":10103,
"id":11,
"deleted":true,
"updateAuthorUrl":"http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/fef32fe5aeac22c365167cb4764554e3?d=mm&s=32"
},
{
"body":"<p>No history</p>",
"updateAuthorName":"Paul Clark",
"updateAuthorKey":"admin",
"updatedDate":"Today 5:10 AM",
"updated":1505365847143,
"commentId":10103,
"id":10,
"deleted":false,
"updateAuthorUrl":"http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/fef32fe5aeac22c365167cb4764554e3?d=mm&s=32"
}
]
}
]
A deleted comment with no history
[
{
"body":"<p>My first comment</p>",
"updateAuthorName":"Paul Clark",
"updateAuthorKey":"admin",
"updatedDate":"Today 5:10 AM",
"updated":1505365809226,
"commentId":10101,
"deleted":true,
"updateAuthorUrl":"http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/fef32fe5aeac22c365167cb4764554e3?d=mm&s=32"
}
]