Sapper Project Cleaner User Guide

A tidy workspace is a productive workspace.

As your organization grows, so does your Jira instance. Old, inactive projects clutter your workspace, confuse users, and degrade search performance. Sapper Project Cleaner is the automated solution to keep your Jira instance lean and tidy.

  1. Reduce Clutter: Automatically identify and hide projects that haven't been touched in months or years.
  2. Improve Focus: Help your teams find what they need faster by removing obsolete projects from dropdowns and search results.
  3. Save Time: Eliminate the manual drudgery of reviewing and archiving projects one by one.

Who is this for?

  • Jira Administrators: Who need to maintain system hygiene and performance without spending hours on manual cleanup.
  • Project Management Offices (PMO): Who need to enforce lifecycle policies and ensure the active project portfolio is accurate.
  • IT Managers: Who want to automate routine maintenance tasks.

Major Features & How to Use Them

1. Inactivity Dashboard

Get an immediate bird's-eye view of your Jira instance's health. The dashboard scans your entire instance and identifies projects based on their last activity date.

How to use:

  1. Navigate to Apps > Sapper Project Cleaner in the top navigation bar.
  2. The main dashboard will load, showing a list of all projects currently flagged as inactive.
  3. Use the "Clean up projects inactive for:" dropdown to filter the list by threshold (e.g., 3, 6, 12, or 24 months).
  4. Review the "Last Work Update" column to see exactly when work last occurred in each project.

2. Bulk Archiving

Archive dozens or hundreds of projects in a single click. Sapper Project Cleaner handles the heavy lifting, processing projects in safe batches to respect Jira's limits.

How to use:

  1. On the dashboard, review the list of inactive projects.
  2. Select specific projects using the checkboxes on the left, or use the "Select All" checkbox in the header to select all projects on the current page.
  3. Click the "Archive Selected" button.
  4. Confirm the action in the dialog box.
  5. Watch as Sapper archives the projects in real-time.

3. Automated Cleanup Schedule (Set & Forget)

Enforce a retention policy automatically. Configure Sapper to run in the background and archive projects that meet your criteria, ensuring your instance stays clean without manual intervention.

How to use:

  1. Locate the "Automated Schedule" panel on the right side of the dashboard.
  2. Toggle "Enable automatic cleanup" to ON.
  3. Configure your policy:
    • Run every: Choose how often the job runs (e.g., every 1, 3, or 6 months).
    • Inactive Threshold: Choose the criteria for archival (e.g., archive projects inactive for 12+ months).
  4. Click "Save Configuration".
  5. Sapper will now run automatically in the background. You can check the "Last run" status in this panel to see the results of the most recent cleanup.

4. Safety & Recovery

Sapper uses Jira's native "Archive" feature, which is non-destructive.

  • Data Preservation: Archiving does not delete data. Issues, comments, and attachments are preserved.
  • Reversibility: If a project is archived by mistake, a Jira Administrator can easily restore it from the "Archived Projects" list in Jira settings.

FAQ

Q: Does this delete my projects? A: No. It uses Jira's Archive feature. Projects are hidden and made read-only, but no data is lost. An administrator can restore them at any time.

Q: What counts as "activity"? A: Sapper checks the "Last Issue Update" time. If no issues in the project have been created, updated, or commented on within the threshold, the project is considered inactive.

Q: Can I exclude specific projects? A: Currently, you can manually uncheck projects before bulk archiving. For automated scheduling, we recommend ensuring critical long-term projects have some activity (like a periodic update task) or are managed via Jira's native permissions if they must remain active but untouched.

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