Let me tell you a wild story from my work life—a situation that went from routine to red alert real quick. It involves a couple of test tickets, a financial giant, a squad of auditors, and, no kidding, a divine whisper that quite literally saved me from what could’ve been a career-defining disaster.
You can’t make this stuff up.
Just Another Day, Just Some Test Tickets
It started off like any other day. The client—one of Africa’s largest financial institutions—wanted to test out some new automation rules in their Atlassian system. So, I did what any good admin would do: I spun up some test tickets in their instance.
Nothing special. Just basic tickets to trigger the rules and confirm everything was working as requested.
Once I confirmed that everything ran smoothly, I cleaned up after myself. I deleted the test tickets. Why leave junk lying around on a live system, especially in a regulated environment?
Seems logical, right?
Well, buckle up.
Enter: The Auditors
Months passed. Everything was quiet… until it wasn’t.
The client underwent one of their regular audits. And then the calls started.
Turns out, the auditors were combing through the entire system audit log and stumbled across some ticket IDs. Except—those tickets no longer existed in the system.
Poof. Gone.
That’s when the questions started flying in hot:
- “Where are these tickets?”
- “Why can’t we find them?”
- “Who deleted them, and what were they?”
Suddenly, I was center stage, and not in a good way.
Email Automation to the Rescue… Almost
Now, here’s where things started to look hopeful. I wasn’t relying on default notifications or being “old school.” Nope. I had proactively built an automation rule that emailed every ticket created in the system to my inbox. Smart, right?
So I dove into my email, pulled up the notifications, and boom—I had screenshots for almost every single test ticket. That should’ve been case closed.
Except it wasn’t.
The Two Missing Ghosts
Of course, there had to be a catch.
Out of all the tickets, two had slipped through the cracks. For some reason, those two didn’t trigger email notifications. So now, there was zero visible record of their contents.
And the audit team? They were not happy.
They flagged the absence of those tickets as a potential integrity issue. “How can we be sure you didn’t delete something sensitive or problematic to cover your tracks?”
That part stung. But I get it—in business, there’s no room for sentiments. Just facts.
Still, I knew I hadn’t done anything shady. I just needed proof.
The Automation Logs Clue
At this point, I was deep in detective mode. First, I crawled through the automation audit logs. Thankfully, Atlassian does keep track of automation triggers. And yes, I found logs showing those two tickets had triggered my automation rule.
Great news! …But not quite enough.
The automation log showed the action, not the contents of the ticket. It was like saying, “Yes, something happened,” but not being able to prove what happened.
Not good enough for auditors.
A Divine Whisper at Just the Right Time
And then… something clicked.
Out of nowhere, I got this nudge—call it instinct, intuition, or honestly, the Holy Spirit—to go looking for the main test tickets that I might’ve cloned.
Let me repeat: only those two tickets were created using the clone function—every other test was built from scratch. I don’t know why I cloned those two specifically, but now I was desperately hoping I could find the originals.
So I got to work. Manually.
I started plugging in ticket IDs, going back one by one, like a digital archaeologist digging through Jira’s tombs.
And then—bam! One ticket loaded.
It was a test ticket. One of those test tickets.
The Hidden Audit Trail
Now, here’s something many don’t realize: Jira keeps a full audit trail inside every ticket. Not just creation dates or status changes—everything.
And there it was. Clear as day. In the ticket history:
“Cloned by [me] on [that day].”
That one entry validated everything. It tied the deleted ticket back to its origin and proved that what I created—and later deleted—was part of a legit testing process.
Found the second one the same way.
Saved by Grace (and Ticket History)
I packaged those screenshots with a clear explanation and sent them over.
No fluff. No defensive tone. Just facts.
And then… silence.
Until the green light came.
The matter was closed. No interview. No escalation. Just a quiet thank you and a collective sigh of relief.
The Final Twist: I Was Right the First Time
Let’s not forget the cherry on top.
Turns out, my original automation rule—the one that sparked all this—was exactly what the manager wanted. The only reason I had to re-test with those two cloned tickets was because a non-technical service desk agent misunderstood the request and told me to update it.
The manager later reviewed the case and confirmed that my first automation was correct. In fact, they asked me to remove the second one.
Insert slow clap here.
Lessons From the Fire
So, what did I walk away with?
- Never delete without a trace—especially in audited environments.
- Use audit logs like a forensic tool—they might not show content, but they show the trail.
- Lean on automation, but don’t trust it blindly—always verify what’s captured.
- Listen to that quiet voice—sometimes, the answer isn’t in the logs but in the pause.
- And yes, God cares about Jira tickets too, apparently.
The Takeaway? Document Everything and Trust the Nudge
Honestly, this could’ve ended differently. But I believe grace showed up in the form of a whisper to check the audit trail. And that whisper saved me from a grilling I wasn’t ready for.
So the next time you’re knee-deep in configuration chaos or defending your workflow to an audit firm, remember: receipts matter, and sometimes, salvation comes in the form of a Jira ticket history.
Still Stay Clouding!
