Both appear on a work item, in the History+ tab (or the Change history panel).
Comment history
Jira keeps no record of comment edits or deletions. When someone edits a comment, the earlier text is gone, and when someone deletes one, the whole thread entry disappears. This app keeps its own versions.
What it captures
| Event | What is stored |
|---|---|
| Comment added | The text, the author and the time |
| Comment edited | A new version with the new text, the person who edited it and the time |
| Comment deleted | The versions already stored, marked as deleted, with who deleted it and when |
- Comment text is stored as plain text, up to 20,000 characters per version. So a name written or @mentioned in a comment stays as it was, even after that person’s account is closed or their name changes.
- Up to 50 versions are kept per comment. The original is always kept; the oldest edits in between are dropped first.
- An edit that does not change the text is ignored, so automation that touches a comment does not fill the history with duplicates.
- If a comment is deleted and the app had never seen it, the text from the delete event is stored as a single version, so the deletion is still on record, as long as comment history is on for that project.
- A comment’s stored history is kept under about 200,000 characters. A very long edit chain drops its oldest edits first, and in the rare case where even two versions are too big, their text is shortened with a note saying so.
What it looks like
Open a work item, then History+ → Comment history. Each comment is shown as Original, Edit 1, Edit 2 and so on, each with its author and timestamp, and a Deleted marker with the date where it applies. Work items with no captured edits say so.
Comment history is free: it stays available on every work item even without an active subscription.
If a work item is deleted and later restored, the comments the app captured can be re-posted onto the restored item. See Deleted items.
Comment history is only shown to people who can open the work item in Jira, and it follows Jira’s comment restrictions. The app checks as you, on every request: a comment still on the work item is shown only if Jira shows it to you, and a deleted one only if you are in the project role or group it was restricted to.
Viewer history
Viewer history answers “who has opened this work item?”.
| Aspect | Behaviour |
|---|---|
| Source | Jira’s own view events |
| Stored per view | The Atlassian account ID and the time |
| Repeat views | One view per person per work item is recorded at most every 10 minutes |
| Depth | The most recent 500 views per work item; older ones drop off |
| Display | Open a work item, then History+ → Viewed by, newest first, each person by name (hover for the account ID) |
No page content, search terms or navigation path is recorded. Only that an account opened that work item at that time.
The Viewed by tab is shown only to people allowed to use the viewer-history feature, on a site with an active subscription, and only for work items they can open.
Switching them off
Both features are on by default. A Jira administrator controls them at Settings → Marketplace apps → UndoTrail → Tracking:
| Control | Effect |
|---|---|
| Keep comment history | Untick to stop storing comment versions site-wide |
| Keep viewer history | Untick to stop recording views site-wide |
| Exclude these projects | Comma-separated project keys, for example HR, LEGAL. Neither comment nor viewer history is recorded for those projects |
Deleted-item snapshots are not affected by any of these settings; they keep working.
Switching a feature off stops new records being written. It does not delete records already stored. To remove those, use Erase captured tracking data, below.
Erasing captured records
A Jira administrator can remove what has already been captured, for example to answer a data-protection request, at Settings → Marketplace apps → UndoTrail → Erase captured tracking data:
- Under What to erase, choose Comment history and view records, Comment history only or View records only.
- Under Project key (blank = all projects), type one project key, or leave it empty for the whole site.
- Press Erase…, check the question the app asks, then press Yes, erase.
The app reports how many stored records it removed. Erasing cannot be undone, and new activity is still captured unless you also switch tracking off. What a one-project erase covers is under Limitations.
Privacy considerations
Viewer history in particular deserves a decision before you leave it on.
- Tell people. Recording who read what is monitoring. In many workplaces, and under UK and EU data protection law, staff should be told what is recorded and why. Add it to your internal privacy notice.
- Have a purpose. “Who saw this HR case?” is a purpose. “Who is reading the most tickets?” is performance monitoring, and needs a different conversation.
- Exclude sensitive projects. HR, legal, security and any project holding special-category data are the obvious candidates for the exclusion list, for both features.
- Comment history preserves what someone chose to remove. If a colleague edits out a phone number or an angry sentence, the earlier version is still readable by anyone who can open that work item. That is the point of an audit trail, and it is also a risk. Consider whether every project needs it.
- Access follows Jira. Neither record is visible to anyone who cannot already open the work item, and viewer history can be restricted further to named groups.
- What is stored is minimal. Comment versions hold text, author and time. View records hold an account ID and a time, nothing else.
- The app sends nothing outside Atlassian. Both records live in Forge storage on your own site. The app has no egress permission. See Permissions and security.
- You can erase them. An administrator can erase captured records for one project or the whole site, as described above.
- Uninstalling ends access to them. Uninstalling the app ends its access to its storage, including every comment version and view record. Atlassian keeps that storage for 28 days after uninstall, then deletes it. A reinstall starts empty. To have it reconnected to your earlier data, contact us promptly: Atlassian must receive the request within 21 days of uninstalling.
Limitations
- Restricted comments the app can’t see are not captured. Jira sends the app no event for a comment restricted to a project role or group that leaves out the app. Add the app’s users to that role or group if you need those comments captured.
- Neither feature is retrospective. Comment versions and views are recorded from the moment the app is installed and the feature is on. Earlier edits and views are not recoverable.
- Erasing works by project or for the whole site. There is no way to erase the records about one person only.
- Erasing view records for a project covers the work items currently in that project that the app can read. View records for a work item that has since been deleted or moved to another project, or that sits at a security level that leaves out the app, aren’t removed by a project erase; a site-wide erase removes them.
- A very large erase can stop part way. Running it again carries on from what is left.
- Comment history stores plain text, so formatting, mentions and embedded media in a comment are not preserved as they appeared.
- A comment edited more than 50 times keeps 50 versions: the original and the most recent 49.
- Views are debounced at 10 minutes, so the count is “viewing sessions”, not clicks.
- Exclusions are by project key. There is no per-work-item or per-issue-security-level exclusion.