Issue Summary

Currently if a Jira Align user has the details panel of a work item open on-screen and another user makes a change to the same work item (either in Jira or Jira Align) - then when the 2nd user's update is saved into Jira Align (either by the user directly or by the action of the  Jira Connector) then the first user is not made aware that the work item has changed.

As the 1st user is then completely unaware of the change, It is then possible for the 1st user to make their own changes to that work item and save them which can result in data loss - especially if the fields being amended are text fields such as Description that may contain a lot of unique/important details

Notes:

• Its is not a complete loss of data as the Audit Log for the work item will contain a record of the lost changes and can be used to correct the values in the affected fields
• Jira seems to have two mechanisms to handle a similar problem: in that changes made in the background either show up in an automated refresh or do pop-up an on-screen warning indicating that you need to refresh
• Confluence also can warn of parallel changes.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Have 2 users (User A and User B) log onto Jira Align on different systems
2. Have User A open the details panel of a story or feature
3. Have User B open the details panel of the same story or feature
4. Have user B change the text in the Description and then save that change
5. Note that User A has not received any warning of the update and they will still see the Description as it existed before User B made their change
6. Have User A then enter completely different text into the Description and Save it
7. If both users then refresh or re-open the details panel, then User A's update will be the current Description and User B's update will be lost.

if this is being done with User B working in Jira, then User A's save operation needs to happen after the connector has synced the work item from Jira - the result in Jira Align is then the same and User A's save will also cause the data in Jira to be overwritten by the next sync from Jira Align to Jira. If user A makes the change before the sync from Jira takes place, then you may see the error "No changes were pulled in from Jira because there is a Jira Align update waiting to be pushed to Jira" in the audit log

Expected Results / Suggestions for fix

There are a few options:

• Have a pop up appear on the screen of anyone who has a details panel open for a work item and anything does a background change to the values in the user editable fields in that work item while the details panel is open
• Refresh an open details panel regularly  (however we would need to handle what happens if User A is part way through editing a Description such a refresh occurs  occurs )
• Do a check at the start of any attempt to save a work item that validates if the data in the work item has been altered since the details panel was opened (and then pop up a message indicating the problem to the user attempting to save)

Actual Results

Data loss can occur when User A saves as they have no visibility of User Bs changes,

Workaround

Currently there is no known workaround that will completely handle this behaviour although the audit log can be used to help the recovery of missing information 

It is possible to reduce the chances of losing an update by:

• Configure notification workflows for the work item types that may be affected - this may cause spam as can't be limited to just the user with the details panel open.
• Advising users not to keep details panels open for extended periods of time
• Refresh/Re-open any details panel that has been open for a while before making changes
• In a Jira Integrated environment try to limit most activity (for each level of of work item) to just one of the consoles (and use the other console for reporting and review activities