Missing status in workflow affecting Agile report

Problem Definition

Currently, in JIRA Software if a status is removed from the workflow used by the board, the following will happen:

1. Status removed (Eg: Open)
2. Open status is used by issues when a Sprint is ended.
3. Admin updated the workflow to remove the Open and replace it with To Do status.
4. The issues with Open status when the Sprint was ended will not be shown in any of the report in the board.

This happens because JIRA Software checks whether the status which was set for the issues when the Sprint was completed. If the status is removed from workflow, JIRA unable the issues in the report due to missing dependencies (status).

Suggested Solution

There are few ways to improve the existing behaviour:

1. Show the data correctly regardless whether any of the status is removed from the workflow.
2. Inform users on workflow change/removal of status for JIRA Software associated projects. This will prompt user to update the workflow to include the status which was removed previously.
3. In reports, show users data that is not included in the sprint reports. Eg : Table of Not belonging to any column and its missing statuses.

Workaround

1. Update the workflow used by the affected issues to include the status which was set to the issues when the Sprint was completed.
2. The steps to add the status in the workflow is done to make sure that the status appears back in the board so the admin can map it.
3. Once it's mapped, the issues will be listed back in the report. If they do not want to have this status in their workflow, they can remove them back.
4. Even when the status is removed from the workflow, the statuses will still be listed in the column management page (with exclamation mark).