How to Report a Bug

Created by BradleyW (Unlicensed)
Last updated: May 30, 2018 by Christine Di Bella
min read

(If you want to make a feature request, follow the instructions in How to Request a New Feature)

The ArchivesSpace team encourages all users of the ArchivesSpace application to report any bugs encountered during use of the application. 

Before reporting a bug,

  • determine that the bug has not already been fixed by updating to the latest release and attempt to replicate the problem in it;
  • review the unresolved bugs logged in the ArchivesSpace development project to see if the bug has already been reported, in which case you can indicate in the report that you also encountered the bug; and, if desirable,
  • post a message to the ArchivesSpace Users Group list, asking for help in understanding and verifying the bug you encountered. To post to the list you will need to be staff of an ArchivesSpace member organization.


Once you have determined the bug has not been previously reports, login to your JIRA account, or sign up for one on JIRA. Then you can file the bug report, in one of two ways:

1)      Directly in JIRA (select Create issue; select ArchivesSpace New Workflow as the project)

2)      Indirectly via the “Send Feedback or Report a Problem” option appearing at the bottom of pages in the ArchivesSpace application in many installations. That link will bring you to the directions on this page. If that link is not there or not pointing to the current address, go directly to JIRA and select Create to create an issue, as in #1.


An actionable bug report requires the following:

1)      Issue Type identified as “Bug”

2)      Summary description of the problem encountered that includes a brief statement of the problem, for example:

      • Component order shifts after edit and save;
      • Wrap and tag editor does not work;
      • Resource title displays with escaped characters;

3)     In the Description section, describe the steps leading up to when the problem was encountered, how the problem behaves, and the desired behavior instead.  Attaching screenshots or other documents that help to explain the problem are highly encouraged.

4)     Assign a priority according to the severity of the issue.  The rankings range from the trivial (lowest) to blocker (most severe).

5)     Whenever possible, please assign relevant labels.  Example: accessibility, digital_objects, agents, etc.

6)      Affects Version/s is the version of the ArchivesSpace application in which the problem was encountered


The other data fields will be used internally by the Program staff and can be disregarded.