Duplicates in Structure

Problem

I’m seeing duplicates in my structure and I want to delete them.

Solution

There can be multiple reasons for duplicate items being shown in a structure, such as:

• items are manually added by users twice;

• items are added once manually by a user, and a second time by a generator;

• items are added twice by two different generators;

• items are added by the same generator which is added to the structure twice.

If the duplicate is added manually, then it can be manually deleted by pressing the Delete button, or by clicking the 'X' on the toolbar at the top. But if there are generators in the structure, and there is no telling which duplicate is added by a generator and which is added manually, you would need to first copy and delete the generators - this way, the structure will appear empty, hence for the manually added work items, which can then be easily removed. After this, you can paste the copied generators back into the structure.

When an issue is added twice by two different generators, you can use the Remove Duplicates Filter: https://help.tempo.io/structure/latest/filtering-insert-extend-generator-duplicates
Note: this filter only works when a work item is added by an Insert generator, and by an Extend generator; it doesn't recognize duplicates of any other origin.

If the work item is added by two Extend generators or a Group generator, then you should either check your Jira setup to avoid double-linking items to two different parents or rebuild the structure in a different way to prevent duplicate creation in the first place. This can be achieved by building the hierarchy from the bottom to the top instead of from the top to the bottom, or limiting the scope of added items, for example.

Lastly, it is possible that the same generator - for example, an Extend generator - is added to the structure twice, and it is adding the same items to the structure twice. If so, manually deleting one of the two generators should cause the duplicates to disappear.