Record sick leave in Jira without exposing it

The problem

An out-of-office tool that shows “Sick” on a shared calendar discloses health information to everyone who can open it, and a free-text reason can say even more. In Jira Service Management, an absence note on a request could even reach a customer.

Step by step

1. Sensitive types. “Sick leave” ships marked sensitive; mark any other type that should stay private.
2. Reason optional. The reason is optional free text, at most 1,000 characters, by default visible only to the requester and an authorised approver.
3. Visibility. By default reasons appear only to the approver and the requester. Even if an administrator opts in to showing them to everyone, the reason of a sensitive type stays hidden.
4. Team view. For a sensitive type, colleagues see only “Absent”. The real type is shown to the person, their approver and Jira administrators, enforced on the server.
5. On issues. The hint and the warning comment show only the return date and the substitute, and on Jira Service Management requests the comment is always internal.
6. Delete when due. Set a retention period so finished absences are deleted automatically, and use “Delete all data of a person” for erasure requests.

What to watch out for

Everything stays in Forge storage inside your tenant and no personal data is written to logs. The warning comment names the absent person, the substitute and the end date, and remains on the issue after uninstalling; it can be removed like any other comment. Deleting a person’s data does not touch issues or comments in Jira.