How to deal with 2 fields with the same name?

[Sintia Pulido Sardiñas]

Context:

I am building an automation in a project and am getting the following error code:

Found multiple fields with the same name and type: 

Start date (com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.custom field types: date picker)

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Issue:

After some digging, I realized we have two Start date fields. One is the "out of the box" option, and the other is a custom field that another team member made for their projects. I want to rename the custom field but don't want to break anything. From our understanding, they don't have any automation or scripts calling the custom field. However, the team member who originally built that project is no longer with the company, and the current owner doesn't have an in-depth understanding of Jira Service Management.

Request:

I want to know what issues might happen if I rename the custom field. Could I swap the custom field to the "out-of-the-box" one without breaking their project? Any recommendations on handling this situation while making a few project changes would be appreciated. Our company is very new to using Jira, and we don't have much internal knowledge yet.

[Nikola Perisic · Accepted solution]

Welcome to the community @Sintia Pulido Sardiñas !

Do you already have some issues that were created with the Start date value? Also, when you rename your custom field, the data that was stored in your custom field will not be lost.

[Nikola Perisic]

To add, you can distinguish your custom fields from your system fields when you see the LOCKED tag by the name of the field. LOCKED indicates that the field is a system field created by Jira.

[Sintia Pulido Sardiñas]

Yes, we already have issues created with the custom start date. Additionally, we can identify which field is the custom one, but the automation I am trying can't.

[Nikola Perisic]

I'd suggest renaming your custom field then, otherwise, you will keep getting the same errors.