Jira portal request pre populated issue

[Yatish Madhav]

Hi

I have a pre populated JSM request page link - particularly for description to add some context/guidance to add in the description before they submit.

Eg link: 

https://sitename.atlassian.net/helpcenter/our-it-service-management/portal/1025/group/1142/create/1671?customfield_12001=13505&customfield_12001%3A1=16484&description=here%3A+%0Ahere%3A+%0A%0Ahere%3A+%0A&labels=label-one&labels=label-two&summary=Test+summary

You will notice I populate summary, description, labels (2 added) and a cascade select field (customfield_12001) - hope this help others.

For the description (see underlined part), I use %0A to create line breaks BUT as soon as I type in the field it joins into a single line. See gif here

Please advise on how i can fix this?

Thank you

Yatish

[David Friedrich]

Hi @Yatish Madhav ,
I'm afraid there is not much you can do. 

It seems the issue you're seeing with the description field joining into a single line is a limitation of how the underlying Jira Description Field is designed to handle pre-populated text via URL parameters.

The URL encoding (%0A for a newline) works initially, but the default behavior of the Jira/JSM description field (which is a Text Area) when it contains pre-populated text is to strip out or normalize multiple line breaks as soon as the user focuses on or starts typing in the field. It treats the URL-encoded content as a simple string rather than formatted text.

I would advise to use separate fields on the request type to have the customer enter specific information separately. If you need/want you can copy that info via automation back to the description field - if that makes sense at all.

[Yatish Madhav]

Doh! Thanks for the reply @David Friedrich - Not the response I was hoping for :)

But it does make some level of sense. 

The idea of using separate fields did cross my mind but I was trying to stay away from that because we have had issues where people have the complaint that the more fields there are, the complex it is. Yes, even if it is 1 or 2 fields more. But if we require some information, I know it is no choice but to do that.

Hoping to see more responses if there is at all a way to achieve my original goal.

Also, slightly side topic, is there any idea on how i can format the text from the url query strings? I tried *, **, _, __, ``` but all of them do not render in the description as bold, italic or even code text. This would help a little more as a 2nd best solution if not the separate fields.

Thanks again
Yatish