Can someone help with the Creator field?

[James Malgieri]

We were doing an import for a customer, using a .csv file that was provided to us, which was an export from a different instance. In that .csv was a Creator field. At first, I thought it needed to be mapped to the Reporter field but then I saw a Reporter field in the .csv - so I thought "Creator must be a custom field".  Therefore, we mapped Reporter to Reporter and Creator to the custom Creator field.

Looking at the list view of the imported issues I was shocked to see 2 Creator fields - the custom Creator field and system Creator field that had my name in it for every imported Issue.

I re-did the import steps to see if there was a system Creator field that we should have mapped "Creator" into, but the only Creator field I could see was the Custom Creator field. However, there were 2 Creator fields staring me in the face in the List view of the Issues.

Looking up "Creator", I read a Reporter was always considered to be the Creator of an Issue. Then Jira added a modification  - if the name in the Reporter field was ever changed the original reporter name was copied into the Creator field. 

1. Am I correct about the origin of the Creator field?
2. How do I map the  csv's Creator field to a Jira Creator field I cannot see? It would seem that I cannot map to it.

Thanks For Your Inputs,

Jim

[Petter Gonçalves · Accepted solution]

Hello @James Malgieri

Thank you for reaching out.

Per your description, it seems you are trying to change the creator of your Jira issues when importing them from a CSV file.

Please, allow me to provide you with some context so we can better know we are on the same page here:

The Creator system field is used to identify what was the true creator of the issue since the reporter field can be modified. Basically, this field is used to map the issue log for security or support purposes, so it cannot be edited.

Answering your questions:

1. Looking up "Creator", I read a Reporter was always considered to be the Creator of an Issue. Am I correct about the origin of the Creator field?

Actually, the default value added to the reporter field is the own creator of the issue, however, both fields are not necessarily connected. You can change the reporter field to a different user if you want, however, the Creator of the issue can not be changed.

2. How do I map the  CSV's Creator field to a Jira Creator field I cannot see? It would seem that I cannot map to it.

As mentioned before, the Creator field is not editable and will always be added with the user that effectively created the issue. In CSV import, the creator is the user that is importing the issue to the application. We have a bug reported by mistake about this behavior that provides more context about this:

JIRA shows Issue Importer as Creator 

That being said, can you please provide us with the reason that you would like to change the creator of the issue? If you want this functionality for report purposes in the Jira User interface or change the user that shall interact in the issue, you can use the own Reporter field. The Creator field is basically used for support and report background, so it does not have an official role in Jira UI.

Let us know if you have any questions.

[James Malgieri]

Hi Peter,  Thank for the information. "Yes" we are both on the same page.

"can you please provide us with the reason that you would like to change the creator of the issue?"   Answer: I'm not going to change the system field Creator.

What happened is were doing a csv import for a client and one of the fields was custom field Creator.  At some point I think I did a full export and that's when I saw 2 Creator fields. One had my name in every field, the sys field, and the other was a list of people's names, the custom field.  That incident is what started my asking about the field.

A few weeks ago I asked about Jira created custom fields and was told they are mainly concerned with Epics. So finding out about Creator was very unusual to me.

It turns out this group I'm working with created a Creator field to track the actual person who created the issue - exatly as sys field Creator does. I suggested they changed the name from Cretor to something else so as to not confuse the 2 fields.

[Petter Gonçalves]

Hey James,

Thank you for the provided details. I'm glad to know you were able to identify what caused the confusion with the creator field.

If there's anything else we can help with, please let us know.