Alternatives to creating dozens of text custom fields?

[David Stallard]

We need to create a form where users can request a build which can contain anywhere from 1 to 77 parts, and for each part the user will specify a Git branch to build from.

At a basic level, this can be done by creating 77 custom fields of type Text Field (Single Line) so that the Jira screen looks like this:

App1:    branch name   

App2:    branch name   

etc.

But that is less than ideal for several reasons, not the least of which is that we know it is a performance best practice to keep your number of custom fields down whenever possible.

It is possible for every app to have a different value for branch name (or to be blank if that app is not to be included in the build), so we can't have a generic "Branch Name" custom field which is filled out once and applied to all designated apps.

One possible alternative would be to create a multi-line text field which has default text representing every app like above, and the user would just edit the pre-existing text to specify branch names for any apps they want built.  However, there is a risk of low accuracy with this approach because users are free to change the template which we would provide as default text for the field.

The suggestion from the requester, who is not aware of the technical possibilities in Jira, was to have a big checklist and next to each item in the list have a text box for them to enter the branch name if they checked that box.  But as far as I know, this isn't possible unless there happens to be a plugin available which provides such a custom issue type (or if we were to develop our own custom field plugin, but that would be new territory for us to explore so probably not a timely solution).

Are there any suggestions on how we can gather this info in Jira without having to create several dozen new custom fields?  Currently this info is gathered via spreadsheet, which is what we want to move away from.

[Julie d_Antin _Elements_ · Accepted solution]

Hi @David Stallard ,

I work for Elements, and we have an app which might work for you: Elements Checklist.

You can create advanced checklists with options like select lists. For example, you could create a Checklist that looks like this:

I've created this example checklist with two attributes: the first one a select list with the the names of the apps, and a second attribute that is a text field where you can enter a branch name.

Users could add as few or as many entries in the Checklist as they need, depending on their build.

If the branch names are rather set, you could also create them as a select list.

Hope that helps!

Laura

[Jeff Turner]

Perhaps a Javascript custom frontend onto a standard multiline text field? That can be done with ScriptRunner:

https://scriptrunner.adaptavist.com/4.3.5/jira/behaviours-conversions.html

It can also be done with plain Javascript, using a library like https://arendjr.github.io/selectivity/. I once worked for a company that let employees choose their workstation from a select list with a huge set of preconfigurations. So if you wanted a server specifically with 16Gb RAM, you had to look through 150+ options to find the 10 that had 16Gb RAM. With a bit of Javascript we turned Jira's plain select list into a list that dynamically narrowed down to options matching what the user typed.