Is it better to pick specific projects or use global context when creating a Custom Field.

[James Woyciesjes]

For Jira Cloud: When you create a new context, outside the default, you can select the issue types or all issues as well as global context or specific projects.

What would be the reason to select specific projects over the global context?

I am mainly referring to:

- overall system performance - searching, reporting, speed to render information, etc.

I was told that in server/data center, it is recommended to select specific projects due to system performance.

[František Špaček _MoroSystems_ · Accepted solution]

Hi,

yes, it is recommended to specify context for custom fields whenever possibly. Altought the direct hit on the performance in cloud is debatable as cloud is automatically adding resources as instances grow in usage. But no hardware is limitless so this is easily one of the best ways to keep search index as small as possible and thus make searching little bit faster.

In the end it comes down to number of issues and custom fields you have. Are you asking about this issue in instance with 50 users and 3k issues? You wont see any effect at all. Are you asking whether use this technique in instance with 5k users and hundreds of thousands of issues? Definetely yes.

[John Funk · Accepted solution]

Hi James,

It is definitely best to have at least one issue type and/or project in the context instead of global context. The more custom fields you have with a global context, the more performance problems you will have.