Automation Advanced

[Nicolas Mayans]

Hello community, how are you? I have a question. I have a field which takes as its value "Projects" of the instance but only one. They are asking me that every time the value is edited, it takes the previous value and is dumped into another field (like a history but shown in a field... if that's strange) it occurred to me to dump that data into a label type field.
I have two queries, the first is whether dumping the data into a label type field is a good idea.
I have to do the second in automation but in "more options" where code is already used, I understand that the update is used but my use with respect to this is a bit limited. I would like help regarding this.

[Kalyan Sattaluri]

Hmm, Copying it to labels will not give you history.

How will the old value be used in the future?

• Will be it used as part of JQL search?
• Will the search be against a particular value?
• Do you want to track when this field was changed along with value?

[Nicolas Mayans]

The idea is basically to record not only the times said field is edited but also the content they choose in it. The issue of counting the number of times it was edited is resolved, but the content that is changed is not. I hope to express myself well.

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @Nicolas Mayans 

Who are "they" that are asking you to make this change?

Assuming that they are some set of users of your Jira instance, try to get them to explain what problem they are trying to solve rather than having them dictate the change.

As administrators of Atlassian tools I believe it is part of our job to understand how our users use the system and to guide them towards the best solution for solving their needs. When users ask me to make a change, I always first respond by asking them to explain the problem they want to solve. 

Custom fields can impact the performance of the system. All fields also are visible to all users who are trying to construct filters, so a proliferation of custom fields without clearly defined need and use case should be discouraged.

So I would encourage you to have that discussion with the people asking you for this change.

[Nicolas Mayans]

Thank you very much for the answers!! In this case it is my boss who requests it. I don't make much sense of this either and I think I'm going to propose a different solution. A "Counter" field is already working that indicates how many times a particular field was edited, I think that when the number is very high they should go to the incident that is marked and analyze the log.
That's why I'm going to propose that to you. On the other hand, I am now intrigued to know how information could be dumped through automation or how to capture that information somewhere else. (this is for your own knowledge ha)

[Trudy Claspill]

You indicated that your custom field is a selection list. What type of values are available in that list?

Do the values include blank spaces? If so, you can't add them to a Labels type of field because Labels values can't include blank spaces.

If you retain all the values that had been selected for that field into one field, what will be done with that data? Will people just review it visually? Do they expect to be able to search based on it? Do they expect to be able to generate metrics based on it?

Any reporting and visualization needs must be considered when deciding how to retain the data.

[Nicolas Mayans]

The field brings all the jira projects, that is, their names. After that they require to see the information. But I think that the accountant thing I mentioned before will be enough for them.