Custom Fields merge for dashboard

[Jason Newman]

Hi,

We would like to create a stat report that shows "Associated Business Partners" across 3 projects. 
I have created a filter to be able to report across all 3 boards BUT
Because each board has its own custom field titled Associated Business Partners, I only return results from one board. 
Each Associated Business Partner returns the results from its associated project.

Is there a way to merge the custom fields in the admin settings so that I can have 1 report for 1 custom field across 3 projects?

[Gorka Puente _Appfire_]

Hi @Jason Newman ,

If you are up for a commercial app, we provide Dashboard Hub for Jira. This app provides templates to create reporting dashboards, 70 gadgets, 10 product integrations, ability to share externally the reports... And you can create custom charts with the JQL Custom Charts gadget, by default, the results the custom fields with the same name are merged. Give it a try a let me know how that works!

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Jason Newman 

Not yet with out-of-the-box features.

There is an in-development suggestion to allow sharing custom fields across team-managed projects, as do company-managed projects.  Please watch/vote for this item to see progress: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JSWCLOUD-20905

Until that is implemented, a couple of options are to investigate the Atlassian Marketplace for apps to support better reporting, or to export/report the issues outside of Jira.

Kind regards,
Bill

[Jason Newman]

Thank you, any reporting suggestions that you are aware of in the marketplace?

[Bill Sheboy]

Sorry, I do not have any reporting recommendations from the marketplace.  We use very few team-managed projects and so have not needed to work-around this.

I thought of another work-around: automation rules and labels:

• create an automation rule in each project, such that when your custom field changes it removes/adds a matching Label value
• change your reporting to look for the relevant Labels with JQL, as that field would be shared across the entire Jira site for all projects

[Jason Newman]

Trick with Lables, is that the enterprise will take artistic advantage of the category and start to use it for unintended uses. 
Also each Project has 6 fields that I would like to report on. 

So essentially 6 reports, that look across 3-4 projects. 
But I appreciate the thought, as automation is such a large beast that for me being new, I have not thought of using it much. 

[Bill Sheboy]

Gotcha...so perhaps investigating marketplace reporting and dashboard addons would be a better fit.  Some of the marketplace dashboard gadgets may overcome team-managed custom field limitations by matching on value/text and not on custom field ID.

[Jason Newman]

Correct, I found a free app in Beta that is working on this exact fix. It has the ability in JIRA native fields, but not custom fields YET. They are building it out, but it seems to be a solid reporting app. 

Smart Board
https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1226691/smart-boards?hosting=cloud&tab=overview

[Jason Newman]

Or another way of saying this:
Every time I create a context field, even if the name is the same, it creates a new item associated with the project which prevents me from reporting for the custom field across multiple projects. 

I don't mind the multiple names if I can pull one report. 

If I can't pull one report, then the solution is to merge the context fields somehow? possibly in a scheme?

I'm a self-taught rookie here and not familiar at all with JQL