Hiding an active Custom Field

[Moshe Yakobovich]

Hi,

I have a custom field that I am populating from my Forge extension via API. I need it since there are some things not supported in Jira that I want to do, so I'm doing it from a spreadsheet. The thing is, I don't want this field to be displayed in the UI, no one should care about it - but if I hide it or remove it's association, I cannot set the value. I think there's a way to put it in a different tab / panel, but I don't want that as well.

Is there a way to keep the custom field alive but not to display it in the screen? 

Regards,

Moshe

[John Funk · Accepted solution]

Hi Moshe - you should be able to leave it on the Create screen, but remove it from the other screens. 

[Moshe Yakobovich]

Thanks for your quick response.

I tried removing the associated screen (common for many projects) and keep another one. Although it still allows me to query the field and see it on the JQL results, updating the field fails (the API is not able to update the field, I get 400 error code). Any other idea?

[John Funk]

Ah, I forgot you were doing this through the API. So if you add the field back to the Edit screen, then the API works? If so, that's just what you will have to do. And yes, I would create another tab called System or something like that. People are less likely to click on it then. 

[Kelly Arrey]

Another hack line of attack which you could try if you really want to hide it is to:

• put the field on a separate screen
• associate the screen with one or more workflow transitions
• trigger the transition via the API

[Moshe Yakobovich]

Thanks for the replies. I guess I just hoped it's a simpler thing. Since it's not a critical issue anyway, I will consider what's best here by the effort for value I guess.

[John Funk]

Can you describe exactly what you are trying to do? You said Jira couldn't do some things so you are using a spreadsheet. What things are you trying to do that Jira can't do? 

[Moshe Yakobovich]

For example, charts on custom fields that are not a closed list, or some statistics where I need calculated values (sometimes a little complex calculations)

[John Funk]

So, you are wanting to group those values? Or show counts by values that are not a closed list? 

[Moshe Yakobovich]

It's actually both. But as I said I'm also doing other things on them (even if those might be supported by some paid extensions, it's very easy to manipulate the data on a spreadsheet).

[John Funk]

True - Jira is not very good at data manipulation.  :-)