Selecting a specific custom field as a column in a Filter

[Andy Lutz]

Hello Folks!

I have several Jira Product Discovery (JPD) projects set up, and when you create a field in that product, behind the scenes a custom field is created in Jira that can be queried via Filters/Issue Search.

Across my projects, I've used the same name for several fields, so that PMs moving between projects have consistency. For example, there's a "Product Strategy" field that exists across 3 different JPD projects. This in turn creates 3 separate custom fields, that look something like this:

• cf[123] = "*Project Strategy" in Project #1
• cf[456] = "*Project Strategy" in Project #2
• cf[789] = "*Project Strategy" in Project #3

The tricky part is that when you go to select a column in Filters/Issue search, it appears that Jira collapses these 3 separate custom fields into one selectable entry:

I assume this is done to hide from users the fact that the "*Product Strategy" column is really 3 separate custom fields.

This causes 2 issues:

1. Sorting: Say that you try to sort the "*Project Strategy" column in the issues table. Behind the scenes, Jira will only sort on one of these custom fields (I'm not sure what logic is used to select the custom field that's used for sorting). So say Jira uses cf[123] to sort, if I'm searching for the issues in Project #2, the column doesn't sort because Project #2 uses cf[456] for "*Project Strategy".
2. Exporting: Similar to sorting, if choose the "Export CSV (filter fields)", Jira ends up exporting all 3 of the "*Project Strategy" fields in the CSV (whereas if I'm working with Project #2, I just want to have cf[456] be exported).

As a result, I'm wondering if there's any way to select the specific custom field as a column in the table in Filter/Issue Search?

Thanks!

Andy

[Michael Wohlgemuth · Accepted solution]

Greetings!

There is no way to choose a specific field by customfield ID as a column.

In general, I would strongly advice against using duplicate field names. The issues you listed are only issues because several fields have the same name.

If a field should hold values that can be labeled as "Project Strategy", then this one field should hold said values for all projects imo. Setup different contexts if the specific values need to differ from project to project.

Then again, add a grain of salt, because i fail to understand what the following means (to clarify, one field called "Project Strategy" provided in all necessary projects would achieve the same, if i understood it remotely correctly - so i assume i did not):

PMs moving between projects have consistency

regards

[Andy Lutz]

Thank you Michael for the context, that makes sense. The tricky part here is that custom fields with Jira Product Discovery work a bit different at the moment that traditional custom fields.

Jira Product Discovery uses team managed projects, which don't have the option to share traditional custom fields. Hence why there's multiple custom fields with the same name.

For now I'll just have to live with that fact.