How do I set up fields in my Jira site?

Fields capture data about work items in your site. As admin, you hold the keys to creating fields that align with how your organization works.

Jira comes with fields essential to planning, but admins can create additional fields that match how their organization manages work. Unlike those made in team-managed projects, fields created by Jira admins can be re-used across multiple projects, which has benefits for organizations at scale:

• Better reporting and visibility - the same fields across multiple projects collect key business metrics and insights into one dataset which can then be used to generate reports for stakeholders.

• Simpler management - As the admin, fields that you create are managed in one place. Updates the fields once, and the changes automatically apply across your site.

Ways you can manage fields

Jira offers a number of configuration options to show fields when and where they’re needed. There’s no right way to configure your site, but the differences between the different configuration options can be overwhelming.

Group fields together with Field configurations and Field configuration schemes

Whether you’re using a field that came with Jira or one you’ve made yourself, start by grouping fields together into a field configuration. These can be grouped together and assigned to individual work types using field configuration schemes. More about field configurations

Configure which fields a project uses

With your fields grouped as you want them, the first step to making them show in your projects is to associate the field configuration scheme with the project. Once you’ve done this, navigate to Types in the side navigation – also under Work items – where you can add the field to a work type in your project.

Make different versions of fields using Contexts

Contexts give you the flexibility to apply a single field to different use cases by creating a different set of available options, limiting the number of choices available per project, or setting a default value. This saves you having to make multiple fields to achieve the same end.

For example, you want to track which vendor is used to complete work. However, you have teams in multiple countries who have different vendors available to them based on their location. Instead of creating separate fields to list the vendors available in each location, you can create one called Vendor, then make different contexts that show location-specific options.

If you reference the Vendor field in a report or a dashboard, all data captured from the different variants appear as part of the same field. More about contexts.

Show fields at specific points of the work item’s lifecycle

Lastly, you can use Screens to change the fields that show in your work items at points of its lifecycle. This is most commonly used to show or hide a field when work transitions from one status to another. More about screens.

• make a field appear when creating a work item, or

• as part of a transition workflow

We don’t recommend using a screen when editing or viewing a work item overrides the field configuration settings defined in your project.

What else can fields do?

Fields can do more than just gather information on work items. They can trigger automations that transition work through workflows and generate reports for key stakeholders.