What are field contexts?

Fields in Jira can be used across multiple projects and work types, but it’s rare for a single setup to meet all your needs. To prevent duplicates, administrators can create different versions of fields. This is what Jira refers to as a Context.

Adding a context to a field doesn’t affect how it’s set up. Instead, it allows admins to adapt a field to various situations such as setting a default value for a field, providing an alternative set of options for users to select, or restricting choices that appear in a list. More about setting up contexts

Benefits of contexts for large sites:

• Simpler administration - Contexts limit the number of duplicate fields with small differences. Reducing the number of fields improves site performance.

• Easier to use - When working with fields that have lots of options, contexts can be used to limit the number of choices available.

  • 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.

• Flexible yet consistent reporting - Contexts sit on top of existing fields, meaning they store data in the same place. All of this data is then available for any reports that reference this field.

  • From the example above, if you referenced the Vendor field in a report or a dashboard, all data captured from the different variants would appear as part of the same field.