Best practices for managing work items and fields in a Jira site
15 min
Advanced
By the end of this lesson, you'll be able to:
- Use best practices for creating and administering custom fields
- Use best practices for administering system fields
- Use best practices for field visibility
Best practices for custom fields
When to create a custom field
Creating a custom field is often an easy way to solve a problem. However, if you create custom fields to address all project admin and user needs, managing those fields will overburden Jira admins.
Before you create a custom field, ask yourself and the requestor these questions:
- What is the business value of this field?
- What is required of the end user to submit this information?
- How long does it take a user to reliably collect and submit the information correctly?
- Is there any way to automate capturing that information?
- When in the work lifecycle do you need this information?
- Is there already a field that does the same thing?
You’ll find that system fields and existing custom fields can often meet user requirements, if you configure them correctly.
How to manage custom fields
To ease the management of custom fields, carefully configure their behavior. Here are some guidelines to follow:
- Limit the number of custom fields and rely on system fields to collect the most essential information.
- Choose field types that enable reporting, like lists or numbers. Labels and free text entry fields will collect less standardized data.
- Don't duplicate field names and use clear, detailed field descriptions so admins and users know what each field does.
- Make names as generic as possible to aid reuse. Remember, you can configure different field contexts for different projects.
- Only require fields that collect critical information. If you require a field, provide a way for users to enter “Not applicable,” “I don’t know,” or a similar answer to keep your data accurate.
- Remove fields with a Last Used date that was a long time ago. You can also use the number of screens that a field appears on to identify unused fields.
- Remove unused options in field contexts for checkbox, radio buttons, and list fields.
Best practices for system fields
Best practices for the Resolution field
Jira admins can configure values for the Resolution field. Because of this, there are some best practices to follow.
👇 Click the boxes below to learn more about resolution best practices.
Naming resolutions is the most important part of configuring them. To ensure your resolution data is accurate, users need to easily understand when to use each resolution. Here are some guidelines:
- Use broad names instead of specific ones.
👉 For example: “Canceled” applies to more projects than “Failed in production.” “Fixed” is more universal than “Laptop fixed.” - Don’t create resolutions named “Unresolved” or “None.” These are already values for the Resolution field that apply to all work items outside the Done status category. Using these names will disrupt searches and reporting.
- Don’t use names that imply the work item hasn’t been resolved.
👉 For example: “On Hold” should not be a resolution. It indicates that a work item needs more work. Resolutions should only apply to work items that users won’t work on anymore.
Best practices for the Status field
Jira admins can also configure values for the Status field. The most important consideration is naming. Here are some guidelines:
- Use distinct status names with clearly different purposes.
👉 For example: Don’t create an “In Progress” and “Work in Progress” status. Users won’t know which to use and it will create unreliable data. - Use status names that apply to many projects.
👉 For example: “In Review” is a much more applicable status than “Sent to Editor.”
Best practices for the Priority field
Jira admins can also configure values for the Priority field. Priorities, and the priority hierarchy, are the same for every work item across Jira.
👇 Click the boxes below to learn more about priority best practices.
All work uses the same set of priorities. Therefore, naming them is important. Here are some guidelines:
- Use broad but clear names.
👉 For example: “High” can apply to many projects and needs no explanation. “B2” is confusing and may not apply to many projects. - Use different colors and icons for each priority. They should be intuitive.
👉 For example: Blue, yellow, and red are a familiar color scheme for low, medium, and high priority, respectively. Green, purple, and pink are less intuitive. - Use names that clearly demonstrate where a priority is in the hierarchy.
👉 For example: If you use the priorities Low, Minor, Medium, Major, High, and Highest, users won’t be sure whether to use Minor or Low, Major or High. It’s better to use only Low, Medium, High, and Highest as they have a clear hierarchy.
Best practices for field visibility
Field visibility in company-managed projects
For company-managed projects, many configurations determine whether a user sees a field. This gives Jira admins a lot of flexibility in configuring their projects, but can create complexity.
For a user to see a field, you need to:
- Add the field to the screen associated with that work item operation
- Show the field in the project's layout for that work type
- Show the field in the work type's field configuration
- Grant the user access to that field and that work item in the project’s permission scheme
- Include the project and work type in the field context (for custom fields only)
Best practices for screens
Screens are an important part of field visibility and data collection. Follow these best practices when configuring them:
- If you need a new screen that is similar to an existing screen, copy the existing screen to save yourself time. You can add the necessary changes to the copied screen.
- Order fields from general to specific, with the most important field first. This helps users intuitively find fields and understand what value they have.
- If you have a lot of necessary fields, use tabs to group related fields. This helps users locate fields easily and prevents them from getting overwhelmed.
- If users aren’t filling out fields or creating work, this likely means you have too many fields. Consider which fields are truly important, then remove excess.
How was this lesson?
next lesson
Explore work types, fields, and screens in company-managed projects
- Categorize work with work types
- Provide context with fields
- Determine what users see with screens
- Customize what users see in projects with layouts