Projects are collections of issues, and issues are collections of fields. As we have seen in the earlier chapters, fields are what capture data that can then be displayed to users. There are many different types of fields in JIRA, ranging from simple text fields that let you input alphanumeric texts, to more complicated fields with pickers to assist you with choosing dates and users.
An information system is only as useful as the data that goes into it. By understanding how to effectively use fields, you can turn JIRA into a powerful information system for data collection, processing, and reporting.
In this chapter, we will expand our Help Desk project with these customized fields and configurations, by exploring fields in detail and learning how they relate to other aspects of JIRA. By the end of this chapter, you will have learned the following:
- Understanding built-in and custom fields
- Collecting custom data through custom fields
- Adding behaviors to fields with field configurations
- Understanding field configuration schemes and how to apply them to projects
JIRA comes with a number of built-in fields. You have already seen a few of them in the previous chapters. Fields such as summary, priority, and assignee are all built-in. They make up the backbone of an issue, and you cannot remove them from the system. For this reason, they are referred to as system fields.
The following table lists the most important built-in fields in JIRA:
|
System field |
Description |
|
Assignee |
This specifies the user who is currently assigned to work on the issue. |
|
Summary |
This specifies a one-line summary of the issue. |
|
Description |
This provides a detailed description of the issue. |
|
Reporter |
This specifies the user who has reported this issue (although most of the time it is also the person who has created the issue, but not always). |
|
Component/s |
This specifies the project components the issue belongs to. |
|
Effects Version/s |
This specifies the versions the issue effects are found in. |
|
Fix Version/s |
This specifies the versions the issue will be fixed in. |
|
Due Date |
This specifies the date this issue is due. |
|
Issue Type |
This specifies the type of the issue (for example, Bug and New Feature). |
|
Priority |
This specifies how important the issue is compared to other issues. |
|
Resolution |
This specifies the current resolution value of the issue (for example, Unresolved or Fixed). |
|
Time Tracking |
This lets users estimate how long the issue will take to be complete. |