Now that you have seen how to manage fields in JIRA, it is time to expand on our HR project. What we will do this time is add a few new custom fields to help capture some additional useful information. We will also create a customized field configuration specially designed for our HR team. Lastly, we will tie everything together by associating our fields, configurations, and projects through the field configuration schemes.
Since you are implementing a project for HR, and we have created two issue types in the last chapter, New Employee and Termination. For the New Employee issue type, we will add a new custom field called Direct Manager, so when everything is completed, the manager can be notified that his/her new team member is ready to start. Since the manager is already in the organization, we will be using a user picker field, so JIRA will be able to automatically look up the user for us.
For our Termination issue type, we will also add a new custom field called Last Day, so we know when it will be the last day for the employee. For this field, we will use a date picker, so we can keep the date format consistent.
To create these custom fields:
- Browse to the View Custom Fields page.
- Click on the Add Custom Field button.
- Select the User Picker custom field type.
- Name the custom field
Direct Managerand click on Create. - Select HR: Task Management Create Issue Screen and HR: Task Management Edit/View Issue Screen, and click on Update.
- Repeat steps 2 to 5, but select the Date Picker field type and call it
Last Day.
Now that we have our custom fields ready, the next step is to create a new field configuration so that we can specify the behaviors of our custom fields. What we will do here is to set both new custom fields as required, so when the issues are entered in JIRA, users will have to enter a value for them. But the Direct Manager field should only be required when creating a New Employee issue, and not Termination. To do this, we need to create two field configurations:
- Browse to the View Field Configurations page.
- Click on the Add Field Configuration button.
- Name the new field configuration
New Employee Field Configuration. - Click on the Add button to create a new field configuration. Now that we have our new field configuration, we can start adding configurations to our new custom fields.
- Click on the Required link for the Direct Manager custom field.
- Repeat Steps 2 to 5 to create a new
Termination Field Configuration, and make the Last Day field mandatory.
We have our custom fields, have configured the relevant options, created a new field configuration, and set the behavior of our fields. It is time to add them to a scheme:
- Browse to the View Field Configuration Schemes page.
- Click on the Add Field Configuration Scheme button.
- Name the new field configuration scheme
HR Field Configuration Scheme, as we will be applying this to our HR project. - Click on the Add button to create a new field configuration scheme.
With the field configuration scheme created, we can associate the field configurations to their appropriate issue types, New Employee and Termination:
- Click on the Associate an Issue Type with a Field Configuration button.
- Set the issue type as New Employee and the field configuration as New Employee Field Configuration.
- Click on the Add button to add the association.
- Repeat steps 1 to 3 for the Termination issue type and Termination Field Configuration.
OK, we have done all the hard work. We created new custom fields, a new field configuration, and a new field configuration scheme; the last step is to put everything together and see it in action:
- Browse to the Project Administration page for our HR project.
- Click on the Fields link on the left-hand side and the Use a different scheme option from the Actions menu.
- Select HR Field Configuration Scheme and click on the Associate button.
Alright, we are all done! You can pat yourself on the back, sit back, and take a look at your hard work in action.
Create a new issue of type New Employee in the HR project, and you will see your new custom fields at the bottom of the page. As shown in the following screenshot, the Direct Manager field is mandatory and an error message is displayed if we do not select a value for it, while the Last Day field is optional:
Note
We are seeing both Direct Manager and Last Day custom fields here because both New Employee and Termination issue types use the same set of screens. We will look at how to use separate screens in the next chapter. We can, however, also use field configuration to hide the field for the appropriate issue type.
Go ahead and create New Employee by filling in the fields. On the View Issue page, you will see your new custom fields displayed, along with the values you provide:
