Armed with the new knowledge that you gathered in this chapter, together with fields from the previous chapter, it is time for you to further customize your JIRA to provide a better user experience through the presentation.
What we will do this time is create new screens and apply them to our Help Desk project. We want to separate the generic fields from our specialized custom fields designed for escalation. We also want to, at this time, apply the changes to the issues of the Incident type only and not affect the other issue types. As with any changes to be done on a production system, it is critical that you have a backup of your current data before applying changes.
In Chapter 5, Field Management, you created a few custom fields specifically designed for our HR team. The problem we had is all the new fields are showing up for both New Employee and Termination issue types, regardless of whether they are applicable, and this is because both issue types use the same set of screens.
So to address this, we will create two new sets of screens, one for New Employee and one for Termination. The default one can be left for other issue types we have in the project, such as Task.
The easiest way to do this will be to clone the existing screens, so we do not have to manually add all the fields, and avoid forgetting to add a field by accident. To create screens for each issue type, perform the following steps:
- Browse to the View Screens page and click on the Copy link for HR: Task Management Create Issue Screen.
- Name the new screen
HR: Create/View New Employee Screen. - Click on the Copy button to create the screen.
Now that we have our new screen, it is time to configure its fields. Since this screen is for creating New Employee issues, we do not need the Last Day field:
- Click on the Configure link of our new
HR: Create/View New Employee Screen. - Remove the Last Day field by hovering over it and clicking its Remove button.
Just to spice things up a bit, we can also create a new tab called People and move all people-related fields, such as the Assignee, Reporter, and Direct Manager fields, onto that tab.
We created and configured our create screen. Our new edit screen is going to look very similar to this with just a few modifications. We want to take the Issue Type field off, since we do not want users to change the issue type after it is created:
- Click on the Copy link for
HR: Create/View New Employee Screen. - Name the new screen
HR: Edit New Employee Screen. - Click on the Copy button to create the new screen.
- Remove the Issue Type field.
Repeat the steps to create a new set of screens for the Termination issue type. This time, instead of removing the Last Day field, and remove the Direct Manager field from both screens.
With the screens created and configured, we now need to link them up with issue operations so that JIRA will know on which action the new screens will be displayed, using the following steps:
- Browse to the View Screen Schemes page and click on Add Screen Scheme.
- Name the new screen scheme as
HR: New Employee Screen Scheme. - Select
HR: Create/View New Employee Screenas the default screen. - Click on the Add button to create the screen scheme.
With our screen scheme in place, it is time to link up our screens with their respective issue operations:
- Click on the Associate an Issue Operation with a Screen button.
- Select
HR: Edit New Employee Screenfor the Edit Issue operation.
Since we assigned HR: Create/View New Employee Screen to Default, this screen will be applied to the unmapped operations, Create Issue and View Issue. There are no differences if you choose to explicitly set the mappings for the preceding two operations.
We have created the screen scheme for New Employee issue type, now repeat the same steps for Termination issue type.
Now, you need to tell JIRA which issue type to apply the screen scheme to that you just created. Since JIRA has already created an issue type screen scheme for our project, we just need to configure it to use our new screen schemes for the appropriate issue types:
- Browse to the Issue Type Screen Schemes page and click on the Configure link for HR: Task Management Issue Type Screen Scheme.
- Click on the Associate an Issue Type with a Screen Scheme button.
- Select New Employee for Issue Type.
- Select HR: New Employee Screen Scheme for the screen scheme to be associated.
- Click on the Add button to create the association.
This will ensure that issues of type New Employee will have your new screens applied, while issues of other types will not be affected. Now repeat the steps to associate the Termination issue type with its screen scheme.
Since we are re-using the existing issue type screen scheme by associating various issue types to our new screen schemes, we do not need to make any additional changes. However, if you created a new issue type screen scheme instead, you will need to associate it with the HR project.
You can now take a look at your hard work and see your custom screens, fields, and tabs all working nicely together to present you with a custom form for collecting user data. Let's go ahead and create a new incident and see what your newly customized Create Issue screen will look like, as shown in the following screenshot:
As you can see, the Last Day field is no longer showing on the screen when you create a New Employee issue, and our people-related fields are now showing on the new People tab. If you create a new Termination issue, the Direct Manager field will not show.