Fields management - where we are up to

July 23, 2025

Hey everyone,

It’s me again, back with an update on all our field improvement initiatives. If you’ve missed my original post on all the changes we have planned, head here.

Let’s start with the highlights:

Fields management page is now live for everyone! (*unless you are on bundled release tracks)
This includes the following features
- customising table columns
- filtering by field type categories
- seeing field IDs
- creating and editing fields on the same page

Note, in the midst of all the changes, we had forgot to include that we are removing the ability to permanently delete fields after trashing. We've heard feedback that skipping the wait period was a source of data loss that's hard to correct and generally causes headaches.

For all intents and purposes, the field is removed from your site once you mark it for deletion, and if not restored after two months, it'll be gone forever. Please leave us any feedback or concerns around this in the comments.

Here are the next things we are working on:

Add field to field configuration schemes from the fields page (rolling out)
Support for third-party Connect/Forge created field types (soon)
Showing system fields (soon)
Sorting by field type (soon)
Searching by field ID (soon)
Manage field options when there is a single field context on the fields page
Support for fields created in team-managed projects (including JPD)
Update to the "Project" column to reflect field configurations (it is currently counted by company-managed project using screens the field is added to + team-managed projects association)

While I can’t promise exact timelines, the features tagged soon should start rolling out in 1-2 months.

Thank you for your continued engagement, please keep any feedback/questions coming!

9 comments

I very much appreciate this effort of upgrading the UI in this area. It's been a long time coming. The updates we've received so far have been a MAJOR improvement. I'm looking forward to the next set of updates. My top 3 on your upcoming list are:

Support for fields created in team-managed projects (including JPD)
Showing system fields
Searching by field ID

Thanks @Carol Low!

Regarding the updates so far:

I appreciate the "Field Type Category" filter, but it would be helpful if there was also a "Field Type" filter or if the field types were sub level checkboxes within their "category". Having the ability to more granularly filter to single line text or paragraph fields specifically would be super helpful.

Also, having the ability to reorder the columns (and have it persist) would be a nice bonus.

Any plans to add searching by project (space) functionality (i.e. show all fields used in project ABC)?

For consistency, are there plans to update the Field Configuration & Field Configuration Schemes screens (and their sub screens) to have the same look and feel (outlined table, additional search capabilities, etc.)?

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Thanks for this @Carol Low

I also second the comment by @Gary Spross !

Looking forward to all these updates (esp Searching by field ID and Connect/Forge fields)

I also wonder if there is a need or wider use case by others for merging fields (and replacing 1 with another in doing so) - I do understand that it can have a lot hinging off it and has severe consequences (eg jql, field configs, etc). I will probably log a FR for this when I can. Eg. we have due date and other Due date_1 and Due date_2 fields of same type (so badly managed by previous admins and it is so deeply used by many projects)

Another thing, which I know, some others may want is some extra field types like more-than-2-level cascade field or perhaps a button field to link to a custom URL or a color field. (i know it is not in this scope :) )

So far, I am really enjoying this update! Thank you to you, Carol and Atlassian!

Yatish

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On the Manage Projects subject...

It would be nice to be able to filter and search by Project Lead - the other day I had to find projects where the Project Lead was a certain person - I had to sort by Project Lead and then keep clicking through the projects until I got to their name (which did not begin with A, B or C!)

And for archived projects, it would be nice to have the same filter / sort options as you do for active projects

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Agree with comments above - recent improvements have been very helpful!

Echoing some new ideas that we would also appreciate, as a very large - fast changing - difficult to clean legacy kind of company:

"Field Type" filter (eg to see if we can reuse an existing field instead of creating new)
Merging fields (to clean past chaos) -- this would be really life changing for us <3

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Note, in the midst of all the changes, we had forgot to include that we are removing the ability to permanently delete fields after trashing. We've heard feedback that skipping the wait period was a source of data loss that's hard to correct and generally causes headaches.
For all intents and purposes, the field is removed from your site once you mark it for deletion, and if not restored after two months, it'll be gone forever. Please leave us any feedback or concerns around this in the comments.

During cloud migrations, testing, and clean-up is very common to trash fields and delete them permanently so that a new field with the same name is created.

Another use case for the need to delete permanently without waiting is when a field was created with the wrong type.

Maybe more warnings should be added before the field is permanently deleted but the functionality is critical and should stay.

Not having this functionality will drastically cause delays to migrations to Cloud!

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@Carol Low thanks for the continued and helpful communications for these changes!

I really like the suggestions made by @Yatish Madhav and @Luísa Ribeiro regarding the ability to merge fields. It would seem that the functionality there would require further discussion / exploration. I'd be happy to participate in a research session or EAP along those lines if it's something the Atlassian team can dedicate resources to.

@Peter Norris is spot on with the recommended improvements for the Manage Projects page.

I'm with @Rodolfo Romero - Adaptavist on still needing a way to permanently delete fields even beyond the cloud migrations use case. I understand the concerns around data loss; perhaps fields could be first trashed and then admins would need to go to the trash to permanently delete (and be greeted with an ominous warning message about data loss before proceeding)? I'd even be open to the Assets-style warning message where you would have to type out the name of the custom field before it could be deleted.

@Rodolfo Romero - Adaptavist , you can have duplicated named fields as they are referenced by their Id's, so the fields not being fully deleted right away shouldn't limit you in this capacity. Additionally, once you place a field into the trash, it's removed from all screens and no longer appears as an option within searches, so it shouldn't cause any confusion as users won't see the trashed field.

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That's a good point @Gary Spross We have a few ongoing migrations at the moment so I will see if there is any use case that could potentially be impacted by this change.