🔜 Coming Soon: Improved Behavior for Assets Custom Field in the Portal

[#1]

Hello Team,

I’m Mohamed, one of the product managers in the Assets team.

We’re excited to share an update about an upcoming change to the behavior of the Assets custom field in the portal, which aims to address feedback we’ve received from many of you.

What’s the issue?

Currently, when a user selects an object in the Assets custom field on the portal, we concatenate all searchable attributes. However, it differs from how the field behaves in the issue view, where only the label is shown once an item is selected. Furthermore, when a user views an object linked to an issue on the portal, only the object's label is visible. At present, users have no ability to customize or modify to choose which attributes to display.

This inconsistency has led to challenges:

• Difficulty identifying selected items: Users struggle to read and identify objects they’ve selected, especially when there are many searchable attributes.
• Confusion between portal and issue view behaviors: Users are unclear why the field behaves differently in different screens.

Issue View

Current Portal View

What’s changing?

To improve consistency and usability, we’re introducing a couple of changes:

• We are updating the portal behavior to show only the label once an item is selected—matching how it appears in the issue view.

• We are introducing a new setting for the custom field that allows you to control the display options on the portal issue view, similar to the existing issue view.

We are believe these changes will provide the following benefits:

• Provide a cleaner and more intuitive experience for users selecting objects.
• Reduce confusion caused by mismatched behavior across the portal and issue view.
• Empower customers with the flexibility to customize and display various types of information tailored for portal users.

When will this happen?

We are currently implementing these changes and, while we do not have an estimated time for the release yet, we wanted to share this update as early as possible. This will allow you ample time to plan any necessary adjustments and provide feedback.

What if there’s an issue?

We’re confident this update will enhance the user experience, but if you encounter any issues, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me directly at mhassan@atlassian.com or contact us through the regular support channels.

We look forward to hearing your feedback and thank you for helping us make Assets better for everyone!

Thanks,,
Mohamed Hassan
Product Manager, JSM Assets Team

[Iman Attia]

It would be great if this also applied to the the asset fields on the forms attached to the portal request type too!

[Mohamed Hassan]

Thanks for the feedback @Iman Attia at this stage we are limiting the changes to the main issue view/portal view but we will definitely keep this in mind for future improvement to Assets in forms.

[Eglė Kaziulionytė]

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JSDCLOUD-12222 - this should be definitely addressed all together. I do not see it as "improvement" - it is simply a bug, because it behaves differently than it is setup in configuration. 

[Elle Longwell]

Just want to piggyback on the other comments. All of our asset selection for end user's happens in forms tied to request types, so if these changes won't also happen there, it won't be much of a change on our end.

I'm surprised to hear that this is the case, though, given how heavily y'all have been pushing for utilizing forms over standard fields lately.

[Sina Schwarz]

Since you are trying to align behaviours of the customfields between portal and agent view - why does the agent selecting objects in a field not get object symbols and the additional attributes as well? It will still look like a completely different field in the create/transition screens.

This alignment seems kinda partial because of this.

[Gabriel Lences]

Hello, just adding to the list of comments for this to consitently work on "Forms" as well. For now it just simply ignores the settings and only shows the "label" no matter what sort of fields we have set up to display in the custom fields. As Egle said - it should be adressed since it looks more like a bug than an improvement :) 

@Mohamed Hassan please try to make this consistent accross the board even in "Forms".

One other bug in "Forms" asset fields - when a custom asset field with no multi-selection allowed is configured in forms, there is no "X (clear)" button after a user made his / her choice from the field. This also seems to be a bug as it's working without any problems with native Jira fields and creates an ugly user experience where the user needs to refresh the whole page (thus losing all he/she entered in the form) in order to "clear" the single select asset field in Forms. Forms don't display icons as well as native jira fields. 

[Chrissy Clements]

Watching this one with interest :)

[Gabriel Lences]

👋 Hello, 

Just woke up today to find a sweet suprise on our instance, where we are able to see icons on Forms fields linked to custom asset fields, hooray! 🥳 We also seem to be able to display additional properties apart from the label, super awesome!!

Would be very glad if the following bug would be resolved and all would be perfect😊

• When an asset custom field is configured in a way to not enable multiple selections (in other words a single select asset custom field) and a FORMS field is linked to such a field, then the user on the form cannot clear the selection in any way once he makes one from the field. Super frustrating to refresh the whole page and lose all other previous inputs.

[Gabriel Lences]

@Mohamed Hassan 

I've also uploaded a preview of the behaviour / bug I'm describing in the above comment over here. The video link expires in 7 days. In the video I select an item from such a field, keep pressing backspace on my keyboard or try to "deselect" the item from the list, but I'm unable to so I have to refresh the page. A simple X to clear the field would be great. When a forms is is linked to an custom assets field with multiple selection it works without any problems and I can deselect each item through an X. But whenever the linked assets custom field is a single select , this happens :)

[Mohamed Hassan]

Hello Team - Apologies for the late response.

Just sharing the news that JSDCLOUD-12222 is being rolled out and we are discussing aligning the proposed changes with the forms as well, will keep you all posted.

Thanks,

Mo

[Pier-Olivier Tremblay]

Way to go @Mohamed Hassan 

Good job

[Mohamed Hassan]

Hello Team - A quick update here, we started the rollout of these improvements. Please feel free to share any feedback you have either here or via email (mhassan@atlassian.com).

Thanks,

Mo

[Salome Khaindrava]

Hi Mohamed, thank you for the update — it’s great to see the Assets team actively working on improving usability in the portal experience.

One solution I’d recommend for anyone currently facing this challenge is the Better Search for Customer Portal app.

This app helps bridge the gap by allowing:

• A structured table layout that makes it easier to scan and compare objects
• Enhanced search experience for users selecting assets
• Support for default and hidden values

We’ve seen it make a big difference for teams managing hardware, onboarding workflows, or service catalogs via Assets in the portal.

Looking forward to seeing these improvements native in the platform as well!

Best regards,
Salome from Twinit
📌 Creators of Better Search for Customer Portal