What is the difference between the "organization" and "organizations" custom field

[Oliver Moore]

I can see that both Organizations and Organization is a JSM maintained field.

Organizations appears to be the field that is used in the dropdwon picker on the JSM portal.

Is Organization part of JSM, or CSM?

I am considering syncing the 2 as when you go to organizations in the JSM project the "view all issues link" uses this query:
 

(reporter in organizationMembers("Example Customer") OR cf[13096] = "Example Customer") AND project = ABC

As "organization" is empty for all of my tickets, I find I have gaps where I have reporters who are outside of an organization reporting issues (for example, if an agent reports something).  If I keep the 2 aligned, then this query would be more reliable to show all customer tickets.

Has anyone got any further thoughts on this and how these two fields are intended to work.

[Marc -Devoteam- · Accepted solution]

Hi @Oliver Moore 

The plural Organisations is related to spaces to the type Jira Service Management and the non plural is related to spaces of the type Jira Customer Service Management.

This is the difference.

[Oliver Moore]

Thanks, thought that might be the case - so I think for safety, having these fields in sync is ok as it makes it easier to go to CSM if needed, and also means you can ensure there is better internal visibility on tickets impacting the customer.

[Oliver Moore]

It would be nice if Atlassian made that clear in their CF descriptions (unless I missed it). Did you identify the different ownership based looking at the backend APIs?

[Oliver Moore]

Interestingly, it doesn't look like "organization" is available as an editable field via automation or in the request form. You can add it to a JSM screen, but it is not available in the request "issue view" or in the "picker" in the edit work item automation.

[Vanessa Mouriz]

Hi!

These are actually two different things, not just the same field named twice:

"Organizations" (plural) is the built-in JSM feature — you manage it under Project settings → Customers → Organizations. It's the field that powers the dropdown on the portal you're seeing. Gets populated either manually or automatically once a customer's added to that org.

"Organization" (singular, your cf[13096]) isn't part of that native feature at all — it's a separate custom field someone set up at some point (probably free text or a select list), likely left over from an old setup or built for something else entirely (I've seen this happen with CSM configs too). That's why it's sitting empty on most of your tickets — nothing's auto-filling it the way the native field does.

On syncing the two: before you go build automation to keep them aligned, I'd check Custom fields in global admin and see what type cf[13096] actually is and whether anything's already wired to it. If it's just sitting there with no automation, you'll need an Automation for Jira rule to update it whenever the native org changes — otherwise you're just going to keep hitting the same gaps.

hope it would be useful :)

[Oliver Moore]

Hi Vanessa,

Thanks for the insight. Organization is "Locked" and is system created - this is not a custom field we have created.

Also note that the built in queries behind https://safe-security.atlassian.net/jira/servicedesk/projects/<project>/organizations/35 reference this field natively.

E.g. the "view all" link has this syntax whcih includes the "organization" custom filed:

https://xxx.atlassian.net/issues/?jql=%28reporter+in+organizationMembers%28%22xxxxx%22%29+OR+cf%5B13096%5D+%3D+%22xxxxx%22%29+AND+project+%3D+YYY+AND+issuetype+is+not+EMPTY

As this is system maintained, I wanted to understand the impact of syncing it.