Why so many limitations on form fields?

[David Briggs]

Does anyone else find it odd that Jira limits what you can and can't do with form fields?

For example, the default Summary field is apparently something that can never be customized. Every time someone on this forum asks about it, they get a very stern "NO" (usually followed by a convoluted work around that doesn't really solve the problem).

I find this hands-off policy absurd, especially considering the summary field is necessarily the subject line of the confirmation email, and Jira says nothing else on the form can take its place.

How can Atlassian be so arrogant as to suggest they know best how to communicate with our audiences?

[Marc - Devoteam]

Hi @David Briggs 

Welcome to the community.

So indeed, the summary field is not adjustable.

But as this is your complaint, you will be frustrated with more applications on the market, as in an email you can't change the layout as well, you will have a mandatory TO field and the email summary is also a now configurable default field.

So in an application that offers mail operations, there needs to be a default field that needs information to be used.

In Jira this is the field Summary.

You could use the text field in a from on a Jira request and map that to the Jira field Summary or you can hide this field and set a default value, then you could use another field single line text to get information that with an automation you could copy to the summary field to be used as the mail summary tile in the mail confirmation.

Also related is that in the mail confirmation the summary contains the ticket ID, on replying this is required so replies on the mail will be recored as comment and not to create a new ticket into the system.