🚀 Now Live: Native Formula Fields in Jira!

[#1]

Hi everyone,

I’m excited to announce that Formula Fields are now Generally Available in Jira Cloud! Formula Fields allow you to run real-time calculations directly on Jira work items. By automating these calculations within Jira, you can ensure data remains accurate and actionable without needing to export to external spreadsheets.

✨ Key Capabilities

• Real-Time Calculations: Results update automatically whenever a referenced source field is modified.

• Searchable & Filterable: Formula results are fully supported in JQL, allowing you to use them in dashboards, automations, and saved filters.

• Multiple Output Types: Support for Number, Text, Date, and Duration outputs to cover use cases like risk scoring, status labeling, and due date management.

• AI-Powered Building: Use Rovo to generate formulas from natural language prompts or suggest corrections for syntax errors.

The image above shows a "RICE Score" formula field with the formula {Reach}*{Impact}*{Confidence}/{Effort}. 

The image above shows how you can generate a formula with Rovo.

🛠️ Admin Details

• Availability: Enabled by default across all Jira Cloud editions (Free, Standard, Premium, Enterprise).

• Configuration: Admins can create "Formula" fields in company-managed spaces or team-managed spaces.

• Stability: To ensure JQL and reporting stability, the output type (e.g., Number vs. Text) is locked at the time the field is created.

🔜 What’s Next?

As we move into GA, here are a few areas that are not yet supported in this release:

• Cross Work Item Rollups: Formulas currently run within a single work item — calculations that span across work items (e.g., rolling up values from child work items to a parent Epic) are not yet supported. We'd love to hear from you: How would you use cross-issue rollups in your workflows? Share your use cases in the comments!

• Select Fields: Referencing single and multi-select fields within formula logic is not yet supported. We're curious — how are you looking to use select fields in your formulas? Let us know in the comments!

🔗 Helpful Links:

• Loom video tutorial - link 

• https://support.atlassian.com/jira-cloud-administration/docs/create-a-formula-field/

• https://support.atlassian.com/jira-cloud-administration/docs/supported-functions-for-formulas/

We’re excited to see how your teams use these new capabilities. Please share your feedback and use cases in the comments!

[Saki Okubo]

Can I also perform time calculations in this field?

[Tomislav Tobijas]

@Saki Okubo yep! It's documented here: Supported functions for formulas / Date and time functions 
Pretty cool actually :)

[Yatish Madhav]

This seems great! Thanks @Esha Gajula and Atlassian! Will try it out real soon.

[Tiina Savolainen]

Is it user issue (me) or is the usable field amount very tiny? For example couldn't find Resolution date available for use.

This has been waited field type :)

[Martin Runge]

Yeah! This will same so much work in automations and reduce friction and hopefully potential errors with not updated/recalculated fields.

[Julia Foden]

@Esha Gajula this looks great and as @Martin Runge said it will save on a lot of automation.

You asked for how we would use formula logic with select list fields if it was supported. Let me give an example of some automation I created in a previous job. There were several single select fields for different types of risk. Each had values 0, 1, 2, 3 ... 10. Users would select an option for each field, Risk Type A, Risk Type B etc. These fields were select lists rather than number fields so that I could ensure that only valid values were entered (no decimal places, not greater than 10 ... ). My automation then converted the values to numbers, summed them, recalculated to a number out of 100, and filled a number field called something like Overall Risk. It would be great if that could be done with a formula instead of automation!

[Roberta Antonini]

Really useful tips for anyone using this type of fields!

[Patricia Francezi_iDev_]

Agree @Julia Foden - agree, this is a good use case. We use all the time for "matrix" calculations like, find the range and put some calculated value into another field

[Julia Foden]

@Patricia Francezi_iDev_ that reminds me of another automation I created before, to calculate a MoSCoW value according to a matrix of two other single select fields. It would have been great to use a formula to do that instead. I guess we'd need mappings in each select list field context between the string values and numbers. And then reverse mappings to convert eg 'greater than 12' to 'Must Have'. Sure that's not too much to ask is it @Esha Gajula :)

[bboyd3]

This is a great feature to see rolling out, Congratulations to you and your team!

We are currently in the process of rolling out SAFe standards at our company so formula fields are a huge desire for our prioritization process. Examples of how we would use them are below.

Select Fields - We would use this to build the priority scoring. User selects the Text value from a dropdown (Business Value, Time Criticality, Risk Reduction, Job size) that text value is assigned a numerical value and calculated to form the WSJF.

Cross Work Item Rollups - This would be great for refining prioritization by rolling up the Job size value to the parent as teams start to build out user stories for features. Stories get sized by teams and depending on their Effort/Complexity the parent work items priority would change.

[Brita Moorus]

This is amazing and will replace a lot of automation rules. Thanks!

One thing I’d love to see next is cross-work item calculations (e.g. rolling up values from child work items to Epics or Initiatives). That would unlock a lot of use cases around portfolio planning and reporting ✨

I also hope Atlassian publishes a library of real-world formula examples, similar to the Automation template library. I think it would really help admins discover new use cases 💚

[Stephanie Levin]

Can I use this to pull the Status of a Parent ticket (like an Epic) onto a user story or task?

[Esha Gajula]

@Tiina Savolainen All fields configured for a Jira space (excluding Product Discovery / Service Management) will appear for Formula Fields. Please see the helpful links section from this article. 

[Esha Gajula]

@Julia Foden Thanks for the feedback. I've shared it with the team. The focus of this release is direct field calculations. 

[Hamzah Mohamed]

Hi @Esha Gajula ,

Glad to hear that roll-ups and select fields are being worked on! One valuable and common use case for roll-ups is using it for calculating a score for different frameworks like RAID or RICE as in your demo video. A single-select list is usually used for the custom field to avoid typos from free-text fields, or common values for numbers. I would like to highlight two asks for your future plans that would enable our clients to leverage this great feature in the future, and move away from costly and fragile Jira Automations:

1. Roll-ups should ideally work on multiple hierarchies: many organizations that track work at higher levels use Jira Premium and at least 1-2 additional levels above the Epic. I would strongly suggest releasing the roll-up with immediate support for rolling up values at higher levels as well. Otherwise the benefits would sadly be quite limited.

2. If select-fields are supported, they would hopefully include possibility for roll-up calculations for both text-based and number-based values. This way complex Jira Automations can be replaced with faster formula calculations. If it is possible at all to streamline the "scoring" of text-based values to enable threshold based roll-ups (i.e. for risk analysis, if 30% of child items one hierarchy level below a specific parent work item have a risk value of "High", then the parent item would be able to calculate it's risk as "High".

I hope this description makes sense. Thank you in advance!

[michelle_bachmann]

Did I interpret this information incorrectly? I tried to created a new custom field with the new field type, I received an error message that the field can only be used in Jira Product Discovery, not Jira. 

 

[Lior Pinelis]

@Esha Gajula     it is a great addition to a native functionality.

Adding support of a Cross Work Item Rollupswould be amazing.

Few use cases:

1. Rollup time spend on a work items

     a. From child to parent all the way to the top (especially when there are parent above Epic

     b. Sum of time spend on work items based on JQL (the limit of 1k work items must be removed), based on a field value. For example, we are using Tempo Account and have a Work Type "Project" that is a parent of Epic. It would be great to add a formula field on a Project work item, that will give a total hours logged on all work items, that have same "Account" value as that Project ticket.

2. Rollup estimates same as two use cases as for work log above

[Sara Phillips]

I have been testing the SUM formula and trying to work out how to get it to display sum, even if some of the fields are blank.

Is there a way to do this without including heaps of IF functions for every scenario where one or more fields might be blank?

I have checked Supported functions for formulas / Date and time functions and it does not mention how to address if one of the fields might be empty/blank.

[Dominic Williamson]

@michelle_bachmann looks you need to check your 'Create field' selection.

Ensure you select the Formula field. Not, Custom formula used in Product Discovery.