How do I reliably use checkboxes in a Jira issue description?

[Carlin Scott]

I've found that if I check or uncheck a checkbox in an issue description, that it will delete the whole description if my view of the issue was out of sync. This is irreversible once it happens. And it makes the feature somewhat unusable.

No, I cannot use the issue history to restore the description because it lacks formatting characters. It's just one giant block of text.

Should I just not use checkboxes in an issue description? Or do I need to always refresh the page before I click a checkbox? I'm not sure if that will even work, because a couple times I had just cloned the issue and clicked a checkbox. And it deleted the description. No one else was editing it, except maybe Jira itself.

[Carlin Scott · Accepted solution]

I can manage the checklist in Confluence where the feature is more reliable and then embed it into the Jira issue description:

1. Create confluence page
2. Add checklist
3. Publish
4. Click "copy link" button.
5. Paste into the issue description
6. Click the generated card
7. Select "embed"

I can still check boxes in the embedded checklist and see it update in Confluence. There is a longer delay of about 10 seconds though.

[Matteo Vecchiato]

Hi @Carlin Scott ,

Thank you for your post.

In my opinion, it is better to use the dedicated checkbox custom field for this kind of use.

Kind regards 

[Carlin Scott]

I would use that if my use-case wasn't a release deployment checklist that changes with each release. The checkbox field is only useful for static checklists.