How to limit or pre-define the amount of values for a customs field of type label?

[Holger Kloenne]

Is there a way of combining the comfortable way of handling labels with the advantage of pre-defining the selectable values/options as possible for multi select fields?

Using JIRA 4.2.2

Thanks in advance

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

Um, that kind of renders labels pointless. Multi select fields are there to allow people to put tags on, from a pre-defined list. Labels are there to allow the user to tag things with whatever they feel.

There's nothing in-between those - either you want a pre-defined list (use a multi-select), or you want the users to enter stuff (use labels)

[Matt Taylor]

Sorry to drag up an old thread but I disagree Nic. The labels interface for entering values is much easier and cleaner than a multiselect, particularly if you have a lot (10+) of options.

It's a lot easier to type in a value with autocomplete (or select from the drop down), or click on the x to remove a value, rather than having to scroll through a list, remembering to hold ctrl whilst to click to add or remove an entry or you lose everything that was selected before.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

I think you need to look at the dates - the answer was valid four years ago in JIRA 4.  The interface you're talking about is a later and better one, for both types of field.

Also, the question was not about the interface, it was about how to handle the content.

[Matt Taylor]

But the original problem that was raised is still an issue in the latest JIRA 7. You still don't have the ability to limit what the user can enter in a custom label field.

And the multiselect is still not as easy to use (or comfortable as the original poster put it) as a label. You still have to scroll through the list, and ctrl-select the entries to either add them or remove them. It would be a lot easier if you could have the same way of adding or removing entries from a field as with a label, but having the ability to restrict it as with a multiselect.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

That "original" problem is still correctly answered.  Labels are designed to allow users to add items.  If you want to limit them, use the multi-select.

The secondary problem of the multi-select feeling uncomfortable - totally agree.  Atlassian are moving that way though - have a look at the components field.  There's an in-progress request to allow the "renderer" for that to apply to multi-selects as well.

[atlasfire_andrew]

@Nic Brough [Adaptavist] I think having a component style renderer for multi-select would help considerably.  I'm pretty new to JIRA, is it possible to create your own multi-select renderer?  Even one that shows more than 5 values at a time would help for some use cases.

On another note, I work on an internal web site and we have an enhanced bootstrap type-ahead control that does the following:

• On focus, automatically recommends up to x values based on popularity.
• On typing, it filters the values available based on substring matching.

This approach has been invaluable in solving a common problem where you can have a lot of values, you want to restrict the values, yet you want to give visibility to common options.  I haven't seen many commercial sites use this approach but it works extremely well for a variety of scenarios.