Scriptrunner for Jira - Issue picker CF - Options for changing how the values can be searched..?

[BBC Application Admin Team]

Hi,

I'm trying to replace some custom fields that we have been using with SR equivalents. I'm pretty new with SR and am hoping for some advise...

The old custom field that we are still currently using, allow summaries from issues that are present in a specific project to be populated as allowed values in what behaves effectively as a multi-select list (which auto-completes when entering values). For context, the project that the field takes its values from is basically our service catalogue, so the custom field is used to pick services that issues in other projects have been logged against.

I've replaced these fields, with scriptrunner issue picker fields as essentially, thats whats happening (issues that meet specific criteria are being picked from another project), however, the issue picker fields can only be searched against by issue key (whereas the current fields that are being used are searched by the issue summaries) which I think is going to be too much of a difference for our users.

To attempt to workaround this, I created a listener that gets the summaries from the issues that are added into the issue picker field when issues in the projects that use these fields are updated, then writes those to a custom labels field. From the reading I did, labels seemed the safest way to do this. This all seemed to work well until today I reaslised that we have services with spaces in them (which are not allowed in labels). I've considered adding in underscores, however, this isn't ideal, as then our users have to add in underscores when searching etc.

I've been looking into alternatives; potentially writing a listener to add values to a multi-select list when issues are updated / added into our service project, however, from what i've been reading this sounds like its probably not recomended and I can see how the number of values in the list could get out of hand quickly. I haven't attempted this yet, but i imagine it also may be tricky handling situations like when the summary changes (as the existing issues will still have the old value). In addition, selecting values from the list is going to be a pain as it will be relitively long.

The issue picker does seem like the best option really as if services get re-named (the summary changes) etc. then it also updates on the existing issues, but how the values are searched is a problem.

I've also considered attempting to wite a custom JQL function for searching against values in the issue picker fields (via summary).

I'm hoping for any advice really on if there may be any other ways that I can achieve this / what the best solution may be. We don't want to buy any additional plug ins.

Thanks.