When using new Jira Issue View, how to avoid extra "\" being auto added for tags in description?

Question

When using the new Jira issue view to edit the description field, extra "\" are auto added to the "{{" tags we use for automation.  The only way I can view and update that is switching back to the old view and go in "Edit" mode to remove.

1. Is there a way to avoid the extra "help" from Jira?

2. Is there a way to edit in non-WYIWYG mode in the new issue view?

Dario B · Answer

@Katherine Chan ,

Thanks a lot for the screenshots and the further explanation. I now understand that you are trying to check if there is a way to see the issue comments or description in plain text instead of WYIWYG in order to check whether or not the escape character (backslash) is added before curly brackets.

In order to check whether backslashes are added or not to the description on my test instance I have called the below REST API endpoints:

*  GET /rest/api/3/issue/{issueIdOrKey} for the description
* GET /rest/api/3/issue/{issueIdOrKey}/comment for the comments

Looking at the returned JSON payload, it seems escape characters are not added anymore since we are now using Atlassian Document Format instead of Wiki markdown:

[...]
  "content": [{
         "type": "paragraph",
         "content": [{
             "type": "text",
              "text": "text"
         }]},
   {
        "type": "paragraph",
         "content": [{
               "type": "text",
              "text": "{text in brackets}"
          }]},
 [...]

Full JSON payload on pastebin: https://pastebin.com/qVv0r6hN

Once this has been said, it is still not clear to me what issue you are trying to solve with the curly brackets having the escape character or not. I understand this is related to automations but I'd like to get more details so that I can further look into this.

Cheers,
Dario

Katherine Chan · Answer

See attached screenshots.  The first one is description in Edit mode in the Old View that shows "\{\{" in the tags.  However, in the New View for the same section, I can't tell from the WYIWYG editor that the extra "\" was added.  And I can't find how to get to a non-WYIWYG editing mode in the New View.

Before the "\" being added we were making updates in the description field but we only found out afterwards so can't tell which exact update triggered it.

It would be helpful to be able to switch to a non-WYIWYG editing mode in this case in the New View.

Katherine Chan · Answer