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Unique custom field for Serial numbers

Robin Stemmers

Hi All

So in many of the posts that I have read, people are looking to create a field that contains unique values.

And the answer seems to be NO all round.

In the cloud version, Unique numbers are created in the Key's - I mean, you cannot create 2 issues with the same key.

Also when you create a field with a choice option, you cannot create 2 same options for the drop down - there is some sort of validation

If the above two conditions currently exist in the platform, can the principle not be applied to other fields?

I am "spit-balling" here, but can't this be done?

PS: I am no expert on coding.

Accepted answers

Nic Brough -Adaptavist-

> And the answer seems to be NO all round.

It's not a "no", it's a "Jira is not a good place to do it"

>Unique numbers are created in the Key's - I mean, you cannot create 2 issues with the same key.

True, but those keys are intended for Jira's uniqueness requirements, not some other arbitrary system that Jira knows nothing about.

>Also when you create a field with a choice option, you cannot create 2 same options for the drop down - there is some sort of validation

That's the whole point of select lists, to uniquely identify an item of data

>If the above two conditions currently exist in the platform, can the principle not be applied to other fields?

Yes, but Jira is the worst place to do it.

I've seen a few implementations of it, but it's mostly clumsy, non-scalable and pointless - no-one likes typing in a theoretically unique id, waiting for 30 seconds for it to check that there is no duplicate and then being told that it's not unique so you can't use it.

There's two recommendations I would make:

Look at what you REALLY want from this unique id - is Jira the right place to be storing it Why does it have to be unique in Jira?
Why can't you use Jira's unique id for it?

Going back to the root of the question though - Why? Why do you think you want to do this in Jira? What problem are you trying to solve?

All comments

Robin Stemmers

2022-05-19 17_12_36-Custom fields - Jira.png 2022-05-19 17_12_51-Custom fields - Jira.png

To be able to have this kind of validation when trying to enter data

Joe Pitt

They examples, key and select list are stored in the database. To create any unique field the values have to be stored in the database as values for that field like select lists are so the current values can be checked to see if it already exists. I would look to see if there is a plug-in out there that does that.

Robin Stemmers

Hi @Joe Pitt

Sorry - I don't understand the Plug-in suggestion. can you explain please.

are you referring to a plug-in for a database?

Joe Pitt

Not sure where to find plug-ins for cloud. for servers it is the Marketplace. It is a plug-in for Jira. The documentation for cloud should have a section of available plug-ins.

Nic Brough -Adaptavist-

> And the answer seems to be NO all round.

It's not a "no", it's a "Jira is not a good place to do it"

>Unique numbers are created in the Key's - I mean, you cannot create 2 issues with the same key.

True, but those keys are intended for Jira's uniqueness requirements, not some other arbitrary system that Jira knows nothing about.

>Also when you create a field with a choice option, you cannot create 2 same options for the drop down - there is some sort of validation

That's the whole point of select lists, to uniquely identify an item of data

>If the above two conditions currently exist in the platform, can the principle not be applied to other fields?

Yes, but Jira is the worst place to do it.

There's two recommendations I would make:

Look at what you REALLY want from this unique id - is Jira the right place to be storing it Why does it have to be unique in Jira?
Why can't you use Jira's unique id for it?

Going back to the root of the question though - Why? Why do you think you want to do this in Jira? What problem are you trying to solve?

Robin Stemmers

Hey the @Nic Brough -Adaptavist-

I's not so sure about the worst place (lol)

In my org, the adoption if Jira is happening fast - good thing

as to the Why in Jira - We don't have a good central place to manage the assets and serial numbers specifically the movement of laptops and desktops.

some use spreadsheets and other are using makeshift webpage and collating data seems to be a bit of a pain.

We want to introduce workflows for the asset movement too, assign responsibility and a few other things. maybe its a pipe dream. What could you recommend? keeping in mind that wonderful statement of "No Budget"

Nic Brough -Adaptavist-

I said "not a good place" at first, but moved on to "worst", you're right, I should have stuck with the first one ;-)

>We don't have a good central place to manage the assets and serial numbers specifically the movement of laptops and desktops.

>some use spreadsheets and other are using makeshift webpage and collating data seems to be a bit of a pain.

I feel your pain.

But it explains why you have asked, and leads me to a rambling auto-biographical essay that I really don't want to bore you with. I will try to keep it short!

Jira itself is not an asset management system, so this sort of thing doesn't quite work with it. Looking for a unique id of some sort makes perfect sense, but it's not quite as useful as it first sounds, because Jira is an issue tracker, not an asset tracker, so it's not ideal.

The answer most people want me to give you is simple (and, actually, right) - use Jira + Insight. Insight will handle assets without any need for Jira having to generate unique ids in kludged fields. And the lifecycle management and responsibility and other stuff, and with a bit of work, even costs.

But "no budget" probably means "no Insight".

A very long time ago, I built an asset tracker in Jira. I wrote several plugins (a subset of what we call "apps" nowadays) to support it, of which the important ones were:

Send something to a label printer to create the physical asset tag
An interface that let a barcode scanner ask for data about an item, and update it in Jira
Fields for other projects to see asset information when linked to it

There's a whole load more things we did, but for this, we built the uniqueness you need for asset management on top of Jira's innate issue uniqueness instead of trying to create our own.

Jira is an issue tracker, but an issue could be representing anything. So we simply set up one issue = one asset.

Could that idea work for you?

Robin Stemmers

Hey @Nic Brough -Adaptavist-

Thank you for your insight on this topic and apologies to the readers who later read this post.

This discussion has made me think of this differently – it may not be perfect.

I agree, Jira is not asset management tool, but like many I think in my situation we will have to make do with what we have. I investigated the Insight App briefly and it seems like a really cool, but we are not on the plan where that is offered.

I also read a post you commented on about Select Lists and the maximum number of entries in said list.

So I had this idea:

My team is wanting to have a way control and track these assets and so I thought of the process.

If the assets are controlled by the team from intake from a supplier, we can start a process that onboards those assets into a Select List. Creating and updating a select list is an admin function, so we have control there.

Serial Numbers will only be added by an admin to when new items are procured. (We have control here as only select few can do this)

The Asset Serial list (or whatever you want to call it) will be a maintenance task. (Some automation can be applied for annual review or any other situation)

Process for maintenance will be for the admin to add the new assets to the drop-down list and it will include a deactivation or removal of old/stolen/recycled/waste devices.

So with the above and your thought on issue=asset I think I have a way to make it work for us.

Thank you for teasing my brain 😊. I will update this post if the situation works or not.

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