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Introducing the new “Empty custom field configuration feature” for Jira and Jira Service Management

Jakub Sildatk

Hello! I’m Jakub, a Software Engineer from the Jira Data Center team.

On behalf of the team, I'd like to share with you more details about recent improvements we’ve made to reduce the amount of work related to filling out empty custom fields in Jira and Jira Service Management Data Center! We’re thrilled to introduce the new "Empty custom field configuration" feature that simplifies updating custom fields, making it more efficient for end-users and project managers.

The issues with the previous custom field configuration

Both in Jira Software and Jira Service Management, users often struggled to edit empty custom fields in the issue view, which made the whole experience time-consuming and frustrating:

Users had to navigate to the issue details or edit the field whenever they needed to add some info to an empty field. Learn more about configuring the issue view
As empty custom fields were hidden by default, users could forget to add the necessary information.

Project managers also faced challenges related to empty custom field configuration:

They couldn’t see specific empty fields on the screen to signal that something was missing from the ticket.
During onboarding, much time was spent teaching new employees how to open hidden custom fields due to the complex user experience flow.

Introducing the "Empty custom field configuration" feature

We've developed the "Empty custom field configuration" feature to address those pain points. With this option, you can configure to display empty custom fields on the full issue view, making it much easier for end-users to fill in the needed fields without editing the issue each time.

The feature can be configured on two levels:

On the instance level. Jira admins can make empty custom fields always visible from the Jira administration menu, on the Configure screen page. Learn more about defining screens
On the project level. Jira admins and Project admins can enable this feature in the Project settings, on the Issue types and Screens tabs. Learn more about customizing project issues

Here's how it works:

A new column on the Configure screen page allows you to configure the visibility of each custom field.
If the Show when empty toggle is turned on, the custom field will always be displayed in the full issue view. If the field has no data, it’s value will be set to "None" by default (the same logic as for system fields).
If the Show when empty toggle is turned off, an empty custom field won't be displayed (the current behavior).

Learn more about the introduced feature in our release notes:

To ensure backward compatibility, every Show when empty toggle is turned off by default.

Updates to the API

We’ve made several updates to the API to support this feature:

Added a new endpoint for PUT requests: api/2/screens/{screenId}/tabs/{tabId}/fieldsV2/{id}/updateShowWhenEmptyIndicator/{newValue} . It only returns the HTTP 204 status if the operation was successful.
Extended the response of the following endpoints with a new boolean field showWhenEmpty:
- api/2/screens/{screenId}/tabs/{tabId}/field for GET/POST requests
- api/2/screens/{screenId}/availableFields for GET requests