How do you utilize screen field tabs?

Question

Hello community!

I have inherited a jira instance that has never had a dedicated admin and things were done and added on the fly, so I am trying my best to make our company managed software projects more user friendly, retroactively.

One gripe I hear about, especially from Customer and Technical Support, is there are so many fields on our issues, especially Bugs. We have about ~20 that are on the side panel that aren't "standard", like Assignee.

(I have already gone through the fields that aren't really used and disabled those, but what we have left, we actually need.)

I know using field tabs is probably the next best move, but I don't want to add more frustration by making confusing groupings. Anyone care to share how they set up field tabs?

Some of our fields, for context: 
fix version, bug source, confirmed by, confirmed by date, tested success user/date, branch, environment found in, ad hoc deployed?...and so on.

John Funk · Answer

Yep, I think you are spot on with your approach.

Hillary DiMaria · Answer

Hi! Thanks for the input. That is what I was thinking! In my test site, I have Bug Details, Priority/Severity, Dev/Deployment, QA/Content.

My thinking was based on which team is responsible for filling out the fields/who triggers the automations for them.  Ie. priority is Product Management, Bug Source is Dev, Release Notes Description is QA/content.

Then try to leave exposed on the side any fields that our customer facing/support teams need to quickly reference.

I just like hearing about what other users do, in case my approach is too simplistic or perhaps even overly complex...

John Funk · Answer

Hi Hillary,

There is probably some type of logical grouping you can do with the fields - maybe by step in the process. For example, put all of the testing related fields in a Testing tab, etc. Deployment data together, etc.

If the fields are really needed, the users shouldn't be complaining about the fields being on the screen. haha