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Setting default value to Comment field on transition screen

Greg Hoggarth

Does anyone know how to set the value of the comment field when a transition form loads?

I've tried various javascript hacks and groovy scripting using the behaviours add-on but just can't get this to work. It's easy to set values for other fields, but the comment field seems to be unique.

Is there a tested and verified working method to do this? I'm not interested in people suggesting to 'try' things if they haven't actually proven themselves that they work; I've spent at least 10 hours on this with many dead-ends already - if it were straightforward I would have gotten it by now.

Jira 6.3.

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Nic Brough -Adaptavist-

I did it with javascript hacks, but in version 4. I removed it after we realised 99% of the comments were set to the default because the users ignore it. I'd strongly recommend not wasting your time doing this. Only make a comment if you have something useful to say, the users will just let junk drif in if you default it.

Greg Hoggarth

I have a distinct use-case for this. We moved from ClearQuest, which had a notes log, and at the top of each note it would record what status the note was left in.

Our workflow is such that there are some transitions where we require the user to enter a reason for their action; eg if a tester rejects a developer's fix, they must explain what went wrong in the testing. At the moment, the transition that appears contains only the Comment box and it is Required to fill it in for this transition, which is fine. But when you look at the log of comments, there is absolutely nothing that differentiates this 'rejection' comment from any other comment that may have been left on the issue. So if managers (such as myself) come to look at the issue and want to quickly see why the fix was rejected, we have to hunt through the comments or look at the detailed history to try and work out what the problem was.

If we had a default template that said "Issue was rejected:" at the top of the comment, it would make this easier to find. This is much more of a "very nice to have" than a mandatory requirement - we've been using Jira for over 6 months without this functionality, but I would like to add it if possible.

Other transitions where we have mandatory comments (where the screen contains only the comment field and nothing else) include re-opening an issue and when a developer sends an issue back to a tester for more information.

And yes, the various javascript suggestions I have found on the internet for this appeared to be for version 4 or early version 5 and no longer work, hence my requirement for "tested and verified"

Greg Hoggarth

Guess this isn't possible in Jira 6.3.

Nic Brough -Adaptavist-

What's wrong with a "reason for latest rejection" field?

Greg Hoggarth

It's not just 1 transition that forces a comment to be left, there are multiple. It doesn't make sense to have 4-5 discrete fields to trace each action. It would be more sensible just to have 1 field.

If you're going to have 1 field, it makes more sense just to use the standard Comment field, and not a special new one.

Nic Brough -Adaptavist-

You've still got the very human point that if you fill in a default, your users are simply not going to bother. In which case, the data is redundent - you know what they're going to enter because they're using transition X.

Your use-case does make sense, but I think you're over-engineering it, and a single filed with "latest" is still a better option. When I implemented defaulted comments in an old system, I said exactly the same thing, but the managers insisted. We agreed to revise it in a months time. Result was a 99.98% incidence of utterly pointless defaulted comments.

Information Systems

Have you found any solution since posting this? I just started looking for the same capability. In my use case we are doing asset tracking with JIRA. When a user does the "Accept Item" transition to accept posesion of an item i would like that to trigger a boiler plate comment something along the lines of "I accept responsible for this asset".

Greg Hoggarth

Other than Cedric offering a paid-for solution, no.

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