Can I have a custom field displayed in the "Descripion" section of my issue ?

Question

Hi everyone,

I’m facing a UI / layout issue in Jira Cloud regarding the display of a custom long text field in the backlog issue preview panel.

Context

I created a custom field (multi-line text) called Acceptance Criteria, which contains a lot of text (functional details, rules, examples, etc.).

However, in the backlog view, when I select a user story and the issue details panel opens on the right, this field is displayed in a very compact layout:

* only 2–3 words per line

* extremely narrow column

* overall very hard to read and almost unusable

See screenshot #1 attached – current broken / unreadable layout.

What I would like

I would like this custom field to be displayed exactly like the native Description field, meaning:

* full-width display

* proper multiline wrapping

* comfortable reading experience

When I put the same content inside Description, it displays perfectly.

See screenshot #2 attached – expected layout using Description field.

My question

Is there a way to:

* configure the issue layout / screen / field position

* or change the rendering behavior

so that my custom long text field behaves exactly like the Description field in the backlog issue preview?

Ideally, I want it to appear in the main content area, not in the compact right-side fields column.

Thank you very much in advance

Marco Bazaud · Answer

Hey Tobi,

Thank you for the time taken to answer.

Indeed we already are in Wiki Style renderer for this custom field, that does not solve it.

I did not think of further steps such as touching application code, I don't think that would be our correct path here, but maybe I'll take a look.

Thanks again :)

Tomislav Tobijas · Answer

Hi @Marco Bazaud ,

I think that on DC, all of these fields are automatically thrown into the Details section and that you cannot 'force' them to behave in the same way as the Description field appears. The description field has a dedicated panel/section which has the full width of the window, while the 'upper' part has a multi-column layout.

I don't have a DC environment to test it out, but one question I have here: which renderer is "Acceptance Criteria" using?
If it's not wiki style and if you would change it to that, does anything change? 👀
Note that I would suggest testing this on some DEV environment or with some other field that doesn't contain data before switching it on the production one. 👈

Apart from that, maybe there are some options to configure the whole UI (in a way), but that's a bit out of my domain and is probably not recommended when it comes to application code restructuring.
Potentially, Dev community would have some better insights here.

Cheers,
Tobi