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Tips for optimizing Jira board performance with many custom fields?

merry chriistmas

Hi everyone!

I’ve been working with Jira for a while, and as our projects have grown, we’ve added a lot of custom fields and workflows. Lately, the boards and filters are becoming slower, especially when switching views or loading complex filters.

Has anyone faced similar performance issues and found good ways to optimize board speed? For example:
• Best practices for managing or cleaning up unused custom fields
• Ways to simplify filters without losing important data
• Any settings in Jira Cloud that can help with performance

Would really appreciate real‑world tips or suggestions

Accepted answers

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Staffan Redelius

Hi @merry chriistmas

Removing unused custom fields can be done from Administration -> Work Items -> Custom fields. You can see when the field was lastley used. That will give you a hint. Just be aware that removing custom fields will also remove the data in the fields. An better option might be just to remove them from the screens if the are not used.

In my experience the loading time for boards mainly depends on the board filter. Try to narrow the search by project(s) so you don't start the filter with a broad search like Assigne in (user1, user2, user 3) or Issuetype in (story, task) since that will force Jira to search thru all issues before narrowing it down to what you actually need to see.

Let me know if this helps!
/Staffan

Arkadiusz Wroblewski

@Staffan Redelius

Unfortunately, thats Spam

Haha i smiled when i seen "Roblox"

Staffan Redelius

@Arkadiusz Wroblewski are you answering the correct post? 😉

Arkadiusz Wroblewski

@Staffan Redelius

Haha using Phone Happens.

But I swear one of this Posts was referencing something to Roblox 😂

Tal Adari

A few things that reliably help here:

1. Trim what the board actually renders. Board and issue-view slowness scales with the number of fields on the screens in play, not just the total field count. Remove fields you do not need from the relevant screens first, that is the fastest win and it is reversible.

2. Find the truly unused fields and retire them. In Jira Cloud, go to Settings, Issues, Custom fields, and check each field's last-used date and contexts. A field with a context count of 0 is unused. Fewer live fields means faster JQL and lighter issue views.

3. Bundle where you can. If several fields represent one concept, a single field (or a bundled field via an app) frees slots and declutters the layout.

4. Watch the 700-field limit. Once you hit it you cannot create new fields until you are back under, so it is worth auditing before you are forced to.

The catch is that doing this safely by hand across dozens of projects and screens is slow, since deleting a field used in some old workflow or screen can break things.

I built a small read-only Forge app for exactly this audit step, Field Limit Guard, which ranks fields by risk and shows where each one is used before you remove anything. Sharing in case a purpose-built tool saves you time.

Rasmus Ersmarker

You’re right to be cautious about treating “last used” or screen/context counts as automatic deletion criteria. I’d start by separating:

- fields with no screen, context, values, or saved-filter references;
- fields that are merely stale; and
- similar/duplicate fields created during migrations.

For each cleanup candidate, document the blast radius first—values, screens, contexts, projects, and filters—and use Jira’s field trash/restore window rather than a permanent delete. Also check automation separately: Jira does not expose every automation dependency through the public API.

Disclosure: I build FastAudit — Custom Field Scanner for Jira, which is designed for this evidence-first review. It inventories those signals, flags duplicates, exports the evidence, and only moves reviewed candidates to Jira’s own reversible trash: Marketplace listing

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