How to transform a custom text field in a URL it is displayed by Jira?

Sorin Sbarnea (

I have a custom field that contains that ID or an issue from another system but I want it to displayed as an URL instead as an simple text field.

How can I do this in Jira?

Remark: the field itself is not a full URL, it is just an ID and I want to add the rest of the url.

Update: I think this may be related to https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/Configuring+Renderers but I am not sure how I can implement this.

I do have Jira 4.4 and the specified Renderers link does not appear at all in the interface!

Sorin Sbarnea (

Create a plugin and add this inside <atlassian-plugin>...</atlassian-plugin>

<customfield-type key="textfield" name="Scale Id"
                      class="com.atlassian.jira.issue.customfields.impl.RenderableTextCFType">
        <description>Scale Id</description>
        <resource type="velocity" name="view" location="templates/view-scaleid.vm"/>
        <!--<resource type="velocity" name="view" location="templates/plugins/fields/view/view-basictext.vm"/>-->
        <resource type="velocity" name="edit" location="templates/plugins/fields/edit/edit-maxlengthtext.vm"/>
        <resource type="velocity" name="xml" location="templates/plugins/fields/xml/xml-basictext.vm"/>
    </customfield-type>

This is the {{view-scaleid.vm}} template:

#if ($value)
 <a href="http://example.com/browse/$!value.toString()">
 #if (${displayParameters.excel_view})
     $textutils.br($textutils.htmlEncode($!value.toString(), false))
   #else
     $!value.toString()
   #end
 </a>
 #end

Still, if you already have the field added, you will have to change its type inside the database, table is named customfields.