Why do some fields have more Operations than others in the View Field Configuration page?

unknown

I'm new to JIRA. I need help understanding what I am looking at when I am viewing the View Field Configuration page. The first sentence on the page says this, "The table below shows all fields configured in JIRA and their properties for TP: Bug Field Configuration."

The first field I see listed is this: "Account" and it also has a little annotation that reads "LOCKED". Under the "Operations" column that field has 1 link: "Screens".

The 2nd field is called "Affects Version/s" and has the following links listed under the "Operations" column: "Edit", "Hide, "Required", "Screens", and "Renderers".

The 3rd field is called "Aha! Reference" and has the following links listed under the "Operations" column: "Edit" and "Show".

 

My 1st question is: Why do some fields have more Operations than others in the View Field Configuration?

2nd question is: How do I gain access to all Operations on all the fields I see on this page?

3rd question is: Why do I see fields on this page that are NOT actually part of my project?

4th question is: Can someone please explain to me what the Field Configuration is and how to use it in my project? With screens, screen schemes, workflows, workflow schemes, fields, field configurations, and field configuration schemes...it's hard to tell what the function of each one is and how I can make any sense of how to go about using the functionality.

*Also just want to communicate that I have read through all the documentation in the "Administering JIRA Cloud Applications" section of the Atlassian Documentation and it doesn't help. Unfortunately, my questions remain unanswered after going through the documentation.

 

Thanks for any help you can give a new person to JIRA!

 . Adam .

 

 

Nic Brough -Adaptavist-

Some field types have more functions than others.  Plain short text for example, is just that - a box for some text.  But a select list field has options, and options which can vary by project/issue-type, so it needs more operations to control it.  You won't get "access to other operations", because they're simply not there.

Locked fields also reduce your operations lists - fields are locked to try to make sure you don't inadvertently remove them and break a critical part of something big (like the Agile Add-on/Application).  You can unlock fields, but it requires a little bit of hacking, and you can't do that on Cloud (if there's a good reason to unlock them, you need to raise a support request, but you can expect them to be refused unless you can demonstrate that you really do need to unlock them and you won't be breaking anything by doing it)

So that's answers to your 1 and 2, albeit a bit mixed up.  So...

3.  Fields are global artefacts, even when they only really apply to one project.  They have to be global to allow you to change where they can be used!

4. Field configurations hold bits of config for fields that doesn't fit anywhere else.  They cover :

• Renderers (I think these should be in the field context)
• Mandatory/optional (I'd bin that and do it by screen)
• A show/hide option (which can be done two other ways and far more logically in those places)
• Changing descriptions (which never seems to work)

The best page to read on this is https://confluence.atlassian.com/jira/configuring-fields-and-screens-187859099.html

(Can you tell that I'm not fond of field configurations?)