Jira Align Objectives - any way to disable auto-populate of Program field?

[Rhodes Baker]

Given a Portfolio Objective that maps to capabilities, when you select the Portfolio (we have 1), it auto-populates the Programs field with ALL the programs in the portfolio (we have 15). The vast majority of these Objectives will only require 2 or 3 programs. Is there any way to disable the auto-population of this "Programs" field? For example, start with no programs selected?  This was reproducible in Portfolio and Solution objective types. Thank you.

[Mark Cruth · Accepted solution]

Hi @Rhodes Baker ! Unfortunately there is no way to disable the auto-populate. Under the hood, Jira Align operates primarily on programs (portfolios is just a group of these programs), so when you select a portfolio Jira Align can't figure out which program to tie back to so it ties back to all of them (you'll notice in the creation process of a Portfolio Objective that you only select the Portfolio and it's only after you initial create the objective that the programs are populate). Two recommendations here...

1. After creation, instead of immediately closing the objective, just hit the "Save" button, then deselect the programs not needed, then hit "Save and Close" - it's a few additional steps but it will provide you what you need
2. Register for our Ideas Portal (where we collect new ideas for the product) and submit a request to allow initial selection of programs (vs getting all of them) - here's the link (you'll need to create an account): https://ideas.jiraalign.com

[Rhodes Baker]

Thank you Mark. The workaround we found is to create a typical Objective, remove the Programs you aren't going to use, and then clone it to start from a smaller list. 

[Mark Cruth]

Good approach! Thanks for sharing!

[Rhodes Baker]

@Mark Cruth  - Another bug/issue we found is whenever you change the Program Increment the Objective is tagged with, it auto-populates all of the programs back, after you've narrowed the list. This is creating a lot of wasted time right now. If you know of any root cause / work around let me know! Also the Ideas page returns "request has been sent" and nothing else. 

Thanks, Rhodes