Is there any way to add a multi-line text field to a JPD project?

[Dave Nicholson]

Teams are looking to add text fields to their JPD projects but are limited to short text, is there a way to add a paragraph-type field or plans to add that functionality?

[Tanguy Crusson · Accepted solution]

Hi @Dave Nicholson it's not supported yet but definitely something we plan to do at some point. We still need to figure out where these are supported in the overall UI. 

It depends what you're trying to do, but if it's to make sure people can describe different aspects of an idea we've seen teams use description templates (you can create your own):

[Ákos Botos]

I have totally missed the temaplates feature.

Same feature for other (company managed) Jira projet types would be great.

[Simone Longoni]

Templates are lovely but you cannot see portions of them into the various views (mostly lists).

Definitely looking for multi-line fields.

[Diana G]

@Tanguy CrussonDo you have an update on this feature? Should we expect it any time soon?

[Louise Baker]

+1 to this feature.

For us, we're a software company. We have our own 'programming language' that our internal users utilize. Many times feature suggestions come with code examples. It would be excellent to have these code examples be corralled into a separate text field rather than alongside the problem definition itself.

Additionally, we'd like to break out business impact from problem definition.

[Joshua Heling]

agreed. I'd built somethign very similar to JPD in a custom team-managed project, and am now trying to migrate to JPD. But the lack of a non-short text field type is a real hassle, since we also had things like business impact and expected outcome as distinct fields (sometimes >255 characters).

[Meytal BM]

+1 on this feature request. yeah we also need it for business justifications and KPI and more

[Robert Aarons]

+1 on this feature request. I also want to split description data in some scenarios to expose different summaries and information to different stakeholders.

It will also be valuable when Forms are fully integrated with JPD.

Regards,

Taha

[Chris Timms]

+1 on this feature request. I want to split description data in some scenarios to expose different summaries and information to different stakeholders.

It will also be valuable when Forms are fully integrated into JPD.

Regards,

- C

[Gregg Reaves]

+1

pretty frusturating. People need custom fields in their ideas and views that house useful information. It's not uncommon - infact it's more often than not - that they need to add information that is larger than 255 characters and this is a headache for me to work around when it should have existed from the beginning. Please prioritize this.

[Karthiga Sethuraj]

+1 to add multi-line text fields. Our organization has several multi line custom fields that is used to define and submit an idea.

Hello @Tanguy Crusson 

Please correct me if I am wrong, JPD still doesn't support multi-line text field. Is that right ?

Thank you,

Karthiga

[Tanguy Crusson]

That is correct. you can use idea description + idea description templates instead today. 

[Karthiga Sethuraj]

@Tanguy Crusson  do you have any recommendations for migrating multi-line text field from the former idea portal over to JPD ? We have around 700+ ideas with 10+ long text fields each with over 255 characters. We do not want to lose that data during the migration using csv import. Please advise. 

Thank  you in advance.

[Tanguy Crusson]

@Karthiga Sethuraj sorry you lost me: what tool are you migrating from? (idea portal)

Something you could do is import the text fields as insights (we have an API for that) or as comments (I think you can import comments via CSV, details here)

[Karthiga Sethuraj]

Hey @Tanguy Crusson  I am migrating 800+ ideas from Aha!. I have a csv dump of all the ideas from our old idea portal (Aha)

There is already a separate Comments field in aha and CSV does allow me to migrate long text into comments in JPD.
However I have a couple of text fields in aha (see below Bullet list) that have to be ideally migrated to its own individual custom fields in JPD . 

Would you recommend importing the below questions and responses to insights using the API ? If yes could you share more details/doc please ?

• Data Purpose / Use Case
• How is this data essential to the client(s) or Zego’s daily operations and in what way?
• How often do you need this data/report?
• Impacted User(s) / Client(s) Requesting
• Is there an existing method or process for getting this data today?
• Proposed Solution
• User Workflow
• What is the problem we are trying to address?
  Idea status

Please advise! Thank you!

[Tanguy Crusson]

I can think of 3 options:

1. you ask an engineer to get these fields from Aha! and append them to a description that you then concatenate to the Aha! description and import into the idea
2. They add it as a comment to the idea instead
3. they add it as an insight instead of in the description. Example of using the API: https://github.com/Atlassian-integrations/polaris-forge-ref-app/tree/master/push-example

[Karthiga Sethuraj]

Thanks for your quick response. Appreciate it.

1) I do not understand your first point above. I already have the dump of ideas from Aha, are you suggesting to append all these questions to the description field and then import it to JPD ? If yes then I can do it in excel itself using "merge two cells" function, why would I need an engineer, Sorry want to make sure I am not missing anything here.

3) Reg point nr 3, Is using an API the only option to map text fields from aha to the insight field ? Looks like it is not supported by the CSV importer, Am I right?

Please advise.

[Tanguy Crusson]

1) sure, if you find a way to do this directly in Excel, perfect 🙂

2) yes, the only way is using the API - the CSV importer does not yet support insights (we'll add support for this later though)

[Karthiga Sethuraj]

Quick follow up to point nr 1:

Did you mean the formatting of the description field (after merging several text fields) can be maintained only by using code and not possible in excel ? If yes is there any documentation on how an engineer can do this ?

[Sylwester]

@Tanguy Crusson - is there any update on when this field type will be added? this seems fundamental, especially that Product Discovery is coming out of beta.

This field type does exist in Jira Software. I do appreciate that there is a templating option but we all probably need another long text field.

Fantastic tool overall! 

[Tanguy Crusson]

Hi @Sylwester , same update as before - our recommendation at this stage is still to use templates.

Can you please share more details about your use case / why you need that ? Thank you!

[Ben Gallant]

@Tanguy Crusson 

I'd like to add paragraph fields to JPD ideas as well.

We have another project that acts as a Project Intake Form (JSM, TM, Cloud) with individual questions about Project goals, Problem Statements, etc, and we need to be able to shoot the contents of those paragraph fields in JSM custom fields into paragraph fields in JPD. We use Elements Copy and Sync to create the JPD issues and sync the fields so that they stay the same. 

It's imperative that we can do this. 

For now, I'm just using an automation to pull the data from each of the JSM paragraph fields and then using smart values to build the description. 

It's a one-way sync at this point because if you update the fields on the JSM side, it'll shoot them over to the JPD description.  But if you edit the JPD description, it doesn't update the JSM individual fields. This won't work. 

Any idea when this will be implemented? I'd be happy with just some additional fields that show up below the Description field if they have data. If not, they could be hidden. 

[Yves Bauer]

+1
any update on this feature?

[Darren Nicas]

+1

[Hannes Stefánsson]

I also would love this feature for a large variety of reasons with most of them listed below.

[Farina Broadley-Pedersen]

+1 I'd like to add report updates associated with JPD project

[Darren Nicas]

It is now 1 year later and in typical Atlassian fashion, multi-line text custom fields are nowhere to be found. Will we ever get it @Tanguy Crusson ?

[Tanguy Crusson]

@Darren Nicas thanks for the feedback and I understand it's frustrating to not get what you ask for, but I'm sure you'll appreciate that creating a roadmap and running a product is a tad more complicated than implementing every feature request from users. The JPD roadmap is 80% made of what users ask for, but... with thousands of customers, y'all ask a lot of things, every day 😅 We have to prioritize, and that means having to constantly say no/later to many things so we can do a few things right.

This one is on the watch list. Lately we've been focusing on big boulders (like sharing/stakeholder currently in early access), making sure the system scales with the increasing demand, and making sure JPD can be adopted by many teams in the company without having to configure everything in each project (e.g. global fields). We're currently reviewing our priorities, and looking at creating a team dedicated to addressing medium sized product improvements like this one. 

[Darren Nicas]

@Tanguy Crusson we're about 6 months later now, any visibility on multi-line text fields?