Can fields in a form be searched using a JQL query?

[#1]

This workaround is meant to help projects where it is necessary to run JQL queries for the fields related to the form.

At the moment, unless we map every Forms field to a Jira field, they will not be searchable through the JQL query, we have a request feature created for this topic:

•  JSDCLOUD-10507 - JQL search/basic search on ProForma/Forms fields

Therefore, you can link form fields to Jira fields to ensure the JQL work as usual.

Workaround steps:

Create a new custom Jira field:

1. Select > Issues.

2. Under FIELDS, select Custom fields.

3. Click Create custom field. Make sure to select All to view the available field options.

4. Select the type of field you want to create and click Next. See a list and descriptions for the available custom field types in company-managed projects.

5. Add the details for your field.

   The name you select appears as the custom field's title wherever the field appears. The description appears below the field when creating and editing issues, but not when browsing issues.

6. When you have entered the field details, select Create.

7. Add the new custom field to one or multiple screens by ticking the corresponding box and click Update.

To link a form field to a Jira field:

1. From the navigation on the left, select Project settings or Service project settings > Forms.

2. Find the form you want to edit, and select More (...) > Edit.

3. Find and select the field you want to link to a Jira field.

4. In the right-hand panel, under Linked Jira field, select the Jira field you want to populate with the information in your form field:

5. Select Save changes.

 Note: To link form fields with Jira fields, certain criteria must be satisfied, or your form may not work as expected, please refer to Link a form field to a Jira field for more information.

And now the form field will be searchable:

[Adam Varadi]

@Bruno Altenhofen Thank you for the "workaround".

However, unless I am mistaken, ProForma forms/now Forms was created with the intention to avoid/reduce the need of creating custom fields within JIRA issue types. So, this workaround is just another shot in the foot: creating a workaround that does what we wanted to avoid doing in the first place. Very disappointing I must say :-(

It would be great to see a real solution to this user need, instead of another "workaround".

[Bruno Altenhofen]

Hey @Adam Varadi

Thanks for tipping me off about it!

I understand that this might not have been the solution you were looking for and I wish there were more I could do on my side to address this for you. However, following at the beginning of this article, I mentioned that this is a workaround for a Feature Request ( JSDCLOUD-10507 - JQL search/basic search on ProForma/Forms fields) that has great chances to be developed.

With that in mind and as you already know, we're constantly improving our products by referring to our customers' feedback through the comments added to the suggestions. I would really encourage you to add any comment/s that you might deem for the Feature Request. Your feedback is very important to us.

Best,

[Charles Trilha]

Nice article. Very helpful!

[Rick Toffoli]

This workaround will come in handy to our project.

Thank you for sharing!

[Jawann Swislow]

Being unable to search Form field results unless you link them to custom fields severely limits the benefits of using Forms in the first place. Hoping this is addressed soon.

[Frederik Vindum]

Forms in JSM enable me to rapidly create an input dialog that is more user friendly, more dynamic and more beautiful than the standard request type approach. The aboslute key feature to enable this is the rich availability of standard controls combined with Confluence style page building. This is great. However, I really need to query the form elements for the form approach to be a success. This is a really deal breaker for me that querying is not available. I appriciate the workaround but it is a whole lot of work and maintenance. Please improve :-)

[Bernd Gurn]

The workaround may be good on first sight but to my knowledge you can only link one forms field to one custom field. So if you want to have all the content searchable you need to create for every forms field a corresponding custom field - seems to me much effort for us course we have forms with more than 50 fields! 

Is there a way of filling any content of the entire form in one custom field?

[Martyn Hughes-Dowdle]

Regex validation for linked custom fields in forms is not flexible. So if you have a custom field of "paragraph" you cannot perform regex validation on it in a form unless you change the type to "text". Not ideal and very limiting.

[Erki Jolla]

I think I found some kind of a temporary solution for my problem here. I also didn't have all the fields from Forms linked to Assets and as it happened I needed to get this information. After playing around I found a solution:

1. Go to Filters > View all issues

2. Go Export issues > Export XLSX (form data)

3. Select the Project and a Form

4. Click Export

After downloading the generated excel it is just a matter of managing your data in Excel. Use Pivot or Vlookup or other pull method macros to get relevant data for you.