JSM can't even update a dropdown?

[Steven Cavanagh]

Do I have this right? Using the mighty Jira, world conquering market leader, dropdowns can only contain static values entered at design time.

You can't fill it in response to a user's role, or an entry in a text box (yeah I know about cascading dropdowns. That's a small percentage of use cases).

You can't fill it from an external source, like an API.

Hell, you can't even fill it from an INternal source, like a lookup table.

So if the user has to pick from a list of periodically changing data, what are they supposed to do?

[Dave Mathijs]

Hi @Steven Cavanagh if any user can add any value to a list, that list could grow exponentially in time. In that case, you might wonder whether it's user-friendly to choose from a list of dozens of even hundreds of options... Then you might be looking for other solutions a field type:

• Text field
• Labels field
• Assets field where user actually can add new values

What is your definition of "periodically changing data"? Daily, weekly, monthly?

[Kevin Patterson]

Hi @Steven Cavanagh , 

You’re not alone in facing challenges as an admin or developer on Atlassian Cloud, especially when dealing with use cases that require dynamic data in fields sourced from lookup tables or external applications. As @Dave Mathijs  mentioned, one viable workaround for these limitations is to repurpose Atlassian Assets as internal lookup tables. I use this approach in all of my JSM Premium Implementation projects for common configurations like Impact/Urgency/Priority matrix, Change Risk Scoring, etc.

By configuring custom fields with the appropriate AQL (Assets Query Language), you can populate the necessary objects based on specific criteria making it effective as a lookup table. Additionally, setting up import schedules to run a few times a day can help keep your schema objects updated with the latest data from external sources.

If you decide to implement this approach, I strongly recommend reviewing Atlassian's guidance and try adhering to these recommended limits documented on this resource page:  https://support.atlassian.com/jira-service-management-cloud/docs/recommended-data-structure-for-an-assets-schema/  . There is always a risk that Atlassian might impose stricter limits on object relationships and maximum cardinality in the future replacing recommended limits with actual limits, which could impact the effectiveness of this workaround for lookup Tables.