How to have prepopulated information in the description field

Otto December 1, 2017

I would like to have the "description" field appear with some text to act as a template. I only want this to affect the "bug" issue type.

I have been tinkering for a bit, but I can only seem to edit custom fields, not "core" fields.


Example:
Upon selecting the bug issue type, the description field shows the following text: 
*Description*

*Steps to reproduce* etc.....


3 answers

6 votes
Johnson Wang December 7, 2017

Hi @Otto,

You can prepopulate the description field using an add-on like Power Scripts.

We've actually put together a quick 8 min video tutorial that walks through all the steps you need to take to set this up. And we've also included the sample code we used, so you can just copy and paste it to test for yourself.

Hope this helps!

Johnson

1 vote
Ignacio Pulgar
Rising Star
Rising Star
Rising Stars are recognized for providing high-quality answers to other users. Rising Stars receive a certificate of achievement and are on the path to becoming Community Leaders.
December 2, 2017

You need ScriptRunner's Behaviours for prepopulating the Desciption field that way:

https://scriptrunner.adaptavist.com/latest/jira/behaviours-overview.html#_setting_a_default_description

Otto December 4, 2017

Thanks, this is exactly what I was looking for!

0 votes
Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
Community Leader
Community Leader
Community Leaders are connectors, ambassadors, and mentors. On the online community, they serve as thought leaders, product experts, and moderators.
December 1, 2017

That's correct.  Description is for a human to describe something, and should not be defaulted.  When you do default it, you end up with metric shed-loads of identical and pointless descriptions completely wasting everyone's time, and when the users do enter data, it's not very categorisable when you search.  A far better option than this is to create set of appropriate, separated, and clear text fields - steps to reproduce, observed behaviour, desired behaviour, etc.  You can default these, but because you're now structuring your data correctly, you'll find you don't need to.

Otto December 4, 2017

I fundamentally disagree. The example used in the tutorial of what Ignacio suggested, you can see it doesn't have to be the case. All QA work I have ever done in JIRA had prepopulated fields and they were all filled in. Always, and by all team members.

Like # people like this
Mark Johnson March 20, 2019

@Nic - I certainly see the problem, but can't you also set a validator to make sure that the user changed from the default?

Like # people like this

Suggest an answer

Log in or Sign up to answer