How to prepopulate Description field (system field) for a certain issue type when creating it

[Mauricio Neves]

Hello everyone,

I have read thousands of documents and tutorials but haven't come across one that suits my needs perfectly. Here's what I need:

For a certain project XYZ, I want the issue type Story to have the system field Description prepopulated / formatted in a way that the POs in our department can set up user stories in a nice visual way.

Using the following code in the description, when creating the issue:

{panel:title="User story"}
AS A
I WANT TO
SO THAT
{panel}
{panel:title="Acceptance criteria"|bgColor=#E3FCEF}
1.
{panel}
{panel:title="References"|bgColor=#FFFFCE}
{panel}

I get the following when hitting the CREATE button:

However, if I create an automation rule to prepopulate Description field (when Issue created, edit field Description with value x), it doesn't work. It creates the ticket, but blank, even though the automation rule log says the rule passed.

Anyone has any idea of how I can fix/resolve this? 

Thank you in advance!

[Trudy Claspill · Accepted solution]

Hello @Mauricio Neves 

Have you looked at the suggestion to use a custom field and copy it to the System Description field, described in the responses on this post?

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-questions/Default-text-for-Description-field-on-Jira-Cloud/qaq-p/785597

[Mauricio Neves]

I have just seen this now, it sounds a lot of engineering from my side in order to have "colorful prepopulated description fields". I will come back to my teams and see what they think and if it is really really needed, I'll try it out. Thanks @Trudy Claspill 

[Eric Kolotyluk]

OMG, that is a truly horrible solution...

[Jarosław Solecki _Deviniti_]

@Mauricio Neves You can prepopulate the content of Jira fields at the Create screen with Dynamic Forms for Jira created by our team.

You will also gain a few additional features like abilities to set value based on condition, and conditional show/hide fields, making them required or read-only.

Let me know if you need any help. 

[Kristian Walker _Adaptavist_]

Hi Mauricio,

The behaviours feature of ScriptRunner for Jira Cloud can help to achieve this requirement by creating a behaviour to run on the Create View for your issue type.

The script would then be the script we have located here. 

You would then replace the Atlassian Document Format in the script with the format for your styling, and the Atlassian Document Format Builder can be used to generate the markup required to paste into the script quickly.

I hope this information helps.

Regards,

Kristian

[Robert Tang]

In Cloud, it is possible if you have Scriptrunner using Behaviours using setValue for description.  I used Atlassian's developer "ADF Builder" to build tables to set as the default value for system fields and some of the example scripts to build it out.

Definitely still some limitations with Behaviours, but it is possible.  https://docs.adaptavist.com/sr4jc/latest/features/behaviours#global-issue-view-supported-fields

[Iago Docando]

I believe that in order to identify any possible mistake it would be way more usefull to share the configuration of your rule rather than the formatting of the description field you're looking to get.

[Mauricio Neves]

Hey Iago, this is the rule - but I already notice that it doesn't work because the trigger is when issue is created, and I would need a trigger "before issue is created, when issue type is selected". 

Or my brain can't think of anything else.

[Eric Kolotyluk]

I can't get that working either... I tried

but could not get that working either. Atlassian constantly disappoints me...

[Srinivasa vissa]

Jira core engineering team and Jira Product Mangement team are not aligned. They just created one, and community wants a good looking UX so they went with this. I also checked for this option, but they didnt make it simple. Have to live with this.