Is this how Checkbox and Radio Button fields are supposed to work in Jira?

[James Malgieri]

We are using Jira 8.13.0 Server.

I have wanted to use checkbox and radio button custom fields in JIRA but they do not behave in a way I am used to.  The only values that are visible are those that have been selected. A user cannot see the checkbox or radio button selection unless they go into the edit screen. Is this normal behavior in Jira?

I expected all values to be visible outside of an edit screen or edit pane.

What is seen after selecting field values:

Selecting values from the Radio Button Custom field:

Selecting values from the Checkbox custom field:

If the Checkbox or Radio Button selections are not visible there's not much point in having these two custom field types, is there?  I could just use a Select List Custom Field because it appears the Checkbox and Radio Button fields are behaving exactly like a Select list except instead of making a selection by clicking on the item I'm using a checkbox or button to make the selections.

[Mike Rathwell · Accepted solution]

Hi @James Malgieri 

I shall try to not "rant" on this one as it is a UI approach in Jira that has long been an annoyance for me. The approach is that fields without values are not displayed on the screen. Once they DO have a value, you can see and edit them.

To my tiny mind, especially for fields such as you cite, they should be "on top" all the time and not only when they first get information in them. It would be nice if the ability to display empty fields were configurable.

The only way I have gotten fields to display in your scenario is often not the best situation where one would set a default value in them so they are onscreen. The danger there is that, if you want a real and true value put in from time to time, often, if it is on the screen with a default value, the users don't. Worse, you can't check that a value was put in consistently in the workflow.

So... short answer, they do behave differently than one might think and the only way to have them on screen by default is set a default value.

[James Malgieri]

Mike, thanks for your input.

It's doubly confusing when you add Confluence into the mix. At least there you can create a checklist - which is nothing like the Jira checkbox custom field and ends up confusing customers because they see Jira and Confluence as Atlassian software so of course they look and behave the same - which they don't.

To me, and a lot of other people, a checkbox/radioButton list should be a list of displayed values that are selectable by the checkbox or radio button - indicated to the user by an "x" in the checkbox or "dot" in the radio button.  Now I'm trying not to rant.

Oh well.

btw: A few years ago we had a user who wanted to "see all of the fields" whether or not they had any data in them.  We tried using a single dot/period as the default value - which did work but it looked really ugly.

[Colleen Gotling]

I totally agree.  The radio button and checklist are no different than a single list dropdown.  

[brian.boggs]

Really disappointing that a simple checkbox is just a thing that Atlassian does not give us the ability to do without adding on extra software from the marketplace. 

It is bad UX and requires more than a single click to "check" a box.    Who cares if you only have one option - you are forced to click to initiate the dropdown, click again to select the checkbox option and then it shows like a tag on the field values.    

Typical example of not seeing the forest for the trees.