Tame those wild URLs with Smart Links!

[#1]

The URL custom field now supports Smart Links. Smart Links, rather than URLs, provide a richer and more contextualized experience by allowing users to engage with work from various sources without switching tools, respecting permissions and compliance, and enabling interactive experiences. Whether you're referencing documents, integrating tools, or sharing resources, Smart Links keep your issues tidy and make them easier to scan through.

Simply paste a URL, and Jira will automatically convert it into a Smart Link.

Key benefits

• Enhanced Readability: URLs will now appear as clickable links with descriptive titles, making it easier to understand their content at a glance.

• Contextual Previews: Many Smart Links offer hover previews and embedded content, which give users access to the content without needing to click through to another tool. This aids in making quick decisions.

Show me some examples...

The URL custom field formats URLS as Smart Links in the issue view, the list view, and the board view…

FAQS

1. How do I add a global URL custom field which can be available to all projects? Create a custom field | Atlassian Support

2. How do I add a URL custom field scoped to a single team-managed project? Customize an issue's fields in team-managed projects | Jira Cloud | Atlassian Support

3. Can I turn off Smart Links for the URL and Short Text fields? Based on feedback, we will consider this. However, for now, Jira custom fields will render URLs as Smart Links where possible.

   • The quick workaround for URL fields is to click into the field, and the plain text URL will be visible. For Short Text fields, removing the “http(s)://” will ensure the link is rendered as plain text.

   • The best workaround is to the use the Paragraph custom field type, with the renderer style set to wiki (see below). URLs pasted into this field type will have a link setting that allows for them to be formatted in different ways.

Special mention - Paragraph custom field

Your Paragraph custom fields may be set to plain text, meaning you won’t get the benefit of these types of text formatting…

• URLs formatted as Smart Links

• Italic, bold and underlined text

• Multiple levels of headings to organize your document

• Bullets, numbering, tables and quotations

• Images, screenshots, and emoticons

We recommend you update the renderer for your Paragraph custom fields to be “wiki style”. Note a Jira admin will need to make these changes.

Link on how to update the paragraph field renderer to “wiki style” here Specify field behavior | Atlassian Support

We hope you get value from this but please feel free to share any feedback or suggestions in the comments! Thanks.

[Harrison Ponce]

[Erica T_]

I don't think this was thought through, we don't want cute (excuse me) smart links.. we need the actual url to display, it's a requirement for what we do.

Why did you not just make it possible via a renderer to either use it as a smart link or use it as full displayed url or, make a new field option called 'smart url' so teams can pick that or use the raw url when creating a new field? That way those of us already heavily utilizing the current one don't have to change everything - fields, automations, processes? You went from one extreme to another. This is a lot of work to undo the fact that we used a url field for urls, now we need to not use the url field for our urls because we actually want to see the url itself. 

[Casey Gould]

Is there a list of supported domains for smart links? Google Drive, Figma, etc.?

I'm especially looking for possible GitHub and Notion previews.

+1 you have to let enable instances to disable this on a field by field basis.

[Danno]

So I thought this was a new enhancement especially with the screenshot of the Jira issue with the smart Link to google drive Survey responses example. Lo and behold as usual, I try that with a SharePoint URL and no Smart Link. Am I missing something in the field setup?

[Ricardo.Gomes]

Lesson of the day:

"A new feature can easily become a bug when it doesn't come with configurable options".

Not all companies are the same... What some call "flexibility" can also be called "inconsistency" by others...

Not all users are the same, not all use cases are the same. Therefore, if you're releasing a new feature, make sure it's fully configurable (can't be enabled/disabled) to avoid confusion and complaints.

You're welcome - that was free.

[James Rickards (Spark-Nel)]

Whilst I like the sentiment of this enhancement, it should have been deployed as a new field type, rather than editing an existing field type and this having unexpected consequences.

[andrew_furness]

I agree with others that this should be configurable. Some of the URL's we want to capture on a ticket link to private systems which means the "smart link" now says "login" instead of the actual URL. Sure it works if I click it, but in this specific example it would be more user friendly to have just left it as the raw URL (which I'd do in the RTE but I can't do in this field).

🥹

[Rune Rasmussen]

Oh no, another "improvement".
In many cases these "smart" links will resolve to something vague and undescriptive, like just "Jira".
Then you'll end up having 8 links that are just
Jira
Jira
Jira
Jira
Jira
Jira
Jira
Jira

Which is wildly useless.

I don't want to be negative. I really want to be enthusiastic. But for us this will absolutely have a negative impact.

Can we at least have a "plain text renderer" we can set in the Field Configurations for the URL fields?