Fields created in team managed project need across multiple projects

[Sam_Spencer]

I am cleaning up an instance of JIRA to help an organisation with getting some consistency.

There are many team managed projects that have individually created custom fields for their project. 

The same field(s) are needed across several projects, when they have created the fields at team level there are different syntax / input types which is making reporting a challenge.

Any thoughts on how to manage this. I think the best way is to create the custom fields and set it up in the team managed projects and then bulk update the custom field.

I think I will get push back on this because people have become attached to how they have set-up their projects  

[Peter DeWitt]

@Sam_Spencer , I think you are on the right track. I know my team would approach this by creating a new custom field and migrating all the data to that field and then removing the extra fields in the team managed projects. I get the push-back aspect. Try to put together a number of benefits that this new field will bring for the admins, organization and especially these teams. Focus on how the new reporting will help them or the leaders higher up in the org. They may not always like the change but understanding the bigger picture usually helps them get on board. Good luck!

cheers -dewitt

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @Sam_Spencer 

Welcome to the community.

Team Managed projects are intended to be used where teams operate independently and  customizations can be made in a project without affecting any other project. Given that, attempting to aggregating data from multiple projects is not easily supported or extendable.

Even it you strive to make the fields across the Team Managed projects consistent, Jira considers them different custom fields. And the Project Managers of each project will be able to change the customizations so keeping the fields consistent is not sustainable without removing the Project Administrator permissions from users who might make the configuration inconsistent with other projects.

If you need to aggregate data across projects then, as you have found, you need the custom fields in them to be defined in a consistent manner. This is more easily done with Company Managed projects where the custom fields can be shared.

Your company needs to decide what is more important, aggregated reporting or team independence and flexibility. If you need aggregated reporting you are going to need to consider changing to use Company Managed projects where the configuration of custom fields is managed by Jira Administrators rather than Project Administrators.

[Sam_Spencer]

Thanks @Trudy Claspill ,

I think your last paragraph sums up the decision that needs to be made, there has been a lot of flexibility which has pro and cons and reigning that back in to some consistency will be interesting