Can I have wiki-style template text in a JIRA task?

[Fran Stewart]

I'm working on a test case database in JIRA. Many test cases require exactly the same steps to set up (Log in, navigate to dialog, switch to tab, enter test data). It's easy to enter this data into each case, but if we do so, we'll wind up with a mess of maintenance whenever those steps need changing.

In Mediawiki markup code, you can create a template page that contains "boilerplate" text (link bar for the bottom of a page, disclaimer or welcome text, etc.) and insert it anywhere by adding the markup code {PageName}. When the page renders, the tag's replaced with the text on the targeted page.

Is there a way to do this in a description field in JIRA? If not, what would be the smartest way within JIRA's normal workflow to point testers to a single location for the correct steps that they could easily navigate back from?

[SimonS · Accepted solution]

Hi Fran,

JIRA doesn't have templates available, but what you could do is create a "template issue" with all of the steps, fields, etc. that you need pre-filled.

Then, when it is time to create a new issue, the user could Clone that template issue, move, and rename it to suit their needs.

-Simon

[Fran Stewart]

Thanks! Unfortunately, for our purposes a template case doesn't really solve the problem: the cost of maintaining numerous copies of the same steps. Writing them up is just a matter of copying and pasting, but when the UI changes and disrupts the steps, we'll have to hunt down each separate copy to update them.

Sounds like we're out of luck but I'm grateful for your answer. JIRA works really well as a bug database, and I can see how it'd be valuable as a case database, but it has a way to go yet. If you implemented a template system (see how it works at http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Templates), you'd really reduce test case maintenance overhead and JIRA'd be much more of a contender.

Thanks again for your help!

-Fran