Can I restrict the list of fields seen in the "MORE" drop down when searching for an issue?

[John English]

Our users are getting confused as to which fields they should use when searching for an issue(Bug).   I was looking for a solution where I could hide nonrelevant fields from "More".

Thanks

John

[Mike Rathwell · Accepted solution]

Hi @John English ,

I am not aware of a method to do that but perhaps someone does know about such a thing. That said, on an average of once a quarter, I do a "Searching in Jira" brown bag training session for the company. They are typically quite well attended AND most of the problems such as you cite evaporate almost completely.

Now, the only times I get help me help me calls are when a given user is attempting something particularly esoteric but that usually is the kickstart to get them really rolling well.

A simple guide you might try to give the users is to look at a issue in detail and/or edit view. The fields visible there are possibly a good list of fields they should search on.

A final note; when I give the brown bag sessions, I do teach them the "Basic" searching part but I do drag them into "Advanced" searching with JQL. A very large majority totally eschew "Basic" after that.

[Daniel Ebers]

Hi @John English

I absolutely agree with Mike, hiding parts of the UI tend to be the wrong way. Users that come from external will miss elements, it can break after upgrades and that are just a few examples.

In case you haven't seen there is also some training available on searches, maybe this helps your users:

https://training.atlassian.com/jira-jql

After all, it also depends a bit on how well the instance is structured. In instances where I saw doubled custom fields, a mess in naming - everything one could summarize as "no structure at all" is decreasing happiness and a housekeeping would be needed before users can start working on a professional basis.

If this should be a topic for your instance you find some guidance here:
https://confluence.atlassian.com/clean/cleanup-guide-1018788576.html

A more organizational blog post which I found to be useful is available here:
https://www.atlassian.com/blog/jira-software/human-side-scaling-jira-software-governance-custom-fields-admins

Regards,
Daniel

[John English]

Thanks for the response Daniel and Mike

I agree that this is a training issue and we should not restrict which fields appear in this drop down.  

John