Configure project key at project creation

[Dan Gale ADMIN]

Currently the only way I can see to edit a project key is to create a project, then edit the project key to change from the Jira auto-assigned default. The project board is then automatically named after the default key and results in annoying extra reconfiguring.

Is there a way to set the desired project key at project creation?

[Daniel Eads]

There is an open feature request to bring back the Key field for new Cloud projects. Take a look/vote/watch here: JRACLOUD-67521

The short answer on the ticket is that the ability to change the key during creation will come back soon. Here's the relevant post from one of our product managers:

When we redesigned the project creation experience as part of the new Jira UI, we made a decision to automatically generate project keys in an effort to streamline project creation as much as possible. Based on your feedback over the last few months, we now know that we underestimated the importance of getting the project key right from the beginning. We are planning to re-introduce the ability to set the project key during project creation as soon as possible.

We will provide another update on this request when we start to roll out this update. We regret the inconvenience caused and thanks again for your patience.

Regards,
Dave Meyer
Jira Cloud Product Management

Hope that helps clear things up! In the meantime, the workaround posted by Tim is a great temporary solution.

Cheers,
Daniel

[Carisa]

Thanks so much for the update last week, @Daniel Eads! 

Following up to let everyone on this page know that as of today the ability for admins to assign their own project key when creating a new project is BACK! 🙌 Enjoy! 

More info: JRACLOUD-67521

[Dan Gale ADMIN]

Yes, awesome. Much appreciated Atlassian :)

[Tim Sweatt]

So I JUST thought of a potential work-around for this. I'm proposing it as a solution because as far as I can tell, it's the only one out there:

Editing your key is a pain, but editing the name is easy. So what I just did was name my new project something that I HOPED (again, not a perfect solution) would create the key I wanted. Jira seems to just do first character of each word, so as long as that key doesn't exist, hopefully you'll be able to get around this.

It worked, and then I simply renamed the project to what I actually wanted it to be.

My example: FTP Server project I wanted to have key 'FTP' (Jira would likely have keyed this as 'FS')

Named it 'File Transfer Project' on creation, got key 'FTP', renamed it to 'FTP Server'.

[Daniel Eads]

Hey Tim! This is a great workaround. Thank you for posting it!

[Alex Christensen]

When you create a new project, Jira offers a suggestion of what the project key should be, but you should be able to click inside that project key field during project creation and change the suggested key to whatever you'd like.

I haven't encountered this issue in awhile (and can't recreate it right now to test), but I have encountered an issue where I couldn't change the project key during creation after I had entered the new project's name and the project key was auto-populated. If I recall the workaround I used, I believe I entered the project key first, then the project name. At little wonky, but I eventually got it to work.

[Dan Gale ADMIN]

I'm operating on the latest UI and I don't see the project key suggestion at project creation that you're referring to. I've attached screenshots detailing my process and the results.

The Create Project ScreenThe Details Page of the Created Project

[Dae-Ho]

I, too, find this infuriating in the new UI. And since Keys can't be re-used I'm accidentally eating up key namespace simply because I can't edit it before the project is created.

[Tim Sweatt]

+1 here too.

Just started with Jira and when I created a sample project, it asked for the key. Once I moved past that and started creating our own projects, I'm stuck having to go in and change 10 other areas of the system for them to match (board, filters, schemes, all sorts of areas in Jira are based on that key) WHY would you remove such a critical piece from initial setup??? And I didn't even realize that by doing this I was losing the ability to use those keys in the future!

If you want a simpler UI, give an "advanced" expandable section or something don't force additional work please.