Default value on custom field for a transition screen

[Florent Sessa]

Hello,

I would like to add a default value on a custom field for a transition screen. However the default value is never displayed and i don't understand why.

I created a custom field (Text Field (multi-line)) with a default value and let the configuration to all issues types and all projects

I created a screen in which i put only the custom filed (plus the comment section) and set it as a transition screen

Then i create an item and run the workflow until the transition screen is displayed, but the default value is not present on the transition screen (my line is empty)

I tried to put this field on a static screen (story for example) and the default value is well displayed on it.

So i assume there is a defferent behavior between static screen and transition screen but i dont know how to force the default value.

Could you help me ?

Regards

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

Default values only apply for creating issues.

If they were for transition screens, you'd find a lot of people complaining that it was filling in incorrect data that they didn't want to enter.

[BW Bishop]

people creating issues surely complain of the very same thing.

the highest value I place on the transition screen is it's utility in presenting a field to the user at precisely the correct time for the user to see it - but that does not mean that in some cases, a field shown at that precise moment, isn't predominantly one of a number of possible values..

am I missing something Nic?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Yes, they do, that's why defaults should be used sparingly, or not at all.  (Especially when you end up calling in consultants like me to fix problems like having 100,000 issues with identical and hence useless fields)

You're not missing anything, it sounds like you understand your data and usage well.  Jira just doesn't do defaulting on transition screens because it's almost always a very poor thing to do to your users.

[Brian W. Bishop]

fair enough, i tend to agree with that - certainly for create screens, so why not, one may ask, for transition screens..

since i have the luxury to do so, i changed the semantic meaning of the field to be the opposite of what it once was... and this only because most of the time users will want that value to be that way and only in rare cases will they make a move to change it...

[Brian W. Bishop]

not an answer, but I just saw this too... seems odd that it does not behave as expected