Empty Custom Field Display on View Issue Screen

[Shiloh_Gealogo]

Hi There, 

We created a few custom fields that we want the business team to fill in on various issues. One of them is a multi line text field. That field does not appear on the View Issue screen unless it is actually filled in. We are trying to figure out a way to have it appear on the screen all of the time, even when it is empty so the Users can just click it and fill it in instead of having to go to Edit and search for the field in the list. Any ideas? 

~Shiloh 

[Joe Pitt · Accepted solution]

You can't. JIRA only shows fields with values. I had management complain about it and forced me to put a default value, TBD, so the field would show. It was a disaster. Over 50% of closed issues had TBD as the value.  In practice, people don't fill in fields that aren't required and they don't change fields with values. 

[Shiloh_Gealogo]

Well that's less than ideal. Thanks Joseph. I am glad to know that I was not losing my mind when I looked all over and couldn't find a setting for it. 

[Joe Pitt]

It's to keep details clutter down. some issues have lots of fields that may not be used and showing them would make the screen too busy. It's been this way forever so I don't think it will change. 

[Phillip Youngren]

It should be an option.  We put all of the fields no the screen because we want them, not because we want them hidden on some edit screen.  It should be something that I get to choose the behavior of.  I don't mind putting in default values for custom fields, but it's pretty annoying that time tracking doesn't show up until an original estimate is in.

[Alexander Post _venITure_]

Hi @Shiloh_Gealogo

you should checkout the answer here: https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-Core-questions/How-can-I-display-empty-custom-fields/qaq-p/445311#U1308254

It is possible to display empty fields. Than your users do not need to search for the field. Alternative you can do a transition to itself and display just that field. 

[Rich Wolverton]

We have two ways a handling this.

1. For text fields we use Behaviors to enter some boiler plate text in the custom field

2. For Group Single User select field we have created a special user with name Blank with no permissions and simply made them a member of the group being selected from and then set Blank as the default value

[Sam Huawey]

Not a good idea for Blank user. It will cost $$$ for your company. Especially if you have many plugins.