Is it possible to pre-populate the "Description" field with a text that can be edited?

[Thomas Niederholz]

We would like to prepopulate the field "Description" with the following text.

Als ..., möchte ich ..., weil/damit/um ...

[Callum Carlile _Automation Consultants_ · Accepted solution]

Hi @Thomas Niederholz 

This is not possible on Jira Cloud - if you are using Cloud then you could either:

• Create a new multi-line text custom field and give this field a default value (you could do this in the same place where you edit the field context), then use this instead of the description field
• Create an automation rule to populate the description field with your text on creation
  • This would however only add the text once the issue has been created, and may overwrite anything that's added to the Description field on creation

If you are using the Server/Data Center version of Jira though, you can achieve this by following the steps in this article.

Hope this helps!

[Thomas Niederholz]

Thanks Callum.

Could you please give me some advise where I can edit the field context? 

[Callum Carlile _Automation Consultants_]

If you're on Cloud, you go to Admin cog > Issues > Custom Fields, then click on the 3 dots on the right of the field > Contexts and default fields then click on Edit Default Value.

Just to reiterate, this is not possible with certain System fields like the Description field, but the above steps would be possible if you were using a multi-line custom field.

Also if you want to apply this default value only to a particular project/issue type, you would need to create a new context in this same place and scope it to said issue type(s)/project(s), but if you want the value to be applied to the field regardless of where it is, then you will not need to do this

[Thomas Niederholz]

We found it but we are just able to set a "context" not a text inside the textfield.

As disscussed with my admin, its not possible for us. Maybee we dont have the neccessary version at our company. thanks for your support.

[Callum Carlile _Automation Consultants_]

Interesting, so do you not see this option?

[Ray Letoa]

Hey @Thomas Niederholz do you still need assistance for this ? just saw this article and can say I have got pre-populated description fields that we use for purchase orders/request or change request as well

[Diego Linzalone]

Hey Ray, 

How did you manage to get that result? I´m looking exactly for that solution.

Thanks

[Ray Letoa]

Hey @Diego Linzalone welcome in, yeah I was able to get this working, in order to set this up you must have administrator privileges and you would do the following

click COG icon top right corner > Issues > Scroll down on the left panel and click Custom Fields > on the right set of options click on top right corner Create Custom Field > Select Standard > choose Paragraph (supports rich text) > Give our custom field a relevant name and description and save > it will then ask you what Screens to associate this with, chose which projects or which screens you would like this pre-populated field on and click update at the bottom >

Now that youve created the custom field you can now create the template by going back to custom field > search for your custom field you created before > click custom field and a prompt will pop up > go to Contexts tab > click beneath that the create edit delete which will bring you to a configuration screen > at the bottom of the info to the right click Default: Edit Default Value and it will take you to Custom Default Value > Here create the template you would like

Thats the start of it let me know how you get on :)

[Diego Linzalone]

Thanks for the help @Ray Letoa , solved with your help!

[Ray Letoa]

@Diego Linzalonehappy to help however possible

[Alex Shirokov]

@Ray Letoa Thank you very much. The only problem with the default value I could not manage to enter rich text. I could not create bold text for example.  Any thoughts?

[Birger Püschl]

• Choose field configuration -
• Choose the field configuration you have the field under
• Find the field and click the Renderer link
• Choose Wiki style
• Click update

[rstimson]

@Ray Letoa Hi Ray, this is good but if you already have a lot of tickets with a Description field, then I think you would need to keep both fields (the original Description and the new custom field), otherwise we would lose previous Descriptions, Do you agree?

[Jarosław Solecki _Deviniti_]

@Thomas Niederholz You can use external plugins for that. 
My team created something dedicated to that problem. You can check Dynamic Forms for Jira to set values for fields or hide/show fields based on defined conditions.