Meaning of Description, Summary, Text.. etc.

[Nicolas Duchastel De Montrouge]

What is the field name for the "title" / "subject" of a task / epic / story etc...

i.e. what shows up just below the project and ID of the object?

Documentation is not helpful because it does not define terms but rather just uses the term being defined in the sentence.

For example, looking at the "field reference":

Description:

Search for issues where the description contains particular text.

And then, for Summary:

Summary:

Search for issues where the summary contains particular text

Those two definition are useless... yeah, a Description is a description; but, what part of the task, epic, story, etc.. is the Description vs the Summary etc..

Please update documentation to be more helpful.

AND,... WHAT is that text at the top of an object? what is that called?

[Heidi Hendry · Accepted solution]

Hi Nicolas,
I understand that you are having some confusion in identifying which field on your screen is named "Summary". 

Using your image, I've identified some of the fields you were concerned about:




I reviewed the existing documentation explaining the fields and can see that you are correct, there is no easy diagram explaining which unlabelled item on the screen is which field.

What is an issue? | Jira Software Cloud | Atlassian Support
Create an issue and a sub-task | Jira Software Cloud | Atlassian Support
Update an issue's details | Jira Software Cloud | Atlassian Support

I have logged an internal request referencing this question, and asked for more clarity in the documentation.


Hope that helps.
Regards
Heidi
Atlassian Support.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

The system field names have been chosen to try to be as close to an explanation of what they're for as possible with a short phrase.

In most cases, I can't really explain it any other way, but working through your list:

• Summary:  A summary of what the issue is about, a short phrase to give you an idea of what the issue is about
• Description:  Literally, a description of the issue
• Title: not a standard field, you'll need to ask your admins.  Some people sometimes call the summary a title, but that's not what title means in English.  You probably want to dump this and use the summary.
• Subject: not a standard field, you'll need to ask your admins.  Probably another synonym for summary in Jira, but a much better synonym than title. But you still probably want to dump this and use the summary.

If you're still stuck on what the fields are for, I can't go any better than "look up Summary and Description in a dictionary"!

[Nicolas Duchastel De Montrouge]

ah; yes, a dictionary. I know what this is.

I am not asking "what does the word 'summary' mean in the English language?"

I am asking, "in Jira, the field named 'Summary' is used where on the JIRA UI page and how? When I look at a task / bug / epic etc... on the JIRA page, WHERE is the Summary? And for that matter, Where is the Title? Is there a Subject?"

See a sample JIRA task

So, now, with this context....

What is the Summary? the Title? The Subject? etc..

Maybe the documentation should explain that - what each part of the Jira form is called. I do not need the definition of the English word. I can use a dictionary.

Thank you,

Nicolas

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Ok, so lets focus on  "In Jira, the field named 'Summary' is used where on the JIRA UI page and how? When I look at a task / bug / epic etc... on the JIRA page, WHERE is the Summary? And for that matter, Where is the Title? Is there a Subject?"

The field summary is usually used to contain a summary of the issue. 

On a Jira page, it appears where you have pointed to in your screenshot, quite prominent because it's the summary and hence what most humans will want to talk about if there's any need to discuss the issue.

Title and Subject are different things to a summary, the words mean different things.  Jira does not have a title or subject field (unless you deliberately add one)

Also "Maybe the documentation should explain that - what each part of the Jira form is called."

It does. It describes the field "summary" as the summary.  Description is described as a description,  The other system fields have names that tell you what they are for.

My feeling here is that you are not asking us the right question.  I can not work out what you are looking for.  You've asked twice about title and subject and I've told you that these are things you are making up (or your admins have added and not explained to you).  I do not know what you are looking for when you ask what a summary is or where it is - it's a summary and it's on screen where most people would expect to see it.  I do not know what more I can tell you about a summary being a summary.  

[David Wolfman]

How fun, Atlassian chooses how the English language works now. A summary could also be considered a title or description. Also funny that a Google search brought me here when I was also was searching for more context as to what Atlassian considered each field to mean. Good times. I wonder how many hits this page sees from people searching for similar things via Google. I agree with the OP on this post. Thanks for your replying though... By default there is no 'title' or 'subject' field and we are looking for "Summary" as the correct field for the big and bold "Title" of each Jira "Issue".

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

>How fun, Atlassian chooses how the English language works now.

No, English chooses how the language works.

Look in a dictionary for any country that has English as its first language (I could be grumpy about this and point out that it's only really England's dictionaries you should read, as the USA, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand all bastardise it a bit, but it still stands).  You will find that summary, title and description have different and distinct definitions.  And Atlassian have followed them with Jira.

[Ash]

Nic, you have STILL missed the entire point.  Are you being deliberately obtuse? Let me explain, it's simple.

Example 1: When we need to use the advanced JIRA search to find all tickets with a certain word in the "title" we simply need to know what you (Atlassian) have decided to name the "title" field for the JQL. 

I just wasted 10 minutes of my life searching via google to eventually work out Atlassian call the title of a ticket the "summary" field.  

Example 2: I needed to search for a word in anywhere in issue comments.  Through a process of trial and error and googling I eventually worked out that the "text" field includes comments, but this is not clearly documented anywhere I could find.

Example 3:  I need to find a word only in tickets with a specific ticket number prefix (eg DEV-123 or DEV-567.  Eventually found out you decided to call this "key" and that it cannot be used with the ~ contains as it is not a text field.  A random forum question provided the answer to this one.   (key >= DEV-1 AND key<=DEV-9999) 

To this date it seems Atlasssian still seems to have not documented what you have decided to call these fields.  I assume many of these names originate from the search engine Jira uses, but that is beside the point. 

Atlassian simply need to provide a page with info such as the image posted above showing a ticket and callouts with the names of all important fields.  This can then be used as a quick reference when anyone needs to use advanced search / JQL. 

If that page exists, I will be grateful to know, I was unable to find it.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

@ash  I do not mean to be rude, but have you actually bothered to read what we said before?

A summary is a summary.

A "title", in English, is the name of something, or a label for people who have certain entitlements.  I have nine titles, but no summary.  In 20 years, I've yet to see a single issue in Jira that could be called "lord", "PhD", "baron", "bEng", "BSc", etc" and I can only claim two of those examples (I'm not going to run through the rest, we might run out of space).

Please, have a quick look at the difference between title and summary.

I think you have STILL missed the entire point.  Take another read of Heidi's and my posts, they do explain it.

[Ash]

Sorry Nic, instead of asking me if I've read what you said before, try actually reading what I have written.  

You're STILL going off on irrelevant pedantic arguments and ignoring the clear issue we have tried explaining to you.

If you're hung up on the word "Title" how about "Heading", "Caption", "Header" "Overview" etc.  See the problem yet, all could plausibly be used to describe the Summary field? 

I'll explain again!  Everyone has different terms for fields (you may find this hard to understand but many are even technically incorrect).   To solve this problem (7784 views is evidence it is a problem), Atlassian simply need to document the terms you use for each of these Jira issue fields.  

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Ok, I'll run with your failure to understand.

What is the "clear issue" here?  Have you read what a "title" is in English?

I'm seeing a simple failure to understand plain english.

Do you understand the the difference between the words "title" and "summary" in English?  

What are your "pedantic arguments!" that you need to explain and "the clear issue we have tried explaining to you"?
==

[Ash]

Sorry Nic I don't have any more time to waste debating irrelevant drivel about the English language with you. Particularly when you don't even seem to be aware of the fact "title" has more than one meaning.  You are really not representing Atlassian well at all, take that on board.

I have also reported your latest comment to the moderator "Deliberately sarcastic unhelpful response to a clear question."

For anyone willing to actually listen and take some feedback. 

This is simply a documentation improvement issue.  My suggestion: create a quick reference page/image showing a typical Jira ticket with callouts stating the JQL search field corresponding to that input field.  Field such as description are self explanatory, but I have listed 3 above that are not.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

I am sorry that I offended you.

And that I got pedantic.  I did not mean to be sarcastic, but I can see how you could read it that way.  I apologise for that too.

I do need to correct you again on something though.  I am not an Atlassian, I do not represent them.

I do agree with you that there should be a simple short page (or maybe an expandable area on pages like https://support.atlassian.com/jira-service-management-cloud/docs/create-issues-and-sub-tasks) that explains what the system fields are in Jira.

But I am not sure that it would be of much use, when all it's going to say is "Summary = a summary of the issue", "Description = a (full) description of the issue", "Original estimate = the original estimate first placed on an issue" and so on.

I'm afraid I have to stand by the facts though - title, caption, header, and heading are not good words to use for a field that is a summary of an issue.  You would absolutely need to document that they actually mean "summary".

[gary carter]

raised a suggestion which i believe relates to this topic, any upvotes much appreciated :)

[JPOSERVER-7021] Summary v Title - Roadmaps and Jira - Create and track feature requests for Atlassian products.

[gary carter]

It's even more confusing when Roadmaps uses the 'summary' and doesnt let you use the 'Title' as an option.

I think part of the confusion stems from the fact most people assume the big bold writing at the top (summary) is where most people would expect to see the 'Title'...?

I note that in the images used above, there isnt actually a field for 'Title', which I do see on our own EPICs here, and only really see them when in the backlog view.  

The fact roadmaps shows a 'Summary' and not a 'Title' is illogical and makes life very difficult for our users.

 

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Advanced roadmaps is simply being consistent.  The summary of an issue is its summary, and AR is displaying that. 

You have added a redundant "title" field which is fine, but AR is not going to use it when it is trying to show you the summary of an issue.

[gary carter]

I wouldn't say AR is being consistent, it is just be limited in customisation.

We havent 'added' a 'redundant' field.  we have used what is available - a title, and simply think that the title is far more the obvious and useful thing that should be presented in such a busy view..

e.g.  if AR showed the 'Title' field, and you could hover over it, and be presented with the 'summary'  i know every user would think this is significantly more 'intuitive', rather than being 'consistent'.