What is a project category

[Kimi Nakashima]

So I'm a Jira newbie and creating my 1st project (we're using service desk cloud). When I took a look at my new project's details I noticed a field called "project category". I've searched the community and documentation, but I can't seem to find out exactly what the purpose of project category is. None of the other existing projects that I'm now in charge of use project category and I've confirmed that the previous project admins didn't use it because they didn't know what it was for. It doesn't seem like it's an integral part of Jira.

I guess I'm just curious why it exists and what it might be used for. Maybe it's something I'd find useful, but I really don't know?

[Avinash Bhagawati _Appfire_ · Accepted solution]

Hi @Kimi Nakashima

As a Jira administrator, you can create project categories so your team can view work across related projects in one place. Your team can use categories in advanced search, filters, reports, and more. Note that project categories cannot be used to create project hierarchies (such as parent projects)

Why are categories useful? JIRA can search for all the issues in a particular project category (e.g. category = "buildeng" in an advanced search), and can display projects sorted by the project category. A JIRA project can only belong to one category. Please note that a project category is not part of a project hierarchy. Also, JIRA does not support sub-projects or parent projects

Please refer below link for project category configuration. 

https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiracloud/adding-assigning-and-deleting-project-categories-844500732.html

Thanks, 

Avinash 

[Kimi Nakashima]

I'm assuming project category is an internal thing only?

[Avinash Bhagawati _Appfire_]

Hi @Kimi Nakashima

Yes, it is kind of internal purpose only. For example, if you have ten projects relates one product line you can categories all these project with project category so that it will be useful for reporting.

Thanks,

Avinash

[Matthew Walker]

@Kimi Nakashima You can think of Project Categories as just another way to further define a Project. Since Labels can't be applied to a Project, and since Components are parts of a Project, a Category gives the admin a way to provide a way to define the Project at the Project level.  I think about Categories as a 1-1 (Project-Category) Label.

[Simon Rigler]

Hopefully this is ok to jump on this conversation - I was surprised to see that Category is not even a field you can see under Field Configurations?

I ask because I'm talking with the vendor of Structure plug-in about why Category does not appear as an available column to add (because I want to group my Structure list by project category), and they've asked to look at the field settings in administration .... but it's not there... which does further suggest it's a 'special' field indeed.