Field configurations; auto hide new field

[Jake Bentley]

Problem

We have almost 1K custom fields, and making bulk changes gets really slow when JIRA is trying to load so many fields.

Current Work-around

We've made an "All Hidden" field configuration that we can copy and then show the fields we need for any given issue in a project, BUT the problem is that when new fields are created, not only do we have to fix the "All Hidden" field configuration, but ALL the other existing field configurations have the new fields shown in them. This problem requires major maintenance year after year.

What I wish

It would be REALLY nice if we could make new fields automatically hidden in all existing field configurations. We can't find a way to do that.

Alternatively, if we could have some sort of bulk hide operations that we could apply to some or all of the existing field configurations, that would be cool to.

We have JIRA 7.2.3, and we have Script Runner (which I figure has the power to do this if I only had a brain).

[Kevin Bouman]

Jake,

I am having the same problem with 1200+ CFs and users are complaining that they are having a hard time finding the right field when they do a JQL search. I am still looking into a way to automatically hide the CF when it is created but I did write a script to hide all the CFs in a current projects Field Configuration. all you need to do is update the project key on line 15 and add the CF names that you want to be visible starting on line 17. 

Run this script in the ScriptRunner Script Console. It might take a while. Mine took 15 min. 

import com.atlassian.jira.component.ComponentAccessor
import com.atlassian.jira.issue.fields.FieldManager;
import com.atlassian.jira.issue.fields.CustomField;
import com.atlassian.jira.issue.fields.layout.field.FieldLayoutManager;
import com.atlassian.jira.issue.fields.layout.field.FieldLayoutItem;
import com.atlassian.jira.issue.fields.layout.field.EditableFieldLayout;
import com.atlassian.jira.project.Project

//*** Get Needed Managers ***
FieldManager fieldManager = ComponentAccessor.getFieldManager();
FieldLayoutManager layoutManager = ComponentAccessor.getComponent(FieldLayoutManager)

//*** Initialize Variables ***
String result = "Done";
String projKey = "KEY"; //JIRA project Key
String[] usedFields = [
 "CF1", //Custom Field Name
 "CF2" //Custom Field Name
] as String[]

//Only look in the specified project
Project nextProject = ComponentAccessor.getProjectManager().getProjectObjByKey(projKey)

//Get all the Unique Field Layouts related to the project 
def fLayouts = layoutManager.getUniqueFieldLayouts(nextProject)

//Loop throught the layouts
for (layout in fLayouts){
 
 //Check if the layout name is not Null
 if (layout.getName() != null){
 
 //Get the ID of the layout
 def layoutId = layout.getId();
 
 //Loop through all the layout items (Custom Fields)
 for (cf in layout.getFieldLayoutItems()){

//Check if Custom Field
 boolean isCF = fieldManager.isCustomField(cf.getOrderableField().getId());
 if(isCF == true){
 
 //*** Lookup Field Layout ***
 EditableFieldLayout editableLayout = layoutManager.getEditableFieldLayout(layoutId);
 
 //*** Lookup Custom Field ***
 CustomField field = fieldManager.getCustomField(cf.getOrderableField().getId());
 FieldLayoutItem item = editableLayout.getFieldLayoutItem(field);
 
 //Set visablilty of field
 if(usedFields.contains(cf.getOrderableField().getName())){
 
 //If item is hidden make it visible
 if(item.isHidden() == true){
 //*** Update Field Visability ***
 editableLayout.show(item);
 layoutManager.storeEditableFieldLayout(editableLayout)
 
 }
 }
 else { 
 //*** Update Field Visability ***
 editableLayout.hide(item);
 layoutManager.storeEditableFieldLayout(editableLayout)
 }
 }
 
 }
 }
}
return result;

[Roberto Marquez Bittencourt]

Fantastic! Thank you for the script. It resolved my problem. I don't know why the Jira holds this configuration. Don't make sense that a new custom field is public to any project. A custom field usually is created to be used in just one or a set of projects, not all projects.

Best regards,

Roberto Bittencourt

[khalid alqahtani]

Many thanks:)

There is LOCKED custom field, it also hide with same script :(  

[mete]

thanks man ;)

works fine!

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

1,000 custom fields is 900 beyond what is useful and sane.  I can't think of a way to justify that many custom fields, and there are memorable chunks of my career that have been "fixing fielditis"

In real life terms, the way JIRA is built does not expect this either, and it's not going to scale cleanly to do this.  You already mention some clever tricks I'd describe as "working around having too many fields", but even hiding them by default is not going to get around the scaling problems you have.

The best I could do with script runner is to run a console script which goes over the field configs and hides a field when an admin chooses to run it, but your admins are going to need to remember its there.

[Jake Bentley]

Yes, I started telling my management that we need to split our instance when I became the head admin of our Atlassian stuff (a year ago), but I don't think they want to take that seriously.

If there was a script we could use to specify a field, and have it hide that field on all the existing field configurations, that would be amazing! Is that something you could help us with, or is there a good place I could start to make such a script?