How to speed up Jira performance with bundled custom fields

[#1]

Working with Jira Software Server issues or Jira Service Desk Server requests, often there is a situation when you need to provide small chunks of information as parts of a greater whole. Then you have to create a massive amount of custom fields to store this information and keep it structured, which can slow down the software significantly. Fortunately, this won’t be the case anymore if you upgrade your Dynamic Forms for Jira or Extension for Jira Service Desk to the latest version. We proudly present Bundled Fields, which allow you to store multiple pieces of information in a single custom field! It is then displayed on screens as an additional form, which you can update at any moment. In this article, we‘ll explain when and how to use the new feature.

The first look at Bundled Fields

Custom fields in Jira Service Desk

If someone purchases a laptop from you on behalf of their company, they need to provide two addresses in the request: for shipping and for billing. These two do not always match in case of a big organization, and also you may often store different parts of customers’ addresses in different fields to search through the database faster. This is where Bundled Fields – a feature available in Extension for Jira Service Desk – come in handy. Instead of having a separate custom field for every city, street, zip code or whatever, you can bundle them all as a whole. To customize the fields’ display further, you can set up the Show Label option or change fields’ size and location.

Bundled Fields can be also useful within your organization. Let’s say, you work in technical support and receive bug reports from different departments. Your colleagues want to report an issue related to one of the apps they work with. Using custom fields in Jira, they provide you with information about the application’s version, their problem’s first occurrence and steps already taken. This way you can easily understand the issue and replicate it.

What’s more, you can search for information stored inside Bundled Fields as easily as you do with any other field in Jira! To do so, go to Issues → Search for issues.  With our dedicated Bundled Fields Searcher, you have two search methods to use in JQL – with two arguments and with three arguments.

• Syntax with two arguments

issue in bundledFieldsEx(“customfield_name”, “subfield_value”)

issue in bundledFieldsEx(“customfield_id”, “subfield_value”)

• Syntax with three arguments

issue in bundledFieldsEx(“customfield_name”, “subfield_name”, “subfield_value”)

issue in bundledFieldsEx(“customfield_id”, “subfield_name”, “subfield_value”)

Taking as an example task TS-14 and choosing three arguments option, we can create a syntax – issue in bundledFieldsEx(“Problem in the app”, “Star App’s version”, “version 2.0”). Note that in case of the custom field name, you should use a system name of a chosen field. The display name of your custom field won’t work in JQL.

Custom fields in Jira Software

Quite unexpectedly, even though the feature was originally designed for Jira Service Desk, you can also use it in your Jira Software. It is because we included Bundled Fields in the Dynamic Forms for Jira app. How to take advantage of it?

Let’s say you work in the HR department and you’re responsible for organizing workspaces for new employees in several departments. Instead of creating a long description of the new tools that they need, you can bundle some information in one place. This way you’ll make the task view clearer. Details and Description will be also easier to read for your colleagues from the technical support department which is in charge of providing hardware, software and small electronic devices.

As in Extension for Jira Service Desk, in Dynamic Forms for Jira, you can also search for details kept inside the Bundled Fields. Our dedicated searcher works the same way here. The only difference is that instead of issue in bundledFieldsEx, you’ll write issue in bundledFieldsDF – the rest of the syntax works the same.

Bundled custom fields configuration

The first step is to add a Bundled Field to Jira and assign it to the screens where you want to display it. Even though this field type is delivered exclusively by the app, you still do it in the Custom fields settings. Note that you can quickly proceed there by clicking the plus icon in the Bundled Fields configuration. Obviously, you can have more than one Bundled Field set up for different purposes, but keep in mind that each of them must be added to Jira separately. Also, remember to add it to the appropriate request types, if you plan on using the feature in Jira Service Desk.

After that, come back to the configuration and set up the fields you’ve created. You can choose the alignment of the field’s display (horizontal or vertical). Then provide the rows of fields to bundle and make some of them required, if you need it. Once you’re all set, save the setup. From now on, your users will fill in this form when creating a Jira issue or a helpdesk request.

If you need to modify your Bundled Fields layout, there’s a way to do that. The option Turn on Edit mode, which you can see in Layout settings, allows you to change fields’ size and location. Note that in order to have your modified layout both on Create Issue and View Issue screen, you need to select Layout in the Alignment field. Below you can see where exactly to find this feature and how it looks in action.

Key takeaway

So, do you see how easily you can clean up the database of your Jira Software Server or Jira Service Desk Server with Bundled Fields? With this feature, you store more information in a smaller amount of fields while retaining its searchability. This way you’ll never get lost and you’ll improve your Jira performance. Additionally, you can customize your Bundled Fields layout so that your issue view will look clearer.

If you’d like to see the mentioned apps in action, book a live demo via Calendly. You can also read more on the subject:

• How to build a winning Jira Server interface with Dynamic Forms
• A simple guide to configure Dynamic Forms in Jira Service Desk
• How to work faster and easier in Jira Software

[Łukasz Modzelewski _Lumo_]

@Dzmitry Hryb _Deviniti_ - update your image sources (those are linked to intenso.atlassian.net )

[Dzmitry Hryb _Deviniti_]

@Łukasz Modzelewski _Lumo_ Are there any problems with image display?

[Łukasz Modzelewski _Lumo_]

yes, there are - please try accessing this article in browser incognito mode ;)
This is how it is displayed:

[Dzmitry Hryb _Deviniti_]

OK, thanks for the info! Just fixed it.

[Stephen Hayden]

With Proforms not yet available to data center users, we're considering massively implementing this across projects, we need to have a better idea of how we can export the data (if at all) first.  Even those who say they might not want to export, we'd hate to have them change their mind and then have few options with all the data entered.

[Dzmitry Hryb _Deviniti_]

Hi Stephen,

Currently, there is only a possibility to export bundled fields to XML format. However, we're discussing Bundled Fields 2.0 right now, which probably will feature exporting to other formats among other goodness. We haven't received such requests before, so we should investigate before putting it on our roadmap. Our Support team will get back to you as soon as the developers make a decision.

Cheers,

Dzmitry

[Steven F Behnke]

Love this plugin :)

[Inetum-Realdolmen Admin]

Hi 

Some of my customer are using this plugin. It's an amazing tool to build dynamic and bundled fields. 

But I've 1 remark about the bundled fields. Is it possible to remove the minor - at the end of bundled fields line on the create issue screen? 

Thanks.

Kr.,

Zehra

BizDevOps ALM Consultant

[Dzmitry Hryb _Deviniti_]

Hi @Inetum-Realdolmen Admin ,

Maybe we already have you covered with the newest 5.0 version, which has improvements to the feature. Please try to upgrade, and if it doesn't help, feel free to drop a line at support@deviniti.com and specify in detail what you need to correct.

Best,

Dzmitry

[RichardA]

Hi @Dzmitry Hryb _Deviniti_ @Steven F Behnke 

We need the support of Dynamic Forms - Dynamic Select' provided by Dynamic Forms for Jira. Now sometimes there is code instead of field value in export results.

My requirement is to export all the field values in excel sheet. but we will get some  code format in the excel sheet after exporting.

[Dzmitry Hryb _Deviniti_]

Hi @RichardA ,

Please create a ticket in our Service Desk.

Cheers,

Dzmitry

[Paul Wright]

My colleague worked out how to 'wildcard' to do a search, which has proven a bit painful to find on forums, so I wanted to share.

In our example below, you can see we've added the customfield ID, the second parameter is the fieldname, and the 3rd parameter is entered with no value and no space, so just ""

Example:

issue in bundledFieldsEx("customfield_12217", "Access", "") 

This returned the tickets that had data in the field called "Access", as you would expect when running a standard JQL query.

Hope you find this helpful - have to say, I'm loving bundled fields.

[Dzmitry Hryb _Deviniti_]

Hi @Paul Wright ,

Thanks for sharing and for using Bundled Fields!

[Avitesh Kesharwani]

How can we create the issue with these bundled fields and also update these using REST API ?

[Dzmitry Hryb _Deviniti_]

Hi @Avitesh Kesharwani ,

REST API support for Bundled Fields is in our backlog and should be realized in the next couple of versions. Feel free to submit a ticket in our Service Desk so that the team can prioritize the feature higher.

[Steven F Behnke]

It seems that this bundled fields plugin is responsible for a huge payload of Javascript delivered to the front end. Is there any plan to minimize this payload? It's not insignificant. 

[Katarzyna]

Hi @Steven F Behnke

I'm a product owner of our apps for Jira Service Desk. First of all, I would like to thank you that you use our apps. It's very important to us that customers trust us and our work.

According to your question, there are many aspects that we need to discuss:

1. Which version of Extension do you use?
2. Which version of Jira / Jira Service Desk do you use? If it's 7.x, do you have any plans for upgrade?
3. In which browser does the problem appear?
4. On which screen do you see the problem: Issue view, Request view or another?
5. Do you use Rich Text custom field from our app? We had a performance problem after implementation, but it has been fixed in the latest version.

Please create a ticket on our Customer Portal. It would help us to investigate the problem and fix this issue as soon as possible.

Best regards,

Kate