How to work with Custom fields in Jira?

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How to work with Custom fields in Jira if you need to add some custom fields to your Jira issues? This article will help you to find it out on the example of SLA Time and Report for Jira add-on, which is an SLA tracking, reporting and monitoring tool for Jira.

Note: you can apply these steps to any other case. It works not only for Jira SLA plugins, or time tracking plugins.

How to add Custom fields to Jira issues?

Let’s look at how to do this in “Next-Gen” Jira projects, which are also “Team-managed” projects. 

Here you have to create custom fields manually.

For this, go to the Project settings, open the Issue type settings and add the Custom fields you need.

To add them, move “Time stamp” and “Label” fields to the Context fields. 

Note: don’t write anything in the “Description” fields, leave them empty. Our add-on will fill them in automatically.

Here is how your Jira issue will look like when custom fields are added:

Custom Fields & SLA Configuration

Now it’s time to start creating a new SLA Configuration.

• Open the SLA Time and Report for Jira add-on. 
  
• Go to the SLA Manager. Add a new SLA Configuration by pressing the “+” or “Add Configuration” button.
  
• Choose the “Negotiated date” SLA goal type if you want your custom fields and SLA timer to be connected to a specific date and time. Or choose the “Time limit based” SLA goal type if you want your SLA goals calculation to be based on some amount of time (for example, I need the task to be moved from the “In Progress” to “Done” status during 1h. Otherwise, the SLA time goal will not be met).
  
• Then name your SLA Configuration, choose a project and work schedule.
• Select Start, Pause, Stop conditions to run the SLA timer.
• Afterwards, add the time goals, automation and activate Custom fields.
  To activate the Custom fields you added in the SLA Configuration, make the “Custom Field” toggle active (it should be green) and select the Custom fields from the list. Afterwards, press the “Confirm” button.
  
• Save the settings of the SLA Configuration and check your Jira issues. If you set up your SLA Configuration properly, you can see the up-to-date data in your Custom fields after the issue meets the Start condition.
  In our example, the Start condition to run the SLA timer was the “In Progress” status of the Jira issue. So it looks like this:
  
  

Pin your custom fields to the top to see them first

Make sure you won't miss the deadline and will move as you planned by pinning the Custom field with SLA date and status to the top. Just click the “Pin” button, and the custom field will be at the top over other issue fields. If you need them to be moved back, click the “Unpin'' button, and this custom field will be back at its previous position.

Takeaway

Now you know how to add custom fields to your Jira issues, connect them to your SLA Configurations, and set time goals in SLA Time and Report for Jira  add-on, which according to the date and time stated in these custom fields.
Try SLA Time and Report for Jira add-on and achieve your time goals easily.