Making the new issue view work for you

[#1]

Hi, Atlassian community,

We’ve read your comments about the new issue view, gathered common themes, and wanted to address them in its own post. We understand that this likely won’t solve all your problems with the new issue view, but hopefully, it’ll help you work with it in a way that better fits your team.

Request more features

For those who have specific suggestions or how to improve the new issue view, comment and vote for it here (each specific suggestion is a subtask). If it’s not here, lodge a suggestion.

Our team looks at the most commented and voted suggestions on the JAC ticket, so bringing your thoughts there will better ensure your voice is heard.

Layout

If you’re having issues with the new issue view’s layout, we recommend contacting your admin to configure the layout of the issue view. See this doc here: https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/configure-field-layout-in-the-issue-view/

Some common problems and solutions:

Q: The old issue view gave me all my most important information at a glance. How do I make the new issue view do the same?

A: Put your most important fields in the Description fields section, the main focus of the issue view. Everything else can go in the Context fields section, or under field tabs.

Q: How do I get my most important fields at the top?

A: Order your fields in the configuration page by priority. The higher up they are in their respective sections, the higher up they’ll be on the issue view.

Q: I don’t use the right side of the issue view. How do I minimise it?

A: While you can’t hide the right side of the issue view completely, you can minimise it by hovering between the left and right section (for a slider to appear) and dragging it to find a configuration that fits you.

Q: The new issue view is cluttered. How do I make it cleaner?

A: To unclutter the new issue view, try hiding fields you don’t need as much in the More fields section, or under field tabs. You can also remove fields you don’t need altogether.

Q: How do I change the issue type in the new issue view’s layout?

A: Hover over the issue type’s icon in the top left, and select it. A dropdown should appear.

 

Q: How do I update the Date Time Picker field?

A: Click the Date Time picker to enter the edit mode. A drop with 30 min intervals will appear if you wish to enter a more precise time, enter the desired time.

Thank you 💙

Thank you for the feedback. Understanding the problems you’re all having with the new issue view is valuable to us, and will help us move towards one issue view that can be customised to fit every team.

Have a Happy Holidays, 

Ahmud 

[Rilwan Ahmed]

Hi @Ahmud Auleear ,

Good article.

Can you please explain how can a user know what ticket type he is working on, unless every time he keeps the cursor on the icon, user doesn't come to know the ticket type. 

For example: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRACLOUD-70555 shows the type as "Suggestion", but in my screenshot it is not easily understood. 

[Panagiotis]

Hello @Ahmud Auleear ,

Very helpful article. 

Thank you!

[Colin Turner]

Hello,
One thing that I find somewhat irritating is the "Copy to link" function against the ticket number. In the old view, it was very convenient to simply copy the ticket number - complete with the embedded hyperlink - and paste it into directly into in email or some other application without displaying the complete URL, e.g., "BM-xxxx" instead of "https://u-blox.atlassian.net/browse/BM-xxxx". It may sound like a petites, but it does avoid unnecessary clutter in your communication. Any chance of fixing that? 

[Tony Koeleman]

Hi, I am still using the old view for changing the format of images to a 'thumbnail' size. If I learn how to do that in the new view, I am fine with removing the old view. If I cannot resize my images in the stories, my Confluence reports explode with too big story descriptions.

[Matt Doar]

Typos:

"A drop with 30 min intervals will appear if you wish to enter a more precise time"

should be

"A drop-down with 30 min intervals will appear. If you wish to enter a more precise time"

[Carl Edquist]

Most important feature missing in the new view is being able to edit jira markup text

This s discussed a lot in the previous post:

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-articles/Jira-Cloud-s-old-issue-view-is-going-away-soon/ba-p/2208963

Also there are a lot of good explanations in the comments in this post for reasons to prefer to edit the raw jira markup text rather than the WYSIWYG editor:

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-questions/How-do-I-use-Jira-Wiki-Markup-in-new-rich-text-editor/qaq-p/1020018

[Carl Edquist]

Another feature that seemed to go away in the new view is attachment links.

In the old view, issue attachments would show up as an actual link with a simple URL, of the style:

https://myorg.atlassian.net/secure/attachment/12345/filename

What could be nicer!  This is convenient because you can reference that link in comments.

I haven't found any way to get the direct link like this in the new jira view.  Attachments don't get a link at all, just some jazzy javascript-driven button.  So there is no way to right-click and get a link.  And further the actual download that results from clicking the button (if I ask my browser for details about the download history after the fact) is an apparently transient, loooong URL with some kind uuid and an encoded filestore token.  No filename in the URL either.  Anyway, the URL is not at all accessible, and even if it were, it's not suitable for adding as a link in a comment.

What would it take to get a proper <a> link for attachments, like the old view has?

[Carl Edquist]

One thing that hugely affects usability for me is that the new view is a very heavy webapp.  Loading a simple issue pulls in over 17M worth of javascript, making over 200 requests before the page finishes loading.  On old hardware and a slow connection, this takes over 30s to load a simple issue page. And after it's loaded, that much javascript makes the page very slow to use on old hardware.

By comparison the old view has historically been much lighter and snappier. (Though apparently things have gotten heavier for the old view over time, too... Still, better performing than the new view.)

In terms of how to make the issue new view "work" for me - the new view could be usable if it were made considerably lighter - in terms of total data that needs to be transferred to load a page, in terms of total web requests that need to be made to load a page, and if javascript were used less or otherwise made more efficient to run on old hardware.

[John Rocha]

The new issue view doesn't allow for the legacy input mechanism. It only supports WYSIWYG.

The new WYSWYG editor is horrible and not ADA compliant. The WYSWYG editor is slow and difficult to use. Anything that requires that I take my hands off the keyboard to mouse to something for formatting is a deal breaker. (see  JRACLOUD-72631 for more details, this is the 2nd or 3rd iteration of this issue, since Atlassian keeps closing the issues despite a strong user outcry.)

[David Mitchell]

Look how many people are commenting against the new view, 6 pages on the previous post. You got to keep the old view. I can't believe this. 

[John Rocha]

@David Mitchell, I think this is how Atlassian buries or hides issues they don't want to deal with or change.

The original post had 6 pages of complaints. So they do a stealth change to and make a new post, this one. (I say stealth because I did not get an update that the original content was changed, I happened on it by accident.)

Notice they didn't even back link to the original post. Seems kind of sketchy.

So now they have a new post about the changes. They propose solutions for some of the problems. They don't acknowledge the other problems, and they have a new post they can use as the "see, the community is okay with this change" reference point/data.

They often do this with feature requests too. There have been several incarnations of the "bring back the plaintext markdown editor" feature request, JRACLOUD-72631 is the current one that is still open.

[Jason M.]

High-volume teams that process large numbers of tickets rely on old issue view text markup to quickly update/create/comment tickets. We have a large number of external integrations/automations that create tickets with markup. Markup provides a way to create tables from text input.

The new WYSWIG editor is cumbersome & slows down productivity. Our organization has been strongly relying on the ?oldIssueView=true hack to continue doing so. Heavy users & high-volume teams can't be forced writing & editing descriptions/comments like they're in Microsoft Word. Taking away old issue view w/markup will trash a large percentage of integrations & operations processes! 

What workarounds or solutions can you provide for teams & processes that rely on this capability?

[Karsten Spang]

Coming from an old version of the enterprise version to the cloud version, the biggest annoyance is that it only allows me to use 2/3 of the width of my screen. About 1/6 on each side is just white space.

But the biggest hurdle in my daily work is the lack of features in the editor. For example:

* Simple monospace is gone. Now, it is "code", with a grey background that even forces space around the text.

* {noformat} is gone. Only "code snippet" remains. Preformatted text is used for many other things than just code.

* Multi level lists, as well as indentation in general is gone.

[Colin]

Get rid of the WYSIWYG editor or I'm getting rid of you.

[Laurie Williams (Morin)]

I have been trying, since you switched to the new view, to make it work, and it doesn't work for me and my team.  Please leave the old view as an option.  Better yet, turn back on the switch to let us stay on the old view indefinitely and exclusively. 

[Mark Richardson]

Between the old thread and this one, it seems pretty clear that a lot of frequent users are going to be inconvenienced by removal of the old view. 

Your suggestions to just change the new view to look how you want, don't really seem that helpful. I  can set it up well for myself as a project manager and as an admin I have that power, but pretty sure the shared projects and other 400 odd users of the system may not find my view to be what works for them. Is there a way to set-up views (fields visible, priority ordering, etc)  at individual level? This would at least remove the issue of irrelevant info and *some* of the pointless scrolling/slow loading.

Although the wretched right hand side bar is still a travesty.

[Jason M.]

This post mostly addresses layout concerns.

A much larger & urgent concern for software/operations teams is the loss of dropping in plaintext markup that the new issue view does not render. We are specifically talking about copy/pasting from a text template to a Jira issue. This is the fastest & most efficient way to automate/create/edit tickets at high volume, dropping in plaintext markup that will render checkmarks & x-marks for lists, creating tables from text, etc. When you paste text w/these notations into the new issue view, the markup does not render. High-volume teams have interfaced w/Jira this way for many years because its fast & efficient.

Another major issue is that you've dropped this news on us over the holiday period with 1 month notice. We need a phased communication and/or longer preparation timeframe (as is being done with the epic-link/parent-link update). Also while those of us are currently aware of the impacts of this change, there will be a slew of users that won't find out until AFTER the removal. In the end Atlassian will lose customers by taking away this remaining interface to quickly create/edit tickets, but if we have time to work w/those teams maybe some can be salvaged. I'm not even sure how this will affect existing external scripts that use markup to create tickets.

Look, there are some nice features w/the new editor that users appreciate, but you must also consider the needs & requirements of teams that rely on legacy inputs that make their job & processes easier. There needs to be an option for dropping in plaintext markup in Desc & Comments, that once submitted, will render the markup as it does in the old issue view.  Such as the 'Visual'/'Text' option you provide in comments on the Jira site.

Some of the comments re: text markup in new issue view from the previous post:

Lack of any way to directly enter markdown, as many others have noted....some formatting options and macros I frequently use aren’t even available in the WYSIWYG editor.
Pasting text from other sources into the WYSIWYG editor sometimes adds formatting when it isn’t wanted or changes the formatting incorrectly.
A lot of markdown formatting entered using the old view doesn’t render correctly in the new view.

For most tickets I have to write a table listing deliverables, versions and instructions. The process is pretty quick because I have a markdown template prepared. With the new what-you-see-is-all-you-get editor this requires creating a new table from scratch every time!
The new view doesn't allow this. Also you can't use the coded WYSIWIG editor when typing, you have to click click click click click emoticons manually that take hours (per year) to do. Where as before I can just type (/) (!) (x).. The edit button is right there!

The text mode is the most important one for me. It is really a productivity booster for me and my team.

At least have the courtesy to let us edit issue descriptions as plaintext. Some of us would rather not use a WYSIWIG editor (and it makes it just about impossible to do any kind of automation or scripting in issue description creation).

Legacy markdown doesn't appear correct under the new view - bold, superscript, tables, panels, images are some cases that display incorrectly now. It is not possible to add markdown directly into the new view. This is helpful for text templates that have the formatting embedded.

The new issue view doesn't allow for the legacy input mechanism. It only supports WYSIWIG.

The only reason our company hasn't switched 100% to gitlab (since that's our source code repository warehouse) is because JIRA still has the old simple text based markdown/markup interface via the old view.
(see JRACLOUD-72631 for more details, this is the 2nd or 3rd iteration of this issue, since Atlassian keeps closing the issues despite a strong user outcry.)

These are Jira requests/suggestions re: text markup that are all stuck in "Gathering Interest":
https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRACLOUD-72631
https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRACLOUD-73508
https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRACLOUD-72178
https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRACLOUD-73649

Please acknowledge & address this issue that high-frequency teams/users will struggle with if the old issue view is taken away entirely.

[Samuel Silver]

Why wouldnt you just give people the option for both views, you're literally not listening to the customers. The new view is awful for certain things and I have a Chrome Extension automatically redirect me to the old view URL action every time. Please don't remove the old view!!!!!! Please! there are many unaddressed forums complaining about the new view. This seems like a top down decision from some product manager who is making the decision for all of us what their UI preference looks like.

[Regina Leslie]

I haven't found a way to add watchers to a ticket without going through the old view.

How is it going to be done without the old view?

Regina

[Adam Parker]

just ignoring everyones comments from the previous post then, as usual

please actually listen to your users for once; from what i can see, nobody likes the new view for many many different reasons

[Dan Hoyt]

Let's talk about the custom time for a second, and ignore the whole "Change your workflow to suit our product instead of allowing you to customize the product to suit your workflow" ethos.

In the old view, I could enter a custom time, and that's what got recorded. Simple, effective.

In the new view, Atlassian had to ADD additional code to change it automatically to a 30-minute increment. Unexpected, undesirable and, frankly, a departure from industry-standard best practices for an editable combo box.

What Atlassian did here was basically the equivalent of auto-correct on smartphones -- which has been aptly referred to as auto-corrupt by users.

How would you feel if these posts "auto-corrected" AhmudAuleear to AhmedAulear ?

The simple solution is to remove the additional code validation that, considering the number of comments here and responses to the original post, a LOT of people did NOT want.

When users complained about this, the response was that the increment is customizable, so it's better. I don't have the information handy, but one Atlassian response indicated where to find it in the Settings.

HOWEVER, it's not USER-customizable (or at least it doesn't show up in any of MY settings); it seems to require an admin to do so. While I get that the new view's greatest strength is to make it more centrally manageable (by your IT department, for instance), the time increment is definitely a USER management issue.

Consider the typical case for an enterprise user working on multiple contracts -- Contract A wants time reported in 30-minute increments; Contract B wants time reported in 15-minute increments; Contract C wants time reported in hourly increments. NO amount of central management will make that clean.

At the risk of pointing what should be obvious: remove (or at least make optional) the ill-advised additional code validation for the time increment and let us put in what we want.

[Mher Aghasyan]

And as a usual they ignore reported bugs as in original post as here!

They did not comment why their advanced system does not understand ftp sftp links are not email addresses.

[Chris Jaquet]

Thank you for the feedback. Understanding the problems you’re all having with the new issue view is valuable to us, and will help us move towards one issue view that can be customised to fit every team

You say this, but ignoring the issues that people have logged (with almost no responsiveness on jira tickets). You are forcing a "product" on us without having feature parity with the old view. There are a number of bugs reported in your issue tracker which are ignored with little to no feedback from atlassian developers.

What is even more frustrating is that the new issue view and transition screens is not even consistent. The new view uses your fabric renderer (or whatever you call it) for rich text fields but all the transition screens are still limited to the old wiki style renderer!

I also note that the main jira issue tracker used by atlassian is not even on Jira cloud so you do not even feel the same pain the rest of us do. How about transitioning so that you can share the frustration with us?

[Dario B]

For all the people commenting in here. You may want to vote and watch below tickets  (depending on your needs):

• JRACLOUD-76076 - Keep the Old Issue View Indefinitely 
• JRACLOUD-68905 - Ability to Disable New Issue View 
• JRACLOUD-73649 - Old comment editor instead of the rich text version in the new issue view 

This will not assure that the above features will be implemented, but for sure it will help to better assess the impact and keep track of the customers sentiment around these topics.

[Oytun Sarikoca]

Please do not force your customers to force new view, hundreds of people are talking on behalf of their teams. Check the other article comments are increasing with negative responds. We are not arguing because we dont like visuals it is because New view is not covering the functionality of old view,