Topic Tuesday: What I Wish I Had Known

[Kimberly Deal _Columbus ACE_]

A couple of thing spurred this topic for me this week.  First a great set of posts in the Welcome Center, 3 things I wish I'd have known. (shameless plug, you can check out mine here) about starting out in the Atlassian Community, and of course changing jobs and having to learn a new environment and even a new tool.  Jira Service Desk!

So what I'd love to hear from you guys, is what are some of the things you wish you had known as a new user of the any of the Atlassian products? We can collect them here and share with some of our new group attendees!

[Kirkie]

One thing I wish I knew sooner is that if a custom field isn't being used on any screen, that doesn't mean it is not being used! Removing some, I found out the hard way, really messed up some add-on functionality (specifically, Xray). What you want to look for instead is custom fields with no context. If it doesn't have a context, it is not being used!

Also, be mighty careful with editing any shared schemes, especially the field configuration scheme. If you make a field required, even if it isn't on a screen, it is still required, which was counterintuitive to me (I figured, when I first started, that if I didn't have it on a screen, the 'required' would not be enforced. Wrong-O!

[Kimberly Deal _Columbus ACE_]

The required field threw me too!  Fun if you just want to mess with people though.  LOL.

[Anja Brkljacic]

I wish I was aware of the ScriptRunner plugin earlier and just HOW helpful it would turn out to be. For everyone that has access to a developer to do Jira scripting for them, Scriptrunner is a life saver. It's helped us customize workflows more by allowing us to create specific subtasks on specific transitions, hide fields easily with behaviours, and many other things. I'd say it's a must have.