How can I link to a document or a program .EXE

[George Carvill]

I want to add a field that contains the full path to a file and then when the user clicks on it, that file will open in the appropriate program. I DO NOT want to attach the file. I want it on the network where others can see it, read it or update it. I just want to be able to get to it from an JIRA/GreenHopper page.

[JohnA · Accepted solution]

Hi George,

I see that you're asking this question about Atlassian OnDemand and this sounds suspiciously like something that we wouldn't want AOD users doing. I can't say this with certainty, but I suspect linking to an external application or document that could be triggered to run from a JIRA/Greenhopper page would present exactly the sort of attack vector that we would try to prevent on the AOD platform. I know for sure that deploying HTML in pages is restricted, and I would assume that the same applies for linking to external files: https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/AOD/Restricted+Functions+in+Atlassian+OnDemand

However, Adam's advice would work perfectly well on a self-hosted instance of JIRA/Greenhopper, so if this is a vital function for your workflow then you might want to consider migrating to a self-hosted instance as these aren't subjected to the same restrictions of AOD.

All the best,
John

[Adam Saint-Prix]

Do you want a field or do you want to be able to add a link using a comment or description field?

If you add a field, you can add a custom field type 'URL field' and then paste the link value and that should work.

Otherwise, you can switch the Comment field and/or Description fields to use the wiki markup renderer, if the aren't already on by default and paste wiki markup: See below for the notation guide for adding links:

<th width="250">Notation</th><th>Comment</th>

[#anchor] [^attachment.ext]	Creates an internal hyperlink to the specified anchor or attachment. Appending the '#' sign followed by an anchor name will lead into a specific bookmarked point of the desired page. Having the '^' followed by the name of an attachment will lead into a link to the attachment of the current issue.
[http://jira.atlassian.com] [Atlassian|http://atlassian.com]	Creates a link to an external resource, special characters that come after the URL and are not part of it must be separated with a space. Note: The [] around external links are optional in the case you do not want to use any alias for the link. Examples: http://jira.atlassian.com Atlassian
[mailto:legendaryservice@atlassian.com]	Creates a link to an email address, complete with mail icon. Example: legendaryservice@atlassian.com
[file:///c:/temp/foo.txt] [file:///z:/file/on/network/share.txt]	Creates a download link to a file on your computer or on a network share that you have mapped to a drive. To access the file, you must right click on the link and choose "Save Target As". Note: By default, this only works on Internet Explorer but can also be enabled in Firefox (see docs).
{anchor:anchorname}	Creates a bookmark anchor inside the page. You can then create links directly to that anchor. So the link [My Page#here] will link to wherever in "My Page" there is an {anchor:here} macro, and the link [#there] will link to wherever in the current page there is an {anchor:there} macro.
[~username]	Creates a link to the user profile page of a particular user, with a user icon and the user's full name.

[George Carvill]

I tried a URL field and it had two problems.

First I had to start the entry with file:///c: like this, otherwise I got an error:

file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/labmanager/My%20Documents/SampleLinkDoc.txt

And then double clicking on the result doesn't open the file.

I also tried a <225 character text field. This entry wasn't recognized as a link:

C:/Documents and Settings/labmanager/My Documents/SampleLinkDoc.txt

I'll try the other one you suggest.

[George Carvill]

These don't work...

[George Carvill]

Time to quit for the day.

I can't get a new description field to show up.

[George Carvill]

The contents in the screen shot do not work.

[George Carvill]

All that aside, what I REALLY want to do is have an object like the file attachment tool that would let me navigate to the file I want and then just save a link to it -- not attach it.

[Renjith Pillai]

Hey Goerge, the file:// links works only with IE not with other browsers, AFAIK.

[George Carvill]

@Renjith - Thanks! Except I just tried it in IE 8 - No go. I'll get 9 on my test machine and try that.

Any idea how to make it -- or something like it -- work in FF and/or Chrome?