How to Customize the Preview Rendering of a jira:customFieldType Field in Issue View?

[Olha Pruska]

Hi everyone 

We're building a Forge app with a custom field using the jira:customFieldType module, and we're using Custom UI for the rendering.

Our goal is to display the field value as a table directly in the issue view sidebar, but we’ve hit a roadblock. According to the Forge docs:

• formatter.expression only supports plain strings via Jira expressions

• And it seems like HTML, tables, images, and other custom markup aren’t allowed

But here's the thing — we’ve come across a few Marketplace apps that appear to go beyond this limitation and display tables, progress bars, even images inside custom fields:

• Awesome Custom Fields

• Simple Traffic Lights for Jira

• Fields – Custom Fields for Jira

We’d love to understand:

1. Is it possible to render rich layouts like tables or visuals directly in the issue view using Custom UI?

2. If yes — are there any examples, tips, or workarounds available?

3. Or is this only achievable using UI Kit, or maybe even something outside of Forge altogether?

If anyone from the Atlassian team or the community has insight into how these apps achieved this — or if we’re just missing something in the docs — we’d really appreciate the help!

Thanks in advance 

[Marc - Devoteam]

Hi @Olha Pruska 

Welcome to the community.

This part of the community os more for issues on the products provided by Atlassian.

You question would be better to be asked in the Developer Community

This is a separate community, specific for app development for Atlassian products.

[Olha Pruska]

@Marc - Devoteam , I also wrote there, but unfortunatelly, because I have a new account and immediately tried to ask about the issue, I was blocked