How to Set a Default Value to Description?

[xinan liu]

As the title says, I want to set a default value to the description.

Just like:

"Condition: 

Procedure:

Result:"

If every issue type has its own description type will be better, just like Bug Requirement have different dafault value.

How to do this?

Thanks very much!

[Joe Pitt]

I agree with Nic. People DO NOT update pre-filled fields. At one site the manager didn't like fields not appearing because they were empty and made us put a default of TBD in them. MANY issues were closed with TBD as the value for those fields making it impossible to capture some of the metrics we wanted.

[MattS]

I agree there is a balance between how much information is required and how much people will actually provide. And as I say to customers "you hire smart people, right? Well they'll find a way to get around entering the data you want, unless you explain why you need it"

[DavidF]

You might want to consider using scriptrunner for this. Scriptrunner allows you to create a behaviour for your use case: https://scriptrunner.adaptavist.com/4.3.1/jira/behaviours-overview.html

We are using this solution only in a few projects to have some structure in the description of user stories.

[Dnyaneshwar Ramesh Borase]

Hello David,

Could you please let me know How to add below default text in Description Field by using Script runner?

• Observed result
• Expected result
• Steps to Reproduce

Thanks!

[Dave Liao]

@Dnyaneshwar Ramesh Borase - in the link DavidF shared, the instructions on how to do that are there. Be sure to adjust the initialiser "defaultValue" contents to what you want as the default. :)

[MattS]

See https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRA-4812 for the feature request for this.

Nic, I think that a template in a text field can be useful if it avoids creating many more custom fields. A sample use case is replacing a questionnaire Word doc of questions with a JIRA issue. You don't want 50 new custom fields, one for each question.

Another approach I've considered is to use https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.e7solutions.jira.plugins.tables or https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.idalko.jira.plugins.igrid to allow people to enter structured data in a single custom field

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Very true, it's well worth keeping the fields to a minimum if you can. My problem with defaulting text fields has happened everywhere I've been and default text has never been the right answer to "we need to give them some guidance". As you say, I prefer to get tables/surveys in there instead.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

You can inject a bit of javascript to do this. 

But, don't.  Text fields should not be defaulted, because if you do it, users ignore them - I've run into systems where the description field is the default text on tens of thousands of issues.

Also, you've got a clear set of things that really should be fields in their own right.  I'd leave the description for a general description, and have those three fields separately defined.

[Joe Pitt]

The value of the additional fields is you can search and create metrics on them. Someday someone will want a list of all the issues where a field has a particular value. I've seen requests to sort or filter on nearly every piece of data being collected.