Jira: How many elements can a select list custom field hold?

[Mike Beebe]

Hello,

We're about to implement a Select List custom field in Jira that will contain approx. 15,000 elements and grow by 2,500 elements per month. What is the max capacity of a select list custom field?

Version is 4.4.5

-- Mike Beebe

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

Jira will actually handle it ok. Your browsers probably won't though, when you throw 20,000 elements into a page as a select list, it's asking for failure.

It sounds like a really bad design to me - could you explain the use case?

[Mike Beebe]

Nic,

The customer has a flat-file database they want to be able to search. We thought that a select list would be the best way to allow them this usability. I'm certainly all-ears if there's a better way.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Ok, what is that information, and how are you trying to use it?

If it's sensitive in some way, then we're looking for the ideas, not the exact description. For example, is it something like a list of possible parts of a system? (That system could be a Death Star, but whether it's a real one or a Lego one really doesn't matter - the principle is "lots of bits that go together")

How do you envisage using it within Jira? Actually, think more free-form that a simple field - I suspect if I were faced with 20k items to select from, I'd be clueless - my main client at the moment has one list of just 450 and are desperate to simplify it because people simply can't find the ones they need.