Issue linking values and meaning

[Ken Hymes]

Using JIRA 5.0.7, I haven't yet found any documentation that explains the meaning of linking an issue to another issue with the options of "fulfilled by" and "fulfills". Can anyone point me to or explain what these options mean and their impact when linking issues?

[Martin Aparicio · Accepted solution]

They don't matter, unless you want to report/export them. They currently can't be show in the Issue Navigator. We had to create a DB view with joins to report the link type (in/out). Therefore, we limited them to a couple of pairs.

[Ken Hymes]

Thanks, Martin. Good to know about the reporting/exporting capability here and the limitations within Issue Nav.....

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Um, there is a "links" field, which will show them in the issue navigator...

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

An explanation:

The wording does not technically matter in Jira. It's a label, which you put on a link type to show to your humans.

You can call your link types "Mr Flibble said" / "Was said by Mr Flibble" or "zut"/"tuz" for all Jira cares. I suspect "fulfills" is a good example of a good label for people doing dependency tracking type things, but you can use whatever you want. Sadly, we've got some rather tortured English in our link names, but it is clear-ish.

Note that there may be plugins that do care, and that when you use "clone", you get to default a prefix, but that's the minor exceptions.

[Ken Hymes]

Thanks, Nic. That clears things up nicely. I had thought perhaps using one of these link types would trigger an automatic closure of the issue that was fulfilled. Wishful thinking! :-)