Why can custom fields be created with exactly the same name?

[LEM]

Creating a custom field with the exact same name and type is possible. So if there are filters searching for "Team" and there are suddenly two custom fields with the name "Team", the query doesn't work anymore.

You then have to alter the query, so that not "Team", but the internal ID of the correct "Team"-field is used (which isn't really feasible when dozens of queries are in use).

Is there a useful reason for this "feature"?

[Deleted user · Accepted solution]

Hi @LEM,

In my opinion, there is not a useful reason for this. However I will check with other Champions who may have a deeper insight.

[Jack Brickey]

agree w/ Danny. All custom fields in Jira actually have a unique ID partially to protect against this situation. I do wish that Jira would require unique custom fields and not allow dups. However, that isn't going to change I expect. 

@LEM, you will either need to choose the correct one or ideally change one of the custom fields by one or more characters to allow you to easily identify.

[LEM]

Nice "feature". The thing with the unique ID is that our custom searches always feature the name, not the internal ID.

We will try to avoid same names. But I still hope Atlassian is looking into this and will try to fix that issue.

[Jobin Kuruvilla [Adaptavist]]

Completely agree that it is a confusing feature. While I do not recommend it, there are some cases where you might end up doing it because of other limitations in JIRA.

For example, it is not possible to have different custom field contexts for different issuetypes within the same project. See https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRASERVER-6851 for more details. Having multiple customfields, with the same name and different contexts, is a possible workaround for this issue.

[Davin Studer]

Oh that this were fixed ... I dream of the day.

[Jobin Kuruvilla [Adaptavist]]

Oh yeah! Some dreams are like that :)

[LEM]

Thanks for the info Jobin, I didn't know that.

Anyways, I do hope Atlassian fixes that somehow.

[Davin Studer]

I would tend to think this situation typically happens after the fact. Where a field was called something for a long time and has gathered lots of data, but now someone wants the field called something else and doesn't want to lose that data, but there is already a field with that name.

[Joe Pitt]

I agree with @[deleted]; it just causes confusion. It happens more often when there is more than one JIRA administrator. This is another reason to manage changes with change control. The first thing the administrator should do is look for an existing custom field with the same name.