When should I create a new component?

[Naomi Perez]

Hello, 

I'm completely new to JIRA and am having some difficulty when it comes to components. Currently, our JIRA is set-up so that the Software's issues are under a "Software Product" project. So all of the issues across our products are grouped  together. The person who administered JIRA prior to me, set it up so that components relate to each of our products. So for a given issue, a component would  "Product X", "Product Y", "Product Z", etc. 

Is this the best way to use components? Should components be more specific? 

[Ignacio Pulgar]

"Components" is the only built-in field which counts with the functionality of setting a default assignee depending on its given value on issue creation.

While that feature is easy to emulate for other fields with the help of a plugin, it is good to use Components for categorising issues in a way that take advantage of this unique capability.

[Jack Brickey]

@Naomi Perez, welcome to the Community!

So first let me ask a question. Are the products represented by components independently released each having their own version control. If so I would strongly recommend breaking each product into a separate project so you can track versions cleanly. If however, the components are really released collectively under a single version then the use of components is ok.

here is and example of component usage:

Product = Application_XYZ --> Project = XYZ

Components: Platform, Application, UI, Reporting, APIs, etc.

with that said Components is quite subjective in its usage