Explain custom fields in a specific Jira project

Your Use Case 🤔

Let's say you're a Jira administrator and your organization has a custom Jira project with specific requirements that are different from the default Jira setup. This includes custom fields and special workflows that need to be understood by the team working on the project.

To ensure everyone is on the same page, you decide to create an announcement detailing the custom fields and workflows. In the announcement, you can explain what each custom field means and how it should be used. By sharing this information, you're not only helping the project team understand how to use the custom fields and workflows, but you're also promoting consistency and accuracy in the data entered into Jira. This will help to prevent errors, improve productivity, and ultimately lead to a more successful project outcome.

Solution 💡

With our Announcer module in the Data Protection and Security Toolkit for Jira, you can easily create a Jira announcement for a specific project to communicate special custom fields or workflows. You can add links to further information or instructions, or even ask your Jira users to provide feedback to the admin if something is not working.

How to communicate a project-wide explanation of custom fields

Step 1: View Announcer Dashboard

From your Jira Dashboard, navigate to the Manage Apps tab and to the Data Protection and Security Toolkit section. Find the Announcer button, click on it, and you will see the Announcer dashboard. It is the main page where administrators can view and manage all announcements.

Open

Step 2: Create the announcement

You can create an announcement from a template (Privacy Policy or Cookie Policy) or, which is more appropriate in your case, simply create your own Jira announcement from scratch. Click on Create to do so.

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Step 3: Configure the announcement

Now, you’ll see the blank configuration page of your Jira announcement, including the preview of it.

This page consists of 4 configuration options: General, Styling, Scope and Review, which we will now modify one by one.

Step 3.1: Change general information

Pick a clear name for your template and a description. Here, for example, we can use: “Understanding custom fields and workflows”. The template name is the internal name that will only be displayed for admins. The Dialog title will be displayed to the user group you define.

In the dialog window, you now have all the possibilities to add the information about the special custom fields or workflows. Simply tell the users of the project all they need to know to ensure an efficient way of working in the Jira project.

For example:

• Introduce the purpose of the custom Jira project and why it requires custom fields and workflows.

• Explain what the custom fields are and how they are used in the project.

• Detail how the workflows work in the project, and how they differ from the default Jira workflows.

• Provide any specific instructions or guidelines for how to use the custom fields and workflows in the project.

• Offer training or resources for admins who need help with configuring or using the custom fields and workflows.

• Mention any potential changes or updates that may be made to the custom fields and workflows in the future, and how you will communicate those changes to the team.

Inside the dialog body, you can change the font size, format, add emojis or even images (if you want to be funny), change the background color and much more. You can also add links, for example, to further resources to the custom fields. Clicking preview will show you how the announcement will finally look like.

GIF

You can also choose whether you would like to perform your customizations in the text editor or directly in HTML.

By clicking on Next, you will be navigated to the Styling options.

Step 3.2: Change styling

In the styling configurations of your Jira announcement for your development project, you can decide where the announcement should be placed and how large.

In our case, because we want to show a notification to every user of our Jira instance and to all user groups, you can choose any display option you like except "Block login form" or "Pin to footer and blog login form". With these two options, you can display the Jira announcement even to users that aren’t already logged in. We don’t need that here.

You can add up to two buttons and change the texts for Accept and Decline to your liking.

Because this is a pure announcement, and there is no reason not to accept it, the only thing that would probably be appropriate here is an “Accept” button. Be aware: If you select only one button in the button count, it means accepting this announcement is required.

By clicking on Next, you will be navigated to the Scope options.

Step 3.3: Change the scope of your announcement

Now, you can define the scope of your Jira announcement and specify in which projects the announcement should be displayed to which user groups.

1. Select projects > Pick your custom project here

2. Can view > Logged-in users

3. Skip Select groups since you want to display it to all groups

   1. Or if you think all the admins know about it already, you can select jira-software-users

4. Select the display framing time > always

   1. If you want to schedule your appointment, refer to this guide

By clicking on Next, you will be navigated to the Review.

Step 3.4: Review

In the last step of your Jira announcement configuration, you can review your work and have also the preview next to the configuration. If you set the status of the announcement to Enabled, it will be activated right after you hit Save. If you click Disabled, you need to enable it later.

Click on Save and you’re done!

Analyze the announcement

Now, your announcement will be displayed like this in your desired Jira project:

In the statistics, you can view how many Jira users have viewed and accepted or declined your announcement.