Custom fields now supported for Jira, Trello, and Asana users

Apr 25, 2018

If you're using custom fields in Jira, Trello, or Asana, you can now have them surfaced in your Screenful dashboard. You can use them for:

  • Assigning estimates for tasks

    • Set size, story points, hours, fibonacci numbers - whatever you use for estimating effort

    • Track sprints and milestones using custom estimates

  • Grouping and filtering by a custom field

    • See the number of open/completed tasks per custom field

    • See total estimated work per custom fields

    • Track metrics like lead & cycle times per custom field

That means that your custom fields are fully integrated to all the features in your dashboard and are available in all the reports you might want to have them included in. If you're not yet using custom fields, now is a good time to give them a try! 

Adding custom fields to your projects

To get started with custom fields, first add them to your board:

Once you add a custom field to a board or project, it is imported to your dashboard during the next data sync (the data is synced once per hour and you can trigger sync manually anytime at the integration settings). Once synced, your Drop down custom fields become available for grouping and filtering data. Number custom fields can be used for e.g. assigning estimates, or other kind of weights such as monetary value for individual tasks. 

Assigning estimates for tasks

To set estimates using a custom field, first assign a value to each of the tasks in your project. The default value is zero if no value is given. 

Screenful will automatically make all Number fields available in the Unit field in the chart settings. If you have a Dropdown field that you'd like to use as a Unit, you can change the field mapping

Here's how it looks like in the Task Status settings:

In the Task Status screen, when a custom field is selected as the unit, the rightmost column reports the sum of the values in each state:

Instead of just seeing the total number of tasks, you can now see the total estimated work per tasks per individual. Custom fields allow you to associate your own data with the tasks and have them reported in your dashboard. It is a great way to extend the data available for reporting in your dashboard. 

Grouping and filtering by a custom field

Custom fields that are of type Dropdown become available in the group by menus so you can use them for grouping data in the charts. Here's an example how they can be used for grouping in the Open tasks chart:

This chart is grouped by Category, a drop down custom field added to the Asana project. The breakdown overlay shows the number of open tasks per Category.

Here are the steps required to produce this chart:

  1. Add a Drop down custom field named Category to your Asana project

  2. Add available categories (drop down options for the custom field)

  3. For each task in your Asana project, select one of the categories from the Category menu

  4. In Screenful, select Category from the Group by menu

This is just an example of how you can extend your task management tool's core features using custom fields, in this case assigning tasks to Categories. You can probably think of many other uses for custom fields!

Let us know if you have questions or feedback by contacting hello@screenful.com. To stay on the loop, read our blog, or follow us on LinkedIn

This article was written by Sami Linnanvuo

Sami is the founder & CEO of Screenful, the company that turns data into visual stories. You can find him on Twitter.