You can require that certain fields be filled before changing a feature to a specific status. This helps you enforce data completeness and consistency across teams and can improve planning, reporting, and handoffs between the discovery, delivery, and go-to-market stages of your product development lifecycle.
If you're an admin, you can set up required fields like so:
From the bottom of the Main menu, click Settings > Lifecycle rules > Create lifecycle rule.
Give your new rule a name.
Under Associated Products, choose at least one product to associate with your rule. Your rule will only apply to selected products and their children.
Click Add Transition Rule at the bottom of the page.
Choose the status to which the required fields will be attached.
Under Required fields, click Add new.
From the sidebar, choose which fields should be required. You can use the search bar at the top to quickly find the fields you need.
Click Done to confirm your choices.
(Optional) Repeat steps 4-8 to define required fields for multiple statuses within a single lifecycle rule.
When you're done, click Save in the top right corner to apply your required fields.
Managing required field rules
Admins can manage required field rules from Main menu > Settings > Lifecycle rules.
Editing an existing rule
Click on a rule's name to open it back up. You can change its name, product associations, and transition rules. Don't forget to save any changes!
Disabling or enabling rules
Click the toggle near the right edge of a rule to turn it off and on again. Disabling a rule is useful if you need to work on it without impacting your colleagues.
Duplicating or deleting rules
Click the ••• More actions button at the right edge of a rule, then click Duplicate or Remove. Removing a rule is is immediate and irreversible, so think carefully before doing so.
How required fields work
Required fields are designed to prevent a user from advancing an item to a certain status before that item has all the data it needs. When a user tries to set a feature's status to a something with required fields, they'll be stopped and asked to fill those fields in order to complete the status change.
Example: Say you've created a rule where the Timeframe field is a required field for the Delivery status.
In the following image, "Decrease initial load times" has the Backlog status (blue). It has no timeframe.
If a user tries to change the status of "Decrease initial load times" to Delivery (purple), like the other features in that component, they'll be met with this message:
From here, they can either cancel the attempt to change the status, or they can click Not assigned to give the feature a timeframe. If they do so and click Done, the feature's status will change to Delivery.
If there was more than one required field for Delivery, the user would have the chance to fill in every required field.
