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Different types for different needs

Advanced Formula Fields gives you two powerful, universal field types that you can reuse everywhere in Jira instead of creating dozens of one‑off fields:

• Advanced number formula fields – show any number you care about, for example:

  • how many subtasks are still open

  • how many unresolved or blocking work items you have

• Advanced text formula fields – show extra information such as:

  • who created the work item and key details about them

  • previous due dates or other historic information

All of this is powered by the expression editor from our enterprise‑grade automation app Jira Workflow Toolbox (Cloud) You get a proven, flexible way to surface the information you need, directly in a work view.

How this goes beyond Atlassian’s built‑in formula fields

Atlassian’s native formula fields are great for simple, per‑item calculations (for example a basic risk score inside a single work item). Advanced Formula Fields focuses on project managers, POs, Scrum masters, marketing managers, developers, and power users who need:

• Fewer, more reusable fields instead of many separate formula fields

• Richer information, not just math on a couple of numbers

• Cross‑work context, like data from subtasks, linked work items, or history

In short: Atlassian’s built‑in formula fields are good for basic calculations. Advanced Formula Fields is designed for teams that want more insight, less configuration clutter, and the flexibility to grow into more advanced use cases over time.

Dynamic values

No more unnecessary clicks and searches: Advanced Formula Fields was designed to effortlessly visualize information that used to be hidden under the hood.

Results are updated dynamically every time you load a work item, so the information you see is always live and reflects the latest data in Jira.

And when you need to roll out a change more broadly, simply Recalculate formula field values across many work items in one go – ideal when you adjust a formula or introduce a new calculated field and want everything to be up to date.

The spectrum ranges from simply displaying text from various sources, such as comments from linked work items, to complex calculations of accumulated time spent on related epics and other advanced metrics that would otherwise be hard to track.

Why advanced formulas?

Go beyond Jira’s built‑in formula fields. Roll up values across subtasks, epics, and linked issues to track progress, effort, costs, or risks in one place. It's not only about just displaying existing data, you can manipulate it too. Using the power of the JWT expression editor, you can customize and enhance the data the way you need it.

From automatically adding days to an expected due date to calculating project costs based on hourly rates.

Using additional Display formats you can even define what the output will look like - adding a currency or weight unit has never been easier. 

The field overview - your central formula hub

The field overview page is your central hub for creating, viewing, and managing all your formula fields in one place. The Field overview page works just like a control center — you can create new fields, check their execution status, and edit existing ones without jumping between multiple Jira admin screens.

Create and configure formula fields

Manage existing formula fields / Field overview

Controlled access for space administrators

In many teams, the people who notice data issues or need up‑to‑date values sit closer to the work than the Jira administrators. Advanced Formula Fields supports this by allowing Jira admins to delegate selected operational tasks to space admins – without giving up control over configuration or governance.

When the corresponding setting is enabled on the Settings page, space administrators can:

• Access a read‑only field overview in the context of their space.

• See only the formula fields that are configured for that space.

• Trigger recalculations for those fields, limited to work items in the current space.

This keeps field definitions, logic, and data quality under central control, while letting space admins ensure that values are accurate when they are needed – for example before sprint planning, quarterly reviews, or when preparing space‑level reports.

To keep things predictable and enterprise‑ready:

• Space admins cannot create, edit, or delete formula fields, and they cannot change field configurations.

• Recalculations started from a space only affect that space and are fully traceable via the execution log.

Space admins can see:

• Field type and name

• Recalculation status

• Status of the last 5 calculations

• Date and time of the last calculation

• User who executed the last calculation

• The work item where the last calculation was performed

This approach gives operational flexibility to the people who need it most, while avoiding fragmented or duplicated configurations and keeping Advanced Formula Fields manageable at scale.

For more information, see:
Formula fields for space administrators
Settings

Templates

Explore the Templates from the library to speed up your next field creation. You will find all templates built right into the app once you start the page creation process.

Categories

Currently all templates are grouped into “topic areas” or categories mostly related to the data you want to display.

Troubleshooting made easy

Each execution of a formula field is being tracked in a dedicated log that can be accessed directly through the Jira user interface - the execution log.

This basically means that every time a formula field is being updated or re-calculated (e.g. when a user refreshes a work item that contains the field), an event is being logged in the execution log.

More information can be found here: Troubleshoot formula fields / Execution log

📚 Custom use cases

You don’t need to start from scratch when the built-in Templates just don’t cut it.

We constantly add to the growing list of example expressions that will get you a head start on creating fields that exactly match your requirements.

🔢 Custom number formulas

🔡 Custom text formulas

🌓 Light or dark

All views support both light an dark mode - depending on your Jira preferences.

What’s next?

Start creating your first formula field by following the steps in the Formula fields user guide or browse through the Formula fields library get get some inspiration.