Advanced Road Maps - Adding a Column for Comments
Asked by Jeanne Higgins:

I am new to Advanced Road Maps and wondered is there a way to add in a column that can be text at my Project Plan View per Epic, Task, Subtask so that when I meet with Customers I can add the latest status to a task versus having to go to the actual Jira level to add comments there when this is really for current status while on a call with the customers? I can do this now for Microsoft Project and Smartsheets. If yes, how do I do this?

Thank you,

Jeanne


Answers:
author: Hannes Obweger - JXL for Jira
body: Hi [@Jeanne Higgins](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/4192108)

I'm not aware of this functionality in Advanced Roadmaps - but it \*may\* be possible to create a plain-text custom field and add it to your roadmap view. Then you could just write your notes to this custom field.

Depending on your use case, you might also have a look at [JXL for Jira](https://marketplace.atlassian.com/1224710). It's a full-fledged spreadsheet/table view for your issues that allows for quick and easy inline editing, similar to Advanced Roadmaps (however without the additional "commit" step of AR).

In JXL, there's a built-in "Notes" feature, very similar to Smartsheets, that has been built exactly for your use-case. You can just add it as a column and add any text you want to.

This is how it looks in action:

![notes.gif](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/175683i9B1B2788CBE813B0/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "notes.gif")

More info at <https://jxl.app>, and please reach out anytime for questions!

Hope this is helpful,

Best,

Hannes

comments: author: Jeanne Higgins
body: Hannes,

Hi.

Good information on the JXL for Jira, but I want to keep to Advanced Road Maps because it is close to what I use in smartsheet for Project Management. I am going to review it though because maybe it has more PM functionality athan ARM.

You mentioned I could create a plain-text custom field, do you have steps to do this because I don't see in the ARM where I can add a custom field?

Thank you,

Jeanne


author: Hannes Obweger - JXL for Jira
body: Hey [@Jeanne Higgins](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/4192108), awesome - I think you'll like JXL, a lot of folks who are familiar with Smartsheet are very happy with it.

Regarding ARM, you should be able to add custom fields here:

![roadmaps.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/175705i27EAE755901EBDB0/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "roadmaps.png")


author: Jeanne Higgins
body: Hanne,s

Hi.

In ARM I see the drop down you are showing and created a custom field, but then it asks me to Associate field Project Status to Screens as shown below. How do I know what screen to Associate it with? I want it to show up in my ARM view I show in the screen shot.![Project Plans View.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/175710i45995F0472ED96E0/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "Project Plans View.png")![2021-12-30 09_03_37-Associate field Project Status to screens - JIRA.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/175709iB0023E114D391B84/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "2021-12-30 09_03_37-Associate field Project Status to screens - JIRA.png")


author: Hannes Obweger - JXL for Jira
body: Hi [@Jeanne Higgins](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/4192108)

yeah, the issue to screen mapping is always a bit of a brainteaser, and I'm not an expert myself in this regard. Assuming that your setup is fairly standard, I'd start with adding it to the screens of the projects you're interested in (in your concrete case, all screens starting with PROJ), and maybe the "Default Screen".


author: Jeanne Higgins
body: I figured out that the orginal customer field I created was paragraph multi line rtf which was not supported so I was able to create a text customer field that is a short text (plain text only) supported customer field that I was able to add to my project plan view in Advanced Road maps. I had to go to Add customer field plan after creating the customer field to add it to the project plan. Shown below. Now do you know how one could make the column wrap the text in a column?

![Custom Short Text Field 01032022.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/175904i85E2381EC8C8F731/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "Custom Short Text Field 01032022.png")


author: Hannes Obweger - JXL for Jira
body: Hi [@Jeanne Higgins](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/4192108)

if I remember correctly, AR has a fixed row height, meaning that you can't show multi-line or wrapped text in your table - sorry.

(On a side note, JXL also has a fixed row height, but it is very easy to open a multi-line editor, as can be seen in my original screen recording above.)


author: Keith Sottung
body: [@Jeanne Higgins](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/4192108) I see you were hit up by a salesperson when looking for an quick answer. hee hee. :-) I just spent few hours trying to do exactly what you posted about. It seem there is no way to add a multi line or even the issue description to to Adv Roadmaps. Kind of a bummer considering Smartsheet user are put off for this very reason. I found this:

<https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JPOSERVER-4403>

I suggest giving it a vote up so maybe maybe someday it will be part of the functionality. good luck..... keith fellow roadmap users not a sales rep. :-)


Tags: advanced-roadmaps

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