Issue fields: Structured issue metadata is in public preview

[ebndev]

issue.fields.public.preview.mp4

If you've ever used labels like priority/p0, severity/high, or team/frontend to track structured data in issues, you know the pain: no types, no validation, no consistency across repositories, and no way to report on them. Issue fields fix all of that. Define typed, org-wide fields once and they show up on every issue, in every repository, automatically. Search by them, report on them, automate with them.

Issue fields are now in public preview. We're rolling out access gradually to select organizations. Not all organizations will have access immediately. If you'd like to be enabled sooner, request access in this discussion (see below).

We've been running a private preview since November 2025 and have been iterating based on feedback from early adopters. Here's what teams are saying:

"Our entire team is a power user of Notion and its databases, and we've been particularly eager for this feature after migrating 100% of our issue and task management to GitHub."
— beingminimal, StaytunedLLP

"This is the most perfect way to start my Monday. We have been needing this for ages to help separate out necessary information across engineering and marketing tasks."
— JenniferAssid, PlayCastDotIo

"We're exploring migrating from JIRA to GitHub, but a current blocker is not being able to store custom fields on issues where it can persist across different projects."
— mark-BannerSolutions, Banner Solutions

📦 What you get out of the box

When issue fields are enabled for your organization, you get a ready-to-use setup.

Default fields

Every organization starts with four fields:

Field	Type	Values
Priority	Single-select	Urgent, High, Medium, Low
Effort	Single-select	High, Medium, Low
Start date	Date	-
Target date	Date	-

Pinned to the right issue types by default

Field	No type	Bug	Task	Feature
Priority	x	x	x	x
Effort		x	x	x
Start date				x
Target date				x

Create a bug and you'll see Priority and Effort right there in the sidebar. Create a feature and you get all four. No setup, no config, just works.

🔧 Make it your own

The defaults are a starting point. Organization admins can customize everything.

Add new fields

You can add up to 25 fields per organization. Four field types to choose from:

• Single-select - pick from a predefined list (e.g., Severity, Impact, Team)
• Text - free-form text with auto-detected URLs (e.g., DRI, Notes)
• Number - numeric values including decimals (e.g., Story points, Staffing)
• Date - date picker (e.g., Ship date, Review date)

Pin fields to issue types

Decide which fields show up for each type. Pin severity to bugs, impact to features, your custom types, or whatever combination works for your team. You can also pin fields to issues that don't have a type.

Customize options and colors

Rename fields, add descriptions, create and reorder options, pick colors. Changes apply across the entire org instantly.

🔍 Search by field values

Some things you can do:

• Find all urgent issues past their target date
• Surface high-effort features that haven't been started
• Filter by DRI to see someone's workload

📊 Works with Projects

Add any issue field as a column in your project views, then group, filter, and slice by field values. Unlike project custom fields, issue fields travel with the issue across projects and views, so your data stays consistent everywhere.

Issue fields count toward the 50-field limit per project.

Note: Issue fields can currently only be added to private projects. Support for public projects is coming soon.

📝 Timeline tracking

Every field change shows up in the issue timeline with what changed, when, and who did it.

⚡ API and automation

Full REST and GraphQL API support for both field settings (create, update, delete fields) and field values (get, set, clear values on issues). Automate field management, do bulk updates, filter by fields, and sync with external tools.

Webhook events (field_added, field_removed) let you trigger GitHub Actions on field changes:

on:
  issues:
    types:
      - field_added
      - field_removed

🙋 How to request access

Want to try it? Post a comment in this discussion with your organization slug and a brief description of how you'd use it. We'll get back to you.

✨ What's new since private preview

Since the private preview, we've fixed over 50 bugs and shipped several improvements:

• Effort field - added as a fourth default alongside Priority, Start date, and Target date
• Compact layout - fields use 40-50% less space in the sidebar
• Pin fields to no-type issues - fields can show on issues without a type
• Diacritics support - field names support accents, umlauts, and other special characters

🔄 Migration tool

Already using labels or project fields for structured data? We built a Copilot skill to help you migrate. It bulk-copies values from labels or project fields into your new org-level issue fields.

💬 Feedback

We'd love to hear from you! Share feedback, report issues, or suggest ideas in this discussion. Your input directly shapes what we build next.

To learn more, check out the issue fields documentation.

[kutsan]

We use issue-only repositories internally to track tasks and manage everything through GitHub Projects. A single repository can have issues for multiple platforms and teams. This feature would help us streamline our workflow, so I'd like to request it be enabled for the @wavera org.

[labudis]

Enabled for wavera! Check your org settings to get started. Let us know how it goes!

[alexanderniebuhr]

We use labels to track over 500 issues for our innovation lab, would be great to get access to the preview @frickegroup

[labudis]

Enabled for frickegroup! Head to your org settings to configure fields. Would love to hear how it goes!

[MrLesk]

Would like to explore storing Backlog.md's tasks directly as Github issues. This new feature would drastically simplify the integration
https://github.com/MrLesk/Backlog.md

[labudis]

Thanks for the interest! Issue fields are an organization-level feature, so they need to be enabled on a GitHub organization (not a personal account). Do you have an organization where you'd like us to enable it?

[DerZade]

Currently at @arma-events we use fields in projects and issue type, but the integration of issues and projects always lacked a bit imo. Atm we move all isses to a single project to allow setting some metadata like size, status etc. Would love to try out the more issue-centered approach.

Also: Is there any change of multi select coming as a field type? I always missed that in projects and the only reason why we still use good all labels for some things (for example affected components) 😕

[labudis]

Enabled for arma-events! Check your org settings to get started. On multi-select, it's on our radar but not available yet.

[setchy]

+1 for multi-select.

I'd like to migrate from custom labels to Issue Fields for Platform: [macOS, Windows, Linux]

[kutsan]

It would be really nice if these and other fields (like type, milestone etc.) could be marked as required at the time of issue creation.

[labudis]

Required fields are on our horizon! Can you share a bit more about your use case? Understanding which fields you'd want to enforce and in what scenarios would be really helpful.

[fnesveda]

This looks great! Can we get it for the apify organization? 🙏

[labudis]

Enabled for apify! Check your org settings to set things up. Let us know if you have any feedback!

[pedro-vbai]

We'd love to try these! Org is voicebrain. We're just setting up project management in github and want to use Projects as a flexible, light-weight, de-centralized way to track, manage, and visualize groups of related issues. But we need certain metadata to be consistent across new Projects, such as priority, estimates, resolution reason, etc. It'd be awesome to have org-level metadata fields like these to handle this, since some of these fields won't work well as labels (and would make our labels much too crowded). Thank you!

[labudis]

Enabled for voicebrain! Head to your org settings to configure fields. Let us know how it goes!

[h-m-f-t]

These look like great additions! We'd love to try them out @cisagov.

We have some fields (priority, effort) in Project metadata that really make more sense on the issue. Structured issue metadata is likely the nudge we'd need to start actually using Issue types.

[labudis]

Enabled for cisagov! Check your org settings to get started. Would love to hear your feedback!

[amenity]

🎉 Congrats, @labudis! You've done a fantastic job moving this forward and collecting such thorough feedback.
I assume that since @cityofaustin already has private preview access, we don't need anything switched on, but if not, please hook us up. 🙏🏻

Are y'all still thinking that you'll be opening these to public repos by next week? We're in a bit of a holding pattern since migrating from Zenhub and are very eager to get our product ops reporting up and running again.

[labudis]

Thank you so much! And yes, since cityofaustin already has private preview access, you should be all set.

On public repos support, we are putting the final touches on it. Fingers crossed!

[nicosammito]

We’d love to request access for the @code0-tech organization. We are currently in the process of building our community and want to ensure a structured workflow from the start. Moving away from label-based workarounds to typed, org-wide metadata like Priority and Effort would be a huge help in streamlining our issue management and reporting.

[labudis]

You're all set! Issue fields are now enabled for code0-tech. Great timing as you build out your community workflows. Let us know how it goes!

[nicosammito]

Amazing, thank you very much 🔥

[chriswnek]

As the PM for the argc org, a consistent way to add priority and effort across our repos would be amazing.

[labudis]

Thanks for the interest! I wasn't able to find an organization matching argc. Note that issue fields is only available to GitHub Organizations, not personal accounts. Could you double-check the org slug and share it here? Happy to get you set up.

[chriswnek]

@labudis Sorry, had a typo in there, it's agrc

[noraa-junker]

I personally do not understand why these are bound to an organization and not per repo. In an organization with many different repos the need for different issue fields can be very big. Please make this bound to repos and not organizations!

[labudis]

Thanks for the feedback! We chose the org-level approach because one of the biggest pain points we heard was inconsistency: every repo ends up with slightly different definitions of "priority" or "effort," making cross-repo reporting and triage really difficult.

Could you share more about your use case? Specifically, what makes it difficult to have a single set of fields across your organization? That context would be really helpful as we think about how the feature evolves.

[noraa-junker]

It's not having a single set of fields across my organization that's difficult. It's more that certain repositories have specific needs. For example I am a contributor and close collaborator in the Microsoft PowerToys project. This is an app that consists of many different modules and it would be useful to have an issue field "Module" where we can specify the module. But as this feature is only available on organization level (Microsoft) such a field will (very likely) not be introduced as it is of zero use for other repos.

Maybe a hybrid approach where both is possible could be an option?

[kwin]

Same need for large organizations like apache, where each repo is run by a different team usually with different demands for issue fields

[kutsan]

Completely agree with @noraa-junker, we also need this for the same reason.

[setchy]

Would love to try this for gitify-app 🙏 🚀

[labudis]

Enabled for gitify-app! Let us know how it goes!

[setchy]

Thanks for enabling @labudis.

I've confirmed Issue Fields are enabled at my org level, but I'm strangely not seeing the fields in the right-hand pane for any existing issues.

Any tips?

[labudis]

Is this in a public repository? If yes, then it won't show. Public repo support shipping very soon.

[jamietanna]

Ah, we must have missed that in the original announcement - I didn't realise it would only work for private repos for now. Out of interest, why the split between public/private repo support?

[labudis]

@jamietanna Good question! Two reasons: the feature just exited private preview, so we wanted to make sure the experience was solid before exposing it more broadly. And for public repos, there's an extra layer of complexity around visibility controls. When public repo support lands, it'll be configurable on a per-field basis, so org admins can decide which fields are visible to everyone and which are limited to members and collaborators. It's on the roadmap and coming soon.

[ViewFromTheBox]

This looks great! Would love to use it with ArtisanPack-UI!

[ViewFromTheBox]

@labudis It's been a day and I missed the part about an explanation. Right now I have a lot of labels that start with Priority::, Type::, Status::, Area::, etc., and being able to use this would be a much better way for us to organize those instead of using an absolute ton of labels.

[labudis]

You're all set! Issue fields are now enabled for ArtisanPack-UI. Excited to hear how it works for you.

[dodyg]

Please enable them for silverkeytech. We keep track of everything using GitHub Issues.

[labudis]

Enabled for silverkeytech! Let us know how it goes.

[labudis]

@zolotokrylin Access has been enabled for holdex. You should now see Priority, Severity, and custom fields available under your org issue settings. Let us know how it goes!

[zolotokrylin]

Thank you, Tadas!

[labudis]

@acidoxee Access has been enabled for seyna-insurance. You should now see Priority, Severity, and custom fields available under your org issue settings. Let us know how it goes!

[labudis]

@MrMTaylor Access has been enabled for Anord-Mardix. You should now see Priority, Severity, and custom fields available under your org issue settings. Let us know how it goes!

[labudis]

@Yantrio Access has been enabled for opentofu. You should now see Priority, Severity, and custom fields available under your org issue settings. Let us know how it goes!

[labudis]

@matheusdias Access has been enabled for laboratoriobridge. You should now see Priority, Severity, and custom fields available under your org issue settings. Let us know how it goes!

[labudis]

@jordanbangia Access has been enabled for waabi-ai. You should now see Priority, Severity, and custom fields available under your org issue settings. Let us know how it goes!

[labudis]

@AlejandroME Access has been enabled for oxidecomputer. You should now see Priority, Severity, and custom fields available under your org issue settings. Let us know how it goes!

[AlejandroME]

Thank you! Excited to try this 😄

[sstrullmyer]

Would love to try this out in the misoenergy organization (commenting with my non-EMU account)! We're also looking at leveraging these fields to support transitioning our processes from Jira

[muehz]

We would love to be able to try out this feature! We're looking at migrating from Azure Boards to GitHub Issues and this is a feature we were going to sorely miss! Please sign us up (commenting from my non-EMU account as well)

Organization Name: NebraskaBlue

[kashike]

Could we get access on the papermc organization? We would like to try this out.

[labudis]

@MrMTaylor Your existing project fields (Priority as a custom list, Effort as a number) will continue to work as they are. Issue fields and project fields are separate, so nothing is overwritten or removed when issue fields are enabled.

When you enable issue fields, you get a default set (Priority, Effort, Start date, Target date) that are org-wide and appear directly on issues. To use them in your projects, you'll need to add them as columns: open a project table view, click the + header, and select the issue fields you want.

To migrate values, you have two options:

1. Manually in a project table: Add the new issue field columns to your project alongside the existing project fields. Position them side by side and bulk-copy values from the project field to the issue field. Once all values are copied, you can delete the project field.
2. Using our Copilot migration skill: This can bulk-copy values from project fields into issue fields. Make sure to add the issue fields to your project first before running the skill.

No pressure to migrate right away; you can run both side by side and transition at your own pace.

[maxdanilov]

Would be great to have this enabled for the camunda organization. Use case: we have hundreds of repos and thousands issues in them, it would greatly simplify issue management and governance across projects.

[NotMyFault]

Would be nice to have this enabled for @jenkinsci and @jenkins-infra. We recently switched to GH issues after using a foreign issue tracker for over two decades and look forward to organizing our issues even better.

[kenyonl]

Organization: Intelligy
Use case: We build DevHub, a GitHub Projects V2 enhancement platform. We currently track effort as issue labels (effort:xs through effort:xl) and want to migrate to native Issue Fields so effort is first-class metadata on our project board — no sync code or custom fields needed.

We would love access to the public preview for our organization. Thank you!

[syntaqx]

Organization: aspyn-io

We've completely abandoned Atlassian products and moved our whole planning/backlog/iteration work into GitHub, and not having the fields has been a large pain point.