Managing Project-Specific Picklist Values with Categories Best Practice

Author: Jakob Khazanovich

Date: June 25, 2025

Audience: Jama Administrators

Products Applicable: Jama Connect®

Use Case

When working in Jama Connect with items that require multiple project-specific field values, it can be challenging to capture this data in a way that scales across projects. Jama’s item types and most fields (e.g. picklists) are, by design, global to allow simpler administration and common methodology and metrics across projects. This article outlines best practices and options for capturing project specific field values.

Best Practice

Use multiple Category Trees to capture different project-specific multi-select values. This approach allows you to define a project-specific list of options that can be easily filtered and maintained without creating new custom item types or fields for every project.

Implementation

Current Situation

Many teams need to record multiple project-specific values per item — for example, product versions, applicable models, hardware options, regional designators, etc.
Fields like Picklists and Item Types are global in Jama, so you cannot restrict the available options per project without creating custom item types for each project.
Categories, however, are project-specific, multi-select, and controlled by admins — making them a flexible choice for these kinds of lists.

Recommended Approach

Use one Category Tree per data dimension that you need to capture — for example:

One Category Tree for Product Versions.
One Category Tree for Models.
One Category Tree for Regions.
And so on…

Benefits:

Teams can assign multiple Categories per item — e.g. one or more Versions, one or more Models — without creating new custom fields or types.
Filters can identify conflicts or missing categories. Conduct audits periodically to identify incompatible combinations that may have been accidentally assigned.
Category Trees scale more easily across multiple projects.

Steps

Jama admin to add new Category Trees representing each field that requires project-specific picklist options.
Populate the trees with project-specific Category values.
Manage Category access to ensure project visibility is correct.
Users select the appropriate Categories for each item.
1. Can type into the search bar when managing categories to narrow down the category list
(Optional) Create filters and dashboards to highlight missing or invalid combinations, so they can be easily audited.

Other Considerations

While Category Trees do not currently support dynamic, value-dependent lists (e.g. filtering the Model list based on the Version selected), careful naming and disciplined use of the trees can help manage these relationships manually.

References

Alternative Options

Approach	Pro	Con
New Item Type per project	Complete customization per project.	High administrative burden and less standardization across teams.
Project Tags	Can be project-specific and multi-select.	Uncontrolled values — any user can create which risks typos and inconsistencies.
Relationships to reference items	Flexible and can support project-specific options.	Requires extra maintenance; less straightforward for end-users.
Release Field(s)	Existing project-specific picklist feature.	Single-select; limited flexibility; scales poorly when many values are needed.

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Managing Project-Specific Picklist Values with Categories Best Practice

Use Case

Best Practice