Using External Links as GitHub Issue Template Options
I've been down the road of configuring custom issue templates on GitHub repos before. It even seems like there have been some nice improvements to help make creating them even easier. Thanks for setting me up with a reasonable bug report template to start from so I don't have to build one from scratch. 🐛
However, teams may rely on a variety of other tools—Jira, Asana, Linear, an Excel spreadsheet (Kidding! But maybe?)—to manage a backlog of tasks. I'd prefer teammates not add new issues on the repo only to then recreate those items in some other workflow. It would be great if folks could be guided to the right place and avoid double entry.
There is a solution for this! It's new to me, so in the spirit of "today I learned", here's a quick tip for us to share.
Creating custom config
We can configure the template chooser with external links and even lock down the ability to open new issues on the repo. To do this, we create a config.yml file in the repo's .github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE directory.
The .github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE directory may not exist yet if templates have not been configured for the repo. If it needs to be manually created, the path should start at the root of the project.
blank_issues_enabled: false
contact_links:
- name: 🐛 Bug Report
url: [link to create bug report]
about: Please file a bug report in our team's app of choice.
- name: 💡 Feature Request
url: [link to create feature request]
about: Have some great ideas to improve our site or this codebase? Open a new feature request in our team's app of choice.The screenshot below shows how these items will render on the "issue chooser" page. The config explicitly sets only the two options, both linking to their respective places where new tasks can be added to the team's backlog.
The blank_issues_enabled: false line in the config code hides the "open a blank issue" hyperlink that normally appears below these custom options. Without this line, folks would still have the ability to add a new issue on the repo.
With all of this in order, the repo remains free of user-entered issues, reducing some friction and redundancy. As an aside: I'm not 100% certain, but I'd wager that automated bot issues would still appear in the repo's issue queue.