I am interested in creating a workflow with a single 'active' issue at a time, enforced with state triggers. A timestamp when an issue changes from active to just open would be used to log time spent per issue, with no direct entry by the user. They could also, of course, 'log out' (poor word choice, since it would not be the same as logging out of Jira) to make no issue active.

Most of this can be cobbled together from existing custom fields and triggers. However, one thing I would like to do is track time spent on the 'new issue' screen as well. I'm not sure if the capability exists to track time before the issue is even created. I could simply be missing a feature, since I am new to Jira administration.