Problem

It is recommended to add context to custom fields for performance reasons. However, in the following really common use case it is more or less impossible to administer:

• You have more than just a few custom fields with a context on a project
• You need to create projects with the same configurations from time to time.

This means that every time you want to create a new project with the same configuration you need to go through all the custom fields used in the project and add the newly created project to the field's context. And with the current interface for configuring context this is really easy to make a mistake.

Possible solution 

Add the context configuration into the Field configuration scheme. Thus in the field configuration you would determine which fields should be used for projects using this configuration. You would also set default values and options. This would be a logical setup for the admin - today configuration for showing fields are split on many different places. We would get these advantages:

• Ability to share context in an easy way between projects.
• Make it possible to have more than one context per project as field configurations are setup per issue type
• Make it easier to understand which fields are actually used and shown in a project.

Alternate solution

Create a configuration element "Field Context Scheme" configuration which can be shared between projects in the same way as other schemes. In this you would configure show/hide, options and default values. This would more or less give the same advantages as solution above, but would still have configuration for field on different places.