Filtering projects by categories during issue creation and search

The group evaluating issue tracking products for purchase in our organization likes JIRA a lot, but stuck with the issue of "project categories". Categorization is important for us due to many projects of different types, sizes, durations, etc. We find that when searching or creating issues, the current UI is cumbersome and confusing to use if the number and types of projects are many.

Having many projects of different types, sizes, durations, etc. really requires them to be categorized, at least from the UI usability perspective. For example, we have transient/temporary projects as well as code libraries, products, and systems to track. Any entity of the last three types (libraries, products, systems) is issue-tracked, version controlled, and released individually.

– Displaying many projects in "Project" list box of issue navigator makes it unnecessarily difficult to use (especially for somebody who is not a power user, taking support calls and logging them). Is it possible to include/configure the "Project Categories" as the first/top filter in Issue Navigator? This would allow only a subset of all projects to be filtered and shown in "Project" list box. When creating a project, JIRA allows associating the project with a project category; therefore the relationship is already available for filtering.

– Similarly, is it possible to include/configure the "Project Categories" as the first/top filter in "Create New Issue" page? One could start by specifying project category first and then the specific project?

– You might consider making these two filter additions configurable (on/off).