Use the Status Update field

  • Google Issue Tracker's Status Update field provides a concise, up-to-date overview of an issue's current state, visible to users with "View Issues" access.

  • The Status Update field supports Markdown, displays the last updated time, is limited to four lines of text, and triggers email notifications upon updates.

  • This field is ideal for sharing workarounds, fix announcements, feature request statuses, and project delay explanations, keeping users informed about issue progress.

  • Unlike the Description field, which provides a comprehensive issue definition, the Status Update focuses on providing brief, evolving summaries of the issue's current handling.

  • Status updates are currently visible only on the issue details page and not on search results or the issue list page.

Status Update is an optional field in Google Issue Tracker that represents the current state of an issue. For high traffic issues, teams can use this field to provide a canonical answer about how an issue is being handled.

The Status Update field:

  • Supports Markdown.
  • Encourages brevity with a soft size limit of four lines of displayed text.
  • Provides visible information on how recently the issue was updated; for example, how many days have passed since the last status update.
  • Triggers email notifications to subscribers when it is updated.

Example use cases

You can use the Status Update field to identify an issue's current state. For example:

  • "The current workaround is ..."
  • "The issue is solved and a fix is on the way. It should be live in all locations in 30 minutes."
  • "This feature request has been evaluated, but it is not yet funded. Click the +1 button if you find it useful."
  • "This project is delayed because of ..."

View status updates

If you have at least View Issues access to an issue, you can view the Status Update field.

The status update is not displayed on the issue list page.

Status Update versus Description

The Description field is where you define the issue, and it is generally more durable over time. The Status Update field is meant to represent a brief summary of the current state of the issue.