A first look at the beta of GitHub Issue Forms

Update 10 May 2021 - Remember that GitHub Issue Forms are in early beta, you need to keep an eye on the regular new releases as they come out. For example, my GitHub Forms stopped showing last week. This was due to me using now deprecate lines in the YAML definition files. Once I edited the files to update to support YAML they all leap back into life

GitHub Issues are core to tracking work in GitHub. Their flexibility is their biggest advantage and disadvantage. As a maintainer of a projects, I always need specific information when an issue is raised. Whether it be a bug, or feature request.

Historically, I have used Issue Templates, but these templates are not enforced. They add a suggestion for the issue text, but this can be ignored by the person raising the issue, and I can assure you they often do.

I have been lucky enough to have a look at GitHub Issue Forms, which is currently in early private beta. This new feature aims to address the problem by making the creation of issues form-based using YML templates.

I have swapped to using them on my most active repos Azure DevOps Pipeline extensions and GitHub Release Notes Action. My initial experience has been very good, the usual YML issue of incorrect indenting, but nothing more serious. They allow the easy creation of rich forms that are specific to the project.

They next step is to see if the quality of the logged issues improves.