When creating new projects, you may find that the project key needs to be in a specific format and length. By default, the project key needs to adhere to the following criteria:

• It should contain at least two characters
• It cannot be more than 10 characters in length
• It should contain only characters—that is, no numbers

You can change the default format to have less restrictive rules.

First, to change the project key length, go through the following steps:

1. Browse to the Jira administration console
2. Select the System tab and then the General configuration option
3. Click on the Edit Settings button
4. Change the value for the Maximum project key size option to a value between 2 and 255 (inclusive) and click on the Update button to apply the change

Changing the project key format is a bit more complicated. Jira uses a regular expression to define what the format should be. To change the project key format, go through the following steps:

1. Browse to the Jira administration console
2. Select the System tab and then the General configuration option
3. Click on the Advanced Settings button
4. Hover over and click on the ([A-Z][A-Z]+) value for the jira.projectkey.pattern option. For example, if you want to use numbers in your project key, you can use ([A-Z][A-Z0-9]+)
5. Enter the new regular expression for the project key format and click on Update

There are a few rules when it comes to setting the project key format, as follows:

• The key must start with a letter
• All letters must be uppercase—that is, [A-Z]
• Only letters, numbers, and the underscore character can be used
• The new pattern must be compatible with all existing projects