Time in Status — Without Leaving JQL

[#1]

The problem (a real one)

Every Jira team eventually moves from "which issues are open?" to "how long did this sit in In Progress before someone picked it up?"

Native JQL can confirm that a transition happened (status WAS, status CHANGED), but it cannot tell you how long an issue stayed in a status. That's a real gap — and it usually pushes teams toward:

• manual changelog reading,
• exports to Excel,
• or a separate reporting layer that lives outside JQL.

There is a third option: extend JQL itself.

- The in-JQL solution: timeInStatus

The JQL Argon Powerful Search app JQL Argon  adds a timeInStatus function and a Time in Status custom field to your Jira Cloud instance. Both are queryable with standard JQL operators (>, <, =, >=, <=, !=).

That means duration becomes a first-class JQL field — usable in:

• the JQL search bar,
• saved filters,
• dashboard gadgets,
• automation rules,
• board quick filters.

No separate report. No export. One query.

TimeInStatus - how it works?

Syntax:

• subquery – any JQL that scopes the issues you care about
• status – the workflow status to measure (e.g. "In Progress")
• time expression – human-readable: 2w 3d 5h 30m

The function reads the issue changelog, sums the time spent in that status (including re-entries), and returns matching issues.

Two basic examples:

1. Issues stuck in "In Progress" longer than 2 weeks:

2. Issues that flew through "To Do" in less than 3 days:

- Combining with other Argon functions

The real power shows when you combine timeInStatus with other Argon JQL functions:

• transitionedBy — Who moved it, and how long did it sit?

Find issues moved to "Done" by a specific person that previously lingered in "Blocked" for over 5 days.

  issue > timeInStatus("project = CORE", "Blocked", "5d")

  AND issue in transitionedBy("project = CORE", "Done", "2026/01/01", "2026/05/01", "jsmith")

• worklog — Long status time, but little logged work?

Find issues that spent more than 1 week in "In Progress" but had less than 4 hours of worklog logged — a classic stuck-ticket signal.

  issue > timeInStatus("project = CORE", "In Progress", "1w")

  AND issue in worklog("project = CORE", "", "", "", "", "4h")

• changedBy — Combine duration with field-change history to spot issues that were silently parked.

These combinations answer questions that no single Jira report answers out of the box — and they are all written in plain JQL.

I hope our solution will meet your expectations and prove useful in your daily work.

Greetings
Bartek from Orbiscend OU (JQL Argon app provider)