What is the difference between JQL operators "was" vs "changed"?

[Diana]

I'm reading through the JQL documentation for "was" and "changed" 

(https://support.atlassian.com/jira-work-management/docs/advanced-search-reference-jql-operators/#Advancedsearchingoperatorsreference-WASWAS)

But could someone provide a little bit of clarification on the differences between the two?

If I push an issue from TODO to In Progress, and then I run a JQL query "Project = ABC and status CHANGED FROM TODO", I can see the issue I changed. But so is the same when I write "Project = ABC and status WAS TODO".

I transition the issue again to Done. And then I run the same two queries, I still can see the issue that was updated.

So how are these two operators different?

[Peter Van de Voorde · Accepted solution]

Hi Diana,

WAS goes back in the history of the field and looks if it ever had that specific value (in this case the field is Status and the value is TODO). It's true power is in the WAS NOT and WAS NOT IN variants

CHANGED only looks if a field changed. 

The way you're using them does indeed give the same result but WAS is more powerful than CHANGED for more difficult queries.


Cheers,
Peter

[Diana]

Hi @Peter Van de Voorde 

I think I understand.

So in the queries I used, they will always come out true because they both show that the issue WAS in the todo status, and the status did CHANGED.

Does that mean CHANGED covers anytime when the field was edited in the issue's lifetime? Meaning, the moment a issue is created and transition to a new status, using "status CHANGED blahblah" will always come out true because the operator only looks if the status field changed and not the value unless specified?

Then, yeah I might as well use the WAS operators.

[Mikael Sandberg]

These two operators are very similar, the big difference is that WAS will give you issues that currently have the value or previously did, while CHANGED will only give you issues that had the value in the past.