Jira JQL and AI - Queries examples and evolutions needed

[Tiago Cardoso]

It seems the Artificial Intelligence functionality is evolving towards the right direction but still have a few aspects to evolve. 

When I heard "Jira + AI", I thought we'd have some sort of LLM parsing of the issue (summary and description, at least) so that actual natural queries about its content could be asked. It seems that so far, the only "AI" we have is a JQL writer. It was a bummer to me, to be honest.

Focusing on this narrow AI usage for Jira search, I see at least two different personas:

1. Jira seasoned users
2. Jira users with some minimal JQL knowledge
3. Jira newbie users with zero JQL knowledge

The current functionality seems to be focused on the 2nd persona. I'd guess this persona is the smaller cohort of Jira users... whereas the 3rd persona would be the one benefiting the most of it.
Focusing on this 3rd persona, there's a few flaws that are not making them ready to go in an intuitive way. Examples:

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Natural query: personal items

JQL generated: assignee = currentUser() AND project = "Personal Projects"

It's interesting (and positive) to notice that he found somehow that I had a project called Personal Projects. I'd assume it means some parsing is happening.

However...

Natural Query: support items

JQL generated: issueType = "Support"

As I also have a "My Support" project, I'd expect the model to also use it. But he defaulted to a issuetype that I don't even have in my site.

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Natural query: items that are open?

JQL generated: status = "Open"

I may want outstanding items. "Open" can either refer to an atual status or the statuscategory "To Do".

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[Sascha Masanneck]

I think you are spot on with the personas. I guess Atlassian wanted to enable the users with minimal JQL knowledge and leave the third cohort to the simple to use, but not very powerful filter UI.

With regards to your example personal items/support items: Large language models have something called a temperature setting that basically controls how much variety it produces given a certain input. That is probably why you don't get the answer 

JQL generated: assignee = currentUser() AND project = "My Support"

or sth similar. I would love to see some more fine tuning in the future, especially with regards to JQL.

[Heidi Hendry]

I'm finding that Atlassian Intelligence is returning JQL queries that can't be run.

Natural language query:
Which work items in project ABCDE are linked to a Done work item?

Response:

project = "ABCDE" and issueFunction in linkedIssuesOf("status = Done") order by created DESC

which then gives an error:

Field 'issueFunction' does not exist or you do not have permission to view it.

And I believe that issueFunction comes from a plugin and is not native OOTB JQL.