Need help with Board Filter

[AisM]

Hi,

We testing out migrating projects between different Jira instances. I have a Kanban Board that has a filter that is supposed to return Issues from lets say, 3 projects, A, B & C. (Also project B & C doesn't exist). When I click edit filter, the issue search page shows empty & says B & C doesn't exist.

But, on the Board, issues from Project A are displayed. Why does this happen ?

I want to understand how the JQL fails on the search page, but yet the Board displays issues. 

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

The boards are a bit more resilient to broken filters than most of the rest of Jira.  Your board, in this case, is reading "projects A, B, and C, but B and C don't exist, so they're not going to give me anything" rather than "broken, can't use it"

The JQL fails in search because search is where you define filters, and it is designed to fail on broken searches so that it forces you to fix them.

[AisM]

@Nic Brough -Adaptavist-  Thank you for the comment.

Okay so from your explanation, the Boards are still going to work despite the broken filter. But is this also the case, if the Board Filter is 'let's say" completely wrong, like contains a wrong syntax. 

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

The boards (and a few other places) read what they can. 

In the case of a missing project, it's works because "Project in (A, <missing>, <missing>)" is still understandable, it's just looking for a value that is not there.

If your query is looking for an object that is not there, or is syntactically incorrect, then it will return an error, not a list of issues, because Jira has no way to guess at what you might mean.  A board will not work if its filter is broken like that, it will not display any issues.

The issue navigator will not let you save a broken filter definition, so this does not happen often.  You have to do something to the data the filter is relying on to break it.

If you want to test exactly what happens with a filter with a broken object, then:

• Add a new custom field with a global context
• add it to screens in a test project
• create an issue, filling in the field
• Run a search for "new custom field is not empty", check it returns the issue, and then save it as a filter. 
• Create a new board, based on the new filter, and/or gadgets that use it
• Check the board or its backlog are showing the new issue
• Delete the custom field

This will show you what happens when a filter is broken.

[AisM]

Thank you so much @Nic Brough -Adaptavist-  That makes a lot sense !

[Florian Bonniec · Accepted solution]

Hi @AisM 

I think it's because the validation of the JQL is done in the Issue Navigator only. So your JQL validation failed and it do not go further. Using an existing filter in a board do not validate the JQL. It's also the case if you run the JQL in a script for instance.

Reagrds 

[AisM]

@Florian Bonniec Hi, Thank you for the comment.

So, if the existing filter does not validate the JQL, then how are the issues being displayed on the Board.

Do you have any links that could help understand this behavior ?

[Florian Bonniec]

I've not find documentation about that but by experience it's the behaviour I've observed.

Regards

[John Funk]

Hi @AisM 

I am not sure how the board technically operates that allows that to happen, but obviously it does as I have also noticed that functionality in the past. Is there something in particular you are trying to accomplish by knowing that? 

[AisM]

Hi @John Funk Thank you for the comment. We are currently planning to merge two different Jira instances. So, following that, I'm testing out migrating a few test projects to see how that would impact the projects & configurations in the source & destination instance. 

So, though the JQL from the Board filter is intended to fail, it still showed up issues on the Board which was a little confusing.