Update - after posting this question, more suggestions appeared and one of them was just the 'ticket' - https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-Core-questions/JQL-excluding-label-while-keeping-empty-label-issues-in-filter/qaq-p/1220794
Hello! I just completed an issues import via csv. My project is managing two boards - a scrum for one product and a kanban for support and other products. The kanban board is new, and the one for which I imported the issues from an external tool. The imported issues currently have no labels, but all the existing scrum issues do - 'Rewrite'. I'm trying to build the JQL for the Kanban board.
When I run this JQL, I get none of my imported issues: project = "Advisory Products and Trading Apps" AND labels not in ('Rewrite')
and when I run this JQL, I get all of my imported issues: project = "Advisory Products and Trading Apps" AND labels is EMPTY
I'm asking this because the issues may at some point have a label, but regardless of that label, I still care to only exclude the 'Rewrite' label and don't want to have to maintain a JQL that includes all possibilities of labels for the Kanban board - the exclusion of the Scrum issues is easier.