JQL search for 'reporter' and 'watcher' ignores 'Project'

Question

I'm trying to do a search that displays all active tickets the 'jira-customer-success' group has reported or is watching.

My queries work for 'reporter' and 'watcher' separately, but when I combine them, I get hundreds of unexpected results of all different 'project' types, not just "Customer Engineering".

Member in the CSM group = Reporter <-- Working

project = "Customer Engineering" AND reporter in membersOf(jira-customer-success) AND status != Closed AND status != Closed AND status != Done

Member in the CSM group = Watcher <-- Working

project = "Customer Engineering" AND watcher in membersOf(jira-customer-success) AND status != Closed AND status != Closed AND status != Done

Member in the CSM group = Reporter OR Watcher <-- Doesn't Work

project = "Customer Engineering" AND reporter in membersOf(jira-customer-success) OR watcher in membersOf(jira-customer-success) AND status != Closed AND status != Closed AND status != Done

John Funk · Accepted Answer

Hi Edgar - Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

You probably just need to add some parentheses. Try this:

project = "Customer Engineering" AND (reporter in membersOf(jira-customer-success) OR watcher in membersOf(jira-customer-success)) AND status != Closed AND status != Closed AND status != Done

Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted Answer

Mixing and matching "or" with "and" confuses humans very easily.  You have to try to think about how the computer is reading it, and we don't instinctively see it the same way as them.

The answer with mixed and/or searches is almost always parentheses.  It's the grammar of searches to computers.

If you break down your query into clauses, just by line, it reads:

project = "Customer Engineering" AND reporter in membersOf(jira-customer-success)

OR watcher in membersOf(jira-customer-success) AND status != Closed AND status != Closed AND status != Done

The OR in the middle is breaking the search into two parts, each section of which is returning a lot more than you are really looking for.  So you get a list of everything matching both.

Try grouping the OR inside a people clause (note the bold on the () I added):

project = "Customer Engineering" AND (reporter in membersOf(jira-customer-success) OR watcher in membersOf(jira-customer-success)) AND status != Closed AND status != Closed AND status != Done

Or, because I'm the type who optimises too much:

project = "Customer Engineering" AND (reporter in membersOf(jira-customer-success) OR watcher in membersOf(jira-customer-success)) AND status NOT in (Closed, Done)

The computer does not know where you are drawing breath to pronounce your question in a way other (English speaking) humans would hear it.  We'd use commas more than parenthesis, but the punctuation really matters when you write it.  (Consider "Let's eat Grandma" vs "Let's eat, Grandma" for example)