JQL Search of a Particular Custom Text Field gives Unreliable Results

Question

I have an issue when I do a JQL Search with a Particular Custom Text Field (Single Line).

If I search for the complete string, it finds all the issues (For example: "ABCD_EFGH_IJK_1234"), but if I truncate the last digit of that string, it doesn't find anything.Even if I use the * or ? symbol at the end.

If I keep truncating letters or number, it finally gets to ("ABCD_") and it is able to find these  issues again

I have done a Full Re-Index. I have compare the configuration with other similar fields that work and they are the same. The Search template is the same as the other fields (Free Text Searcher), and I have use quotes around the string when I use the * symbol.

What could be causing this issue with this particular field?

Thanks in advanced,

Carlos

Hannes Obweger - JXL for Jira · Answer

... and just to expand on my last point: If you're open to solutions from the Atlassian Marketplace, your use case would be easy to solve using the app that my team and I are working on, JXL for Jira.

JXL is a full-fledged spreadsheet/table view for your issues that allows viewing, inline-editing, sorting, and filtering by all your issue fields, much like you’d do in e.g. Excel or Google Sheets. This is how it looks in action:

For more advanced use cases, you can also filter using regular expressions.

I should add that JXL can do much more than the above: From support for configurable issue hierarchies, to issue grouping by any issue field(s), sum-ups, or conditional formatting.

Any questions just let me know!

Hannes Obweger - JXL for Jira · Answer

Hi @carlos andrade

welcome to the community.

I would assume that this is related to how Jira does its internal indexing for full-text search, in particular wrt. special characters. This article gives some insights on the matter.

If you are open to solutions from the Atlassian Marketplace, there are ways to overcome JQL's text filtering limitations. Happy to elaborate if this is something that might be of interest to you.

Best,

Hannes

Matt Parks · Answer

Without knowing for sure, it sounds like the underscore character doesn't mix well with the ? or * character in the search.

As a test, you replace all of the _ characters with a ?

So you'd search for ABCD?EFGH?IJK?123?