How can I limit my dashboard to only display JIRA items by Label when multiple Labels exist?

Question

I have a rich filter that returns results based on Labels. I want to set my dashboard to only show the results with the specific labels that I'm interested in. I have labels A-D. My dashboard is returning those results, but if the JIRA item also has a label such as E, it's returning E as well in the dashboard. My query is only looking for labels A-D.

I tried using a Dynamic Filter based on Labels, and then select A-D in the Rich Filter Controller, but it still also returns other labels in the dashboard because they are also on the same JIRA.

My query is:

Project in ("these projects") AND issuetype = Triage AND labels = A OR labels = B OR labels = C OR labels = D AND created >= startOfWeek(-1w) ORDER BY createdDate asc, status desc

Karl Reading · Answer

Thanks. Yes, I usually use ( ). The query I presented is a result of not understanding why it wasn't returning what I expected in the dashboard. I understand it's going to produce A-D, which is what I want.

The problem is that on the dashboard, sometimes the JIRA item with A may also have a label of E. E is now showing on my dashboard instead of just A. So on a pie chart, E has it's own percentage. I only want to see A-D.

Karl Reading · Answer

Thank you for all the information. I typically prefer using "in" and () but what you see is a product of where I left off when trying to figure out why what I wanted wasn't working as I expected.

I thought about excluding labels as currently there are only a few outliers that stick out, but overall we have a ton of labels. They really shouldn't be getting applied, but I figured it would be best to write one filter to target exactly what I need and then forget about it.

We're moving to Atlassian Cloud as an org in the next few months. Maybe that will open up some opportunities for JXL.

In the meantime, it looks like writing one filter per label is going to have to suffice. The problem with that is it makes my dashboard look clunky, with too much on it, which means I'll now have to have a second dashboard just for this.

I would have thought that the Dynamic filters in the rich filter or the rich filter controller would have made it possible for exclusions such as this.

Hannes Obweger - JXL for Jira · Answer

... and to expand on my last point: Your use case would be easy to solve if you manage to apply regular expressions on your labels.

E.g., If you're open to solutions from the Atlassian Marketplace, this would be easy to do in 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. It also comes with a number of advanced features, including support for (configurable) issue hierarchies, issue grouping by any issue field(s), sum-ups, or conditional formatting - as well as the ability to filter issues via regular expressions.

With regular-expression-based filtering, you can apply pretty much any logic, including the one that you are after:

(Note how we only see issues with labels training and/or analysis, and no other labels.)

The regex that I'm using is

^(training|analysis, )*(training|analysis)$

and for your exact example, it would be

^(A|B|C|D, )*(A|B|C|D)$

Note that I don't need to list E (or F, G, H, I, etc.).

Once you've identified your issues, you can work on them directly in JXL (e.g., bulk edit them via copy/paste), or trigger various operations in Jira.

Any questions just let me know!