Hi there We're using JIRA across our organization and love it. The main search query is really useless though and we can't make sense of its logic. Feels like when entering a search term in the main search field in the header, priority should be given to: * tasks/bugs/etc where the term is in the summary * tasks/bugs/etc assigned to me * tasks/bugs/etc. not closed * and THEN only everything else I know JIRA lets you do a detailed search, but right now the default search is so bad it works 0% of the time without adding search parameters. Any insights as to plans to make this work better?

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Is there a plan to make JIRA search better?

Vincent Paquet

Hi there

We're using JIRA across our organization and love it. The main search query is really useless though and we can't make sense of its logic. Feels like when entering a search term in the main search field in the header, priority should be given to:

tasks/bugs/etc where the term is in the summary
tasks/bugs/etc assigned to me
tasks/bugs/etc. not closed
and THEN only everything else

I know JIRA lets you do a detailed search, but right now the default search is so bad it works 0% of the time without adding search parameters.

Any insights as to plans to make this work better?

Accepted answers

All comments

Doug Swartz

I don't have any answer for you regarding planned quick search changes.

Unlike you, I find the quick search to be useful, although, as you note, the response often requires additional parameters to narrow to what I want. Your question made me go look at the documentation. I didn't realize if the quick search has a project key as the first word, it will scope the search to the specified project.

I can see where your specified search order would be useful in certain circumstances. Personally, for me, I don't think it would be a better default than the current settings. I'm almost always looking either across the whole enterprise or looking at history when I use general search. When I want to look at issues assigned to me, or open issues, I'm usually looking at a dashboard or kanban board.

JHC

The current search is really bad with the word stem issues. At the very least you would expect a product like this to support better .*substring.* to work. But the tokenizing, word boundary stuff in JIRA search is really terrible.

So if you are searching for parts of a link you are pretty much out of luck. It would really help if jira full text search was working better.

Hamish Moffatt

I've just tried typing the project key as the first term and it actually made the search much worse. I find hardly any issues when I do this.

Why is the quick search so bad?

Nicolas Degardin

I know this issue has been opened for years, but the global search is still so frustrating! When I type the exact name of an issue in the global search field, I would expect it to be the first result, not the search results to return loosely related issues, which force me to click on More results and then browse a few pages, before I can find it.

It makes it incredibly hard to ensure I'm not creating a duplicate of an existing issue. Sometimes I'm quite sure that the need we're speaking about was covered by a recently created issue, but I'm just unable to find it back. And when I finally do, it turns out the description or even the title contained exactly the search words I was using.

I understand that there might be some search results weighing based on status, creation time or some other mysterious criteria, but matching title or description words should be prioritized a lot more.

is there anything feasible to adjust the search engine behavior?

Jeferson_xhyjjy

It is incredible this is still an issue. If anything, it has gotten worse over the years.

Philip Rubins

It's insane how terrible the search function is. I'll type in a word or phrase that I know is contained in the ticket I'm looking for, and there's a 90% chance it won't appear in the first set of results.

David Desrosiers

Search is still horrible. Does Jira care at all?

Nic Brough -Adaptavist-

What do you mean by "horrible"? Could you define something that is not working for you?

(I find it has "weaknesses" rather than "horrible" - most of the time, it works well. Sometimes, I can't find what I need, but usually find that an app can answer the question. Jira + an app or two seems to work for most people)

Rafa_qznmo3

EIGHT YEARS later and search is still garbage.

They have wasted more than a year on a new navigation nobody asked for, and yet

* the "search board" field does not find anything that isn't simply on the title/summary of a card; nothing else.

* the big search field at the top as others said does not show the obvious results and you have to click on view all to get any useful results,

* and now it even shows spam for other atlassian products you don't care about like Compass,

pathetic

Kamil Dąbrowski

I find that adding * to the end of searches helps a lot

François Champagne

2026 and yet, the default search box doesn't search in the tickets' comments it seems. Only the core of the ticket.

Wow.

Erik Bauch_u3n0kj

I use their AI feature (Rovo) to find tickets because their search is broken. Whoever is responsible for the search at Jira should be fired.

Nicolas Degardin

My guess is that this person was indeed fired 10 years ago and never got replaced.

Alec Henken

The year is 2026. 9 years have passed, and no improvements have been made to Jira's search functionality. My hair grows gray. I see my parents age through the lens of a middle-aged man, once an innocent child. The USA invades Iran. I search for "VC-12" in the Jira search box. "No Results". I will retire and die before this is fixed.

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