How to search text fields with JQL [Summary, Description, Comment]

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Sometimes, we need to find some specific word or phrase when working on our Jira project.  Imagine hunting for a key detail buried in a sea of Jira issues, like a critical bug report or a customer request hidden in comments. Finding them quickly can save time, prevent misunderstandings, and keep tasks on track. Luckily, Jira provides a query language (JQL) to help users search smarter and faster. Here, we’ll explore some cases of text searches with JQL.

Text searches with JQL (Examples)

Finding the right information at the right time can be life-saving for managing your projects. JQL makes this easy by scanning and locating specific words or phrases across multiple fields. You might be troubleshooting, reviewing updates, or tracking customers’ requests. No matter what, with JQL, you can quickly retrieve relevant information.

Let’s look at some examples.

Searching across all fields

The queries below will work to search across all text fields, whether they are comments, descriptions, summaries, or another. 

1. Find all issues containing a keyword like “update”.
   text ~ "update"
   This saves you from manually combing through countless issues to locate updates relevant to your project.

2. Need to search for incomplete words or variations? Add a wildcard. For example, searching for “key” to find terms like “keyword”:
   text ~ "key*"
   This ensures you capture all related terms, even if the full word isn’t known or consistently used.

3. To locate an exact phrase, enclose it in double quotes. For instance, searching for “critical bug”:
   text ~ "\"critical bug\""
   This helps you find precise matches, making it perfect for identifying detailed bug reports or client feedback.

JQL for summary, description, and comments

Text searches with JQL become even more powerful when focused on specific fields like summary, description, and comments. These are often the most detailed parts of your issues and using targeted searches here helps you quickly find exactly what you need, whether it's a bug report, task update, or a specific note left by a team member.

Here are a few examples for each of these fields.

1. Summary:

If you're looking for issues with a particular keyword or phrase in the summary (the title of the issue), you can use:

summary ~ "bug fix"

This will return all issues where the summary includes the words “bug fix”, allowing you to quickly find relevant issues without reading through each one.

2. Description:

If you're looking for a specific feature mentioned in the description, you can use:
description ~ "user authentication"
This would return issues that have the phrase “user authentication” somewhere in the description, helping you pinpoint where it's being discussed.

3. Comments

Often, crucial updates or discussions are added in the comments. To find specific feedback or updates mentioned in comments, use:
comment ~ "testing completed"
This search will show issues where “testing completed” appears in the comments, helping you track progress or approvals.

How to review past changes for text fields

While JQL is an incredibly powerful tool for searching current content within Jira’s text fields, it has one key limitation: it doesn’t track past changes. Let’s say someone changed the description, and it doesn’t contain certain words anymore. JQL won’t help you identify how these fields have changed over time or retrieve historical data on what was previously entered.

If you need to review past changes to these text fields, you can explore alternative options like Issue History for Jira from our SaaSJet team. 

Issue History for Jira lets you view the full history of an issue, including any changes to text fields. You can see what was previously written in the summary, description, or comments at any point in time, but this isn't something that can be queried via JQL. Instead, it’s manually accessed within the issue view.

Let’s look at the examples.

Summary updates:

Each entry provides a clear view of how text in the summary field evolved, highlighting additions (in green) and deletions (in red).

Description updates:

The following screenshot offers a clear history of how the issue descriptions have been edited over time.

Comments changes:

Here, you can see how collaboration and communication within the comments evolved over time, who updated comments, and when.

Try to track text fields changes

Tracking updates in Jira's summary, description, and comments fields is essential for maintaining project transparency and collaboration. While JQL helps search current text content, it doesn’t capture past changes. Instead, Jira's history logs allow you to review what was added or removed, who made the changes, and when, ensuring you have a comprehensive view of all updates.