New feature: Edit the JOIN clause in visual mode queries

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Today we're excited to announce a new feature to visual mode queries—the ability to edit the JOIN clause without needing to switch to SQL mode!

JOIN clauses bring together two tables using foreign keys that are defined in the schema, but they're often tricky to write by hand using plain text SQL. Visual mode has the ability to do these joins automatically, but sometimes there are multiple ways (or paths) to connect tables together. Previously, if there were multiple paths available, visual mode would simply pick one of the available paths, and you’d need to switch to SQL mode to manually edit the query if you wanted another option.

Our new join path panel allows query creators to not only see the available join options but also just point and click to change the joins!

Learn more about how to edit the JOIN clause of your visual mode query.

Here’s an example

Let’s say you want a query to get a list of all Jira issues and the email of each issue’s creator. It’s a relatively simple query to make using visual mode—just select the following columns:

• “Issue key” from the “Issue” table under “Jira family of products”

• “Email” from the “Account” table under “Organization”

Visual mode query

Since the query uses columns from two different tables, it needs to use a join to bring their rows together. But the “Issue” table has three foreign keys that it could use to connect to the “Account” table: “Assignee account ID”, “Creator account ID”, and “Reporter account ID”. When there are multiple join options for the query, you’ll see a “More options” label appear in the new Join path panel.

The email that you get from the query will depend on which foreign key is used. In this example, you’d need to use the “Creator account ID” foreign key to get the creator emails. To check or change the join path, you’d open the join path panel and ensure Creator account ID is selected in the join path.

Send us your feedback

Give the feature a try and let us know what you think in the comments.