Empty label field not working as expected

[Ivo Noort]

Hello,

I want to exclude succeeded backup notification tickets from different sources from the 'All open" filter queue.

I add the label 'backup' to tickets from certain sources with different triggers through automation and list it in it's own 'backup reports' queue.

But when I want to exclude them from the all open queue an empty label field does not trigger the "labels != backup" criteria.
Why not?

This is the JQL filter.
resolution = Unresolved AND labels != backup ORDER BY created ASC

[Ilya Turov · Accepted solution]

Hello,

thats how JQL works, you need to search for empty labels as well like this:

resolution = Unresolved AND (labels != backup or labels is empty) ORDER BY created ASC

[Ivo Noort]

Thanks for educating me on JQL Ilya it works now! 👍🏻

[Keith Robertson]

Instead of

labels != backup

labels not in (backup, authorization)

use

# Select ticket if missing the named label.
NOT (labels = backup)

# Select ticket if missing ANY of the named labels.
NOT (labels = backup AND labels = authorization)

# Select ticket only if missing ALL of the named labels.
NOT (labels in (backup, authorization))

These avoid having to check whether labels IS EMPTY.

Your filter therefore becomes:

resolution = Unresolved AND NOT (labels = backup) ORDER BY created ASC