How to display the JQL for a filter?

[John Smart]

Folks - apologies if the following has been asked many times. I was not able to find it.

When I create filters in JIRA, the JQL is easy, and for my filters I can see the syntax used, like:

project = MYTEAM AND labels = Accessibility AND status not in (Closed) AND type = Story

But for filters shared by my coworkers, I can access a filter, but the query textbox is reduced to something like:

filter=91274

In JIRA, I can see the matched tickets, but how do I find out the JQL criteria that resulted in those matches? 

Thanks for your patience.

John

[Gemma Clark · Accepted solution]

QUICK FIX

When opening a filter from Confluence you will be directed to a URL akin to:

https://your.site.com/issues/?jql=filter%3D18011

Simply change this to the following and you'll be able to see the jql for the filter

https://your.site.com/issues/?filter=18011

(Answer edited to correct example URL)

[Carson Price]

I was having the same issue and it was driving me mad. In the query line it only said:

filter = 1487

I wanted to know what exactly that was searching for. 

So, open any filter, go to the address bar and it will say

https://YOUR SITE.COM/issues/?filter=1511

change the number after "filter=" to the filter who's query you want to see and it will show up in the query bar. 

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

That doesn't look right to me.  If you visit a filter, you get the whole text of it.

It looks to me like your colleagues are sharing a filter that's looking at another filter.  Ask them for the actual filter instead of the obscured one.

[Craig Wyndowe]

I think the intuitiveness of changing a URL from "?jql=filter%3D18011" to "?filter=18011" is lost on most people; the Advanced SQL should be displayed whenever the Filter is executed. For what reason should the JQL only reflect the Filter name? 

Honestly, would you include this into an operations manual? 

"Simply change the URl by doing the following two steps;

1. Deleting the "jql="

2. Replace the "%3D" to "="

Then run the filter. 

Also, when presented with only the Filter number, we should be able to search on this number to locate the details of the Filter in the filter results. 

[Mike Aniskovich]

What a firedrill.  Just another example of how confusing and unwieldy this tool is.  I curse it every time I try to build something.  The architects should be sacked.

[Craig Wyndowe]

The persons responsible for sacking the architects have been sacked. 

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Yeah, but no-one bothered to tell the architects that one of the requirements was to make a Klein bottle that didn't look like one.

Most of the question here is about being unable to find out why a query reports a list of issues.  The problem here is that computers are fast, logical and dumb, and humans don't really understand that.

Jira search is missing a lot of functions we humans would really like, yes, but most of what we want is there.  It's perfectly valid to criticise that (and I do, a lot). 

But this is not "confusing and unweildy".  You don't have a human-level brain running this stuff.  It needs simple and clear instructions on what to report on.  If you can't provide that, it's a computer, it's stupid, you need to expect it not to understand vagueness.

Jira can answer clear questions.  It fails if we are fuzzy.  At least it doesn't lie when it responds.  It's not a politician.

[Kelvin Dsouza]

I'm having a similar problem, 

In mycase, I've picked this filter from a dashboard and I want to find out how this dashboard was created So I clicked on hyperlink and was redirected to this page in JIRA. Here it only shows what the FilterID is but not the actual JQL.

I've tried poking and prodding to try and get the JQL that was used to filter this information to no avail. 

Screenshot of my setup

Some of these dashboards were created by people who no longer work with the company so I'm not sure whom to even ask for the original JQL.

Any help would be most helpful!

[Carson Price]

Carson Price Jan 16, 2019

I was having the same issue and it was driving me mad. In the query line it only said:

filter = 1487

I wanted to know what exactly that was searching for. 

So, open any filter, go to the address bar and it will say

https://YOUR SITE.COM/issues/?filter=1511

change the number after "filter=" to the filter who's query you want to see and it will show up in the query bar. 

Try that and let me know if it works.

[Kelvin Dsouza]

Thanks for the heads up @Carson Price 

Unfortunately, I got the query from a widget from Confluence so I don't know what the name of the query is, I only know the filterID. 

I essentially clicked on one of the numbers from the widget and got redirected to the JIRA screen I attached earlier. where I see the ID but not the JQL.

I've made sure that the URL is https://YOUR SITE.COM/issues/?filter=1511 but not really sure what you're asking me to do next. 

[John Smart]

Matt and Nic, thanks for the replies!  Unfortunately, at my current company, and at all prior tech firms where we used JIRA, it doesn't show the JQL statement in the filtered JIRA page's UI for any filter that a coworker created/shared.  It just shows the filter number, like this:

filter=91274

These are not redirected or secondary filters.  This is direct access to the page.  

... which is not as helpful, from a usability (UX) standpoint, as it should be.  For filters that I create, I do see the JQL for my filters.  Good for me, but not for my coworkers.  We each rely on filters defined by many others on our teams.  Just seeing the filter number in JIRA is not great.

And while I like chatting with my coworkers, asking each one about the JQL defined per filter is not an efficient way to work.  Couldn't Atlassian designers do the simple thing and display both the JIRA filter's number and the JQL in the page UI, for any user who's in the auth'd share group?  

Thanks for listening.  UX matters! 

John

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

There's a problem here - Atlassian already have that.  You go to a shared filter, you get the JQL for it, and you can then save it or modify and save it for yourself.

In every version of Jira from Server 4.0 to 7.7 and all incarnations of Cloud, going to a saved filter displays either the simplified selections or the advanced JQL for it.

So, my best guess is that you are NOT going to the filter in the issue navigator, but looking at it from some other place, which is not where you'd normally be editing filters.

[Matt]

I agree, something is amiss. Could there also be some add-on involved here? John, can you provide a screenshot? Might help us understand what's going on.

[John Smart]

Thx again guys. I'll post a screen shot after a backlog grooming session at work today.  

[John Smart]

Sorry guys for the delay in pointing to a screen shot for the JQL-less filter UI.  I'm trying to get free cycles in between work tasks - sprint closure, retrospective, and next sprint planning.  I appreciate your attention to this forum thread.  More soon.

[John Smart]

Hello again Nic and Matt.  You're both right that when I launch a filter from the JIRA Issues menu, the resulting display does show the JQL.  To take a simple example, for the standard "Reported by Me" filter at https://jira.charter.com/issues/?filter=-2, the JQL displayed in the JIRA UI is:

reporter = currentUser() order by created DESC

Cool.  However ... the scenario I'm describing is when I access a filter from a link on the Confluence wiki, or by directly entering the filter's URL.  When imported into a Confluence wiki page, the html for the rendered JIRA filter includes something like this near the bottom left:

<a rel="nofollow" title="View all matching issues in JIRA." href="https://jira.charter.com/secure/IssueNavigator.jspa?reset=true&amp;jqlQuery=filter%3D91265++&amp;src=confmacro">
22 issues
</a>

If I follow that link from the Confluence UI, the filtered tickets open in JIRA (of course).  But it's there on the resulting JIRA display that I cannot find the filter's JQL statements.  Instead, JIRA displays only the filter number in the field that normally contains the JQL:

"filter=91265"

Even though I arrived at the filter in JIRA from Confluence, as a user, I still want to see the JQL.   Do you agree that's a reasonable request?  I've chatted with a few other developers on my teams and they have complained about the same thing.  No matter how the user got to that JIRA filter's display, its JQL should always be shown. 

Thanks guys. 

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Right.  That was a vast waste of everyone's time then.

Five days before you bother to tell us you are not even looking at Jira while asking questions about Jira.

Confluence looks at the saved filter.  If you want to see the definition of that filter, go to Jira and look at it. 

[Craig Wyndowe]

I understand Johns concern and i encounter this as well. We use the Confluence pages to represent the filters in meaningful ways. JIRA is limited in the views and formatting. 

It would indeed be helpful to be able to always get the JQL available for the filter, when you move from Confluence into JIRA. 

If i want to see the JQL of the saved filter, i have to search through all of the available filters and hover over the names to determine which is the related filter. There does not seem to be an easy way to lookup the filter JQL if i have only the filter number/key. Am i missing a view for this?

If i didn't know who created the filter, i might have to hover over all of the filters made, i suppose that have been shared with a Project? Is that a reasonable solution to locating the JQL for a filter? The "Search Filters" does not allow for using the filter number to locate the filter.

Please tell me there is an easier way to identify the JQL when i know the filter number.

[Mike Bresnahan]

I'd love to find a way to expand "filter=12345" to the full JQL query when linking from Confluence to JIRA so people can take my template filters and modify them.  Right now I'm having to both imbed the JQL query in Confluence as text and provide the link to the JIRA filter.  The users then have to copy the JQL text from Confluence into JIRA and modify it.  The problem with doing this is if I modify the filter in JIRA I also have to remember to go back and update Confluence which spins up a document approval process that is time consuming.  It would be much simpler if the users could click on a link to a filter, expand "filter=12345" into the JQL, and modify the JQL for their own project.

Let me know if there is a better way to expand a filter into the JQL query when linking from Confluence to JIRA using "filter=12345".

Thanks

[Matt]

Hey John,

You can request the JQL from the filter owner, or I've seen it happen that the ownership gets passed to you ( to get the JQL) and then passed back to the original owner. I would personally just reach out to the owner and ask nicely for the JQL. I'm sure they'll comply :) .

[Mike Aniskovich]

OK, next logical question:  how do I find out the filter owner?  Jira is like a rabbit warren.