Jira JQL search for "IT" or for "NO" does not give any search result

[Helma]

We have a field called "Language", but searching (JQL) for some of the language codes does not give any result, while we're sure there should be.

This is no problem for for example EN, NL and PT, but it does not work for IT and NO.

• "Language[Short text]" ~ NO
• "Language[Short text]" ~ IT

Is this because these are actual words in English?

How can I get this working?

[John Funk]

Hi Helma,

Not sure if it will help or not, but you might try putting IT and NO in quotation marks:

• "Language[Short text]" ~ "NO"

[Helma]

Thanks for the suggestion, but we already tried that and it did not work.

[John Funk]

Maybe try changing that value then to a 3 character

[Helma]

Hi Frank,

The language code only has 2 characters, so there's no 3th character to add.

I also tried:
"Language[Short text]" ~ "N?"
But this only results in the search results for NL, not for NO.

[Helma]

And same for 
"Language[Short text]" ~ "N*"
Also here only the search results for NL appear and not the ones for NO.

[John Funk]

The other thing might be to convert it to a single pick list custom field type. 

[Helma]

I'm afraid we don't have the rights in the project to do so. The fields get filled from an external application at the client's side.

I wonder why searching does work for the other language codes and not for these.
Is this because these are actual words in English?

[Radek Dostál]

If the values are escaped ("NO") then this should return the issues.

Can you check a specific issue via {baseUrl}/rest/api/latest/issue/<issue-key> and check the value for the Language custom field? To confirm that it really is "NO" and does not contain any other strange characters in it, maybe due to a copy or an import or something.

Can we also rule out that the indexes are there - can you do a project re-index and see if there's any difference in search results?

[John Funk]

They are probably some type of key word in JQL - it's not because they are actual English words. 

Try this:

"Language[Short text]" ~"\"NO\""

[Helma]

It looks like the text is really "NO": 
"customfield_13074":"NO"

Meanwhile I found this in https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirasoftwareserver/search-syntax-for-text-fields-939938747.html. Both "it" and "no" are mentioned in it. 

Reserved words
To keep the search index size and search performance optimal in Jira, the following English reserved words (also known as 'stop words') are ignored from the search index and hence, Jira's text search features:

"a", "and", "are", "as", "at", "be", "but", "by", "for", "if", "in", "into", "is", "it", "no", "not", "of", "on", "or", "such", "that", "the", "their", "then", "there", "these", "they", "this", "to", "was", "will", "with"

Be aware that this can sometimes lead to unexpected results. For example, suppose one issue contains the text phrase "VSX will crash" and another issue contains the phrase "VSX will not crash". A text search for "VSX will crash" will return both of these issues. This is because the words will and not are part of the reserved words list.

 Your Jira administrator can make Jira index these reserved words (so that Jira will find issues based on the presence of these words) by changing the Indexing Language to Other (under Administration > System > General Configuration).

[Helma]

Both
"Language[Short text]" ~ ("NO")
and 
"Language[Short text]" ~"\"NO\""
are not working.

[John Funk]

I suggest you go ahead and open a support ticket with Atlassian:

https://support.atlassian.com/contact/#/

Then please post back here what the resolution was.  

[Helma]

Thanks a lot for your help.

[Angélica Luz]

Hello Helma,

Thank you for reaching out to Atlassian Community!

Testing on my local site, I was able to replicate the same issue. Words as NO and IT doesn't return anything when using the CONTAINS operator (~).

I used the same values on a dropdown field and it works.

I believe that this is expected because they are reserved words as you mentioned in one of your replies.

There was a bug a while ago related to this issue, but it was closed as "Won't fix".

• Certain words are breaking the JQL when using the CONTAINS (~) operator

There is a workaround that I tested here and it works. Changing the indexing language of the site to "Other" will fix this issue. Go to Cog icon > System > Edit settings and change the Indexing language. 

Regards,
Angélica

[Helma]

Thanks Angélica.
Unfortunately the administrator is not willing to make this change.