which values or individuals are in 'fields' in JQL?

Mara Owens March 15, 2019

Hi, 

Does anybody know where to find the individuals in the sets referenced by the 'Fields' section of this page? https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirasoftwareserver0711/advanced-searching-955167110.html#Advancedsearching-ConstructingJQLqueries The text is hyperlinked, but none of the references seem to point to any other content.

Thanks!

Mara

1 answer

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Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
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March 15, 2019

The hyperlinks take me to the right pages, and the expansion bits on "show list of fields" expand when I click them  - could you tell us what you're seeing?

I'm also not sure what you mean by "individuals in the sets" or which "fields section" you mean?

Mara Owens March 15, 2019

Sure. Here's what I'm seeing: Capture.PNGI want to, for instance, click on 'Category' and see what the individuals in or members of the set 'Category' are; in other words, which values I can use to constrain my results.

Without this information, I can't infer what 'Category' means. Instead, I have to guess that 'Category' or (for instance) 'Level' means 'Level in the JIRA hierarchy.' I made the following statement (in black) based on that guess. Because I guessed wrong, the machine returned the following (in red):

Capture2.PNG

I noticed that I can place my cursor after the '=' in this statement and see the members of the set in question. Since it will take me a long time to type each constraint, look at the members of its set, and infer its definition 'til I find the one I'm looking for, I'm hoping that there's a more easily discoverable way to see the individuals in or members of the set so that I can use JQL effectively.

Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
Community Leader
Community Leader
Community Leaders are connectors, ambassadors, and mentors. On the online community, they serve as thought leaders, product experts, and moderators.
March 15, 2019

Ah, I am sorry I did not understand.  I had not gone down to the level of clicking any of the "field" names (I know what they all are, so don't need any more info), but I see exactly what you mean - clicking them is useless (I'll poke some Atlassians and see if we can get that fixed - no point in saying "click here for more" if it does nothing!)

Most of the fields in the list are issue fields.  To look at the two you've mentioned that are not quite issue fields though:

Category is a project field, it's a way to group projects together.  "Category = X" in a search will give you all issues in any project that has been put in the category of X

In your search, you say "level = ".  The "Level" field is an issue field, but it refers to the issue security level.  "Level = epic" will only work if you have a security level called "epic"

I don't think theres a way to see "members of a set" here without looking directly at the exact type of field you're looking at.   Issue security, project category, project id, assignee etc - all very different.

Mara Owens March 18, 2019

Thanks for this! Yes, it would greatly improve usability if Atlassian provided concrete definitions.

For those sets or fields which have membership that are user-dependent (i.e. Category), it'd be useful to have concrete definitions that aren't about set membership like you just gave me, plus an example or two, so that users can self-serve how to use them like we would with SQL, SPARQL, Gremlin, etc.

If you were me, where would you make this recommendation?

Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
Community Leader
Community Leader
Community Leaders are connectors, ambassadors, and mentors. On the online community, they serve as thought leaders, product experts, and moderators.
March 18, 2019

https://support.atlassian.com/contact is the way to go, I'd suggest looking for the "documentation is incorrect/missing" route

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