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JIRA is a cool tool but it becomes even cooler if you know how to leverage it's powerful search features! Some of you probably already discovered the powerful JIRA Query Language (JQL) and that's what this series of blogposts is all about. In the next few posts we'll cover:
The basic search is nice and it allows you to easily create basic filters which usually cover 90% of the cases but what if you want to dig a little deeper? For example: you'd like to get all issues that does not have a Description.
That's currently not possible with the basic search feature in JIRA, to achieve this you'll have to use JQL, JIRA Query Language. To switch the JIRA search to Advance mode you'll simply click the Advanced link next to the Basic search form.
As you can see it'll automatically convert the Basic filter into JQL.
Maybe you've already noticed but JQL looks very similar to SQL, so if you're familiar with SQL, JQL will be a breeze. The simplest way to get going is to start typing with the following syntax:
<field_name> = <value>
JIRA will try to help you by providing an autocomplete for most of the fields and even values:
While typing, JIRA will show you whether the query is valid or not
, when you hover it'll tell you which line and character the error can be found
But when I press enter it executes the query instead of adding a new line to my query?
Yes exactly, you should do Shift + Enter to create a new line in your query. This will make it easier for you to debug syntax errors as JIRA will tell you on which line the error can be found.
Just like in most tools you can sort the results on a certain column. In JQL this can easily be achieved by using ORDER BY <column>. For example:
project = Collaboration ORDER BY created
This will give you a list of all issues in the Collaboration project sorted on the date they were created (most recent first).
By default, JIRA will sort descending (from large to small) if you don't specify anything. If you would like to control the order in which the sort happens, you can specify that right after the column name:
project = Collaboration ORDER BY created ASC
You can also sort on multiple fields to cover the cases where the value of a certain column is the same for multiple issues.
project = Collaboration ORDER BY created ASC, updated DESC
This query will sort the issues based on the creation date (oldest first) and when the creation date is the same for two issues it'll sort these issues on the updated date (newest first).
Atlassian has created a JQL reference where you can find all keywords, operators, etc that can be used in JQL. This is your go-to-guide when you want to discover new search capabilities. But to get you started some examples:
project = Collaboration AND status = "In Progress"
This will only return issues that match both clauses (are part of the Collaboration project and have their status set to "In Progress")
project = Collaboration OR status = "In Progress"
Returns all issues from either the Collaboration project or that have their status set to "In Progress".
description IS EMPTY
This will return all issues that have no description.
status != "To Do"
Returns all issues except for those that have their status set to "To Do"
"Story Points" >= 5
Find all issues that have Story Points which are greater than or equal a given value
Similar
status IN ("To Do", "In Progress", "Closed")
is the same as
status = "To Do" OR status = "In Progress" OR status = "Closed"
Find all issues which are either have the status "To Do", "In Progress" or "Closed"
Reverse
Questions/Problems?
Please use the comments below.
Maarten Cautreels
Community ChampionProduct Owner Digital Nomads Squad
Persgroep
Belgium
50 accepted answers
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