Search for an exact phrase with JQL

[#1]

Advanced search lets you search for issues by building structured queries using the Jira Query Language (JQL). It's being updated to provide more accurate results when searching for an exact phrase.

For example, if you enter summary ~ "\"saturn summer sizzle\"" as a JQL query, the search results will only include issues where the summary contains the exact phrase "saturn summer sizzle".

What's changed?

Searching for a phrase will only find issues with that exact phrase. This is an improvement on current behavior, where searches:

• can include results with the words in a different order, with other words between them, or with variations of words
• don’t include reserved words, like “a”, “an” or “the” (learn more about reserved words).

The feature will start rolling out in October.

This could affect your search results and automation rules

If you’re using saved filters or automation rules with exact search syntax, this may affect your rules and search results. There are a couple of different ways to approach this. You could:

• leave your existing filters and rules as is, but expect different search results (especially if you’ve migrated from Jira Server or Data Center to Jira Cloud)
• update the filters and rules to use (or not use) the new syntax, depending on your needs.

Want to learn more about advanced search?

Take a look at What is advanced searching in Jira Cloud?

[Andrey Kiyanovsky]

Not a good idea to have no option! Instead, you could leave ~ for stemmed search and introduce = for exact search. That would not break existing filters and let users have an option!

[Boris Berenberg - Modus Create]

Are there any docs that explain the change in detail?

[Michael Flores]

Does this mean that "string" will use fuzzy matching logic and "\"string\"" will be exact so that we can choose when to use each?

[Hugh Gibson]

This has been requested for many years, on the ticket https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRACLOUD-21372. It's clear from there that the syntax is to enclose the text to search for within quotation marks. That's why there are escaped quote marks in summary ~ "\"saturn summer sizzle\"" . You could mix an exact search with a normal search - for example text ~ "saturn \"summer sizzle\"" would find any ticket with the phrase "summer sizzle" as well as the word saturn in some other place.

Another issue raised in that ticket is that of sorting results by relevance. That's what Jira Server does, but Cloud sorts by Key descending. We've just migrated and I've compared results from both instances. Server gives much better result sets when you are trying to find a ticket using words which are very common. In the example search above, if those words were in a summary then that ticket would appear first, followed by tickets where they are just in comments. You wouldn't need to modify the JQL and just search in the summary.

It's great that exact searching is being done, but when you don't know the exact phrase but have a general idea, sort by relevance - which every other search does - is much better for finding results.

[Matthew McGarity]

This should be a helpful change in our org, where we often search by two-word phrases.  For example, we use the term "data store" a lot, and prior to this I would have to do something half-*ssed like:

 summary ~ data AND summary ~ store

...then still refine my search even further.  Being able to do this instead:

summary ~ "\"data store\""

...opens up a ton of possibilities for me — thanks!

[Harald Seyr]

Hi,

thank you for this option to search for an exact match. This does help in most cases where I need exact match, however, it does still not solve the "search by numbers" issue:

Summary contains the string "AT-197681389", a search for

summary ~ "\"197681389\""

does not return it.

Thank you

Harald

[Irene]

@Boris Berenberg - Modus Create  - Thanks for checking. Docs is coming, I'll provide an update when it's available.

[Jacqui Shadforth]

Hey @Andrey Kiyanovsky — stemmed searches will continue to work with the non-escaped quote syntax like summary ~ "hello world".

Exact search will use the escaped quote syntax summary ~ "\"hello world\"" which is also compatible with the existing behaviour on Jira Server/DC. I hope that clarifies.

[Yatish Madhav]

Thank for this @Hannah McKenzie  and @Irene  - this will be great to use - I also ditto @Harald Seyr 's comment. Please advise?

[Hannah McKenzie]

@Harald Seyr @Yatish Madhav I believe it should work correctly if (using Harold's example above) you type the whole: 

summary ~ "\"AT-197681389\""

you should receive the correct result. Let me know if you still experience problems. 

[Harald Seyr]

@Hannah McKenzie : I am aware that searching for "text followed by number" does work. However, search for "just number" does not work. There was a user requesting support to search his Jira for a CVE number and this is not possible at the moment.

[Hugh Gibson]

Earlier in these comments I mentioned sorting of search results by relevance which I think is more useful than exact matches. It's the default in Jira Server, but missing in Jira Cloud.

Atlassian has now raised a feature request. If you agree, please watch, vote for and comment to https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRACLOUD-80173

[Eduard Diez]

Hello in my case it does not work, I am looking for this:

summary ~ "\"[ICTO_\""

But JQL found some similar issues, but not exactly.

[Jacqui Shadforth]

Hey @Eduard Diez

Unfortunately, special characters are not yet supported in text searches. If there are any special characters in your search, they will be ignored as they are not stored in the index. You can see the note in our documentation about it here.

We have a separate ticket for supporting special characters here: JRACLOUD-75866. Please vote and comment so we can understand your use case. In this comment on JRACLOUD-21372 you'll also see @Irene Ongkowidjaja has also offered to set up time in Zoom if you'd like to chat more about your use case.

I hope it helps.