Filter is broken

[Michelle Harrison]

Issues I know should show up in my filter do not. They are there when I do not filter out any resolutions, but if I filter out duplicates and won't fix, issues that are "Unresolved" are not showing up. If I search for the one issue I know is not showing up but should using id=... then it only shows up if I use "\"Unresolved\""versus just plain Unresolved. But when I remove the id=... parameter, even when I search on "\"Unresolved\"", my issue doesn't show up.

In the simple search, it adds Unresolved without the escaped quotes and then my issue doesn't show up. So that's a bug that should be easy to fix. But why oh why is my issue just not showing up in my filter at all?? Please help!

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

Three possibilities

• Your filter is not doing what you expect because you're misunderstanding how they work (there are a few quirks that make them less than intuitive sometimes)
• Your filter is referring to data that is doing something odd
• Your index is broken

To debug all those cases, could you tell us exactly what your filter says, and tell us about the issue that should be shown. We need to know what the values of any fields the JQL is using are - for example if you're searching for "project = ABC, unresolved, and due date > now", then tell us the issue key, the resolution and due date. Finally, when your issue is shown in a list, is the ID struck out at all?

In this case, pay particular attention to the resolution - what you've said is suggesting a certain problem, but I can't be sure..

[Michelle Harrison]

Hi Nic - I was able to get it to show up by using BOTH "\"Unresolved\"" AND Unresolved in the filter. There is indeed some bug that is making the issue (Video-4210) not show up when I use simple search and it just uses Unresolved. The filter I used (that accurately picks up Video-4210) is now:

project in (ACE, News, VIDEO) AND issuetype in (Bug, Epic, Story) AND resolution in ("\"Unresolved\"", Unresolved, Fixed, Incomplete, "Cannot Reproduce", Completed, Passed, Failed, "On Hold", "Working As Designed", "User Error", "Forwarded to other team", "Unit Tested", "Pushed to QA", "In Development", "Pending QA") AND created >= 2013-04-01

Can you let me know where the other quirks are so that I don't lose any issues? We are using a filter to track all stories in a huge redesign and it's critical that we don't lose track of any issues due to a bug with the way Jira filters work.

Thanks!

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

I'm not sure why you are using two "unresolved"?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Ok. Can you do two things now

• As hinted before, go to the issue view of video-4210 and look at the area where resolution normally appears. What exactly do you get for the resolution (or confirm that it does not appear at all)
• Look at your search - is video-4210 struck out?

[Michelle Harrison]

That's the only way I could get my story Video-4210 to show up. If I just used the regular Unresolved status, it didn't appear. There is some bug that is only causing it to show up when I use "\"Unresolved\""

[Michelle Harrison]

Hi Nic - I see the following under status

• Resolution:Unresolved

As for Video-4210, the title is struck out. What does that mean? There are a ton of stories with the title in strikethrough text

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Ah, now that narrows it down to one of two problems.

First one is easy - a broken index record for it. To fix that, simply edit the issue. Any change to a field will do, I usually add a full-stop to a sentence in the description or summary. You should try this first because it's a very easy fix and needs to be ruled out as a possible cause before moving on to the second possibility.

The second one is a bit more painful - an inexperienced Jira administrator has added a resolution called "unresolved". This is a disaster because ANY value in the resolution field means "this issue is resolved". Doesn't matter if the value is "unresolved", there is something there, so the issue is resolved. (The value could be ".", "unresolved", "nope", "penguin", really doesn't matter)

The fix for the second one is also simple. With admin rights in Jira, go to Admin -> Resolutions and DELETE any resolution that says "unresolved". Also, find out which admin added it, and explain the resolution field rule to them.

[Michelle Harrison]

Hi Nic,

Thanks for the suggestions. I tried #1 and it didn't work :( So it seems like the problem is that there's an additional Unresolved status. When I create a new issue, the status under Resolution is set to "Unresolved". In fact, all issues in our system have a status under Resolution (I can't find ANY that have no status in the Resolution field). Am I correct in assuming that the correct behavior is to have NO status in the Resolution field for a new issue or an issue that is still unresolved?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Correct - an issue that has anything at all in the resolution field is considered to be resolved by Jira.

It sounds like someone got very muddled up here. The resolution field should NOT be on any "create issue" screen unless the intention really is to create issues that are resolved immediately (this is valid sometimes, but generally, not). I suspect someone has added the field to the create screen and then discovered that it always fills in the default resolution. Instead of correcting that error and removing the field, they've added "unresolved" to the list of resolutions, which is effectively a lie because "unresolved" is a value for resolutions and is now telling Jira that the issue is resolved.

So, you really need to look at where resolution is placed on screen too - it needs to be removed. Once you've done that, then you must remove the resolution called "unresolved".

Doing those two means your searches will work correctly. As well as all the unresolved/resolved stuff built into Jira that you aren't seeing because all your issues are seen as resolved at the moment.

[Michelle Harrison]

Thanks Nic - I'll bring that up with the team who implemented Jira here. Appreciate your help!