Filter issues out by label

Joseph Turley October 20, 2015

I need the ability to filter out issues based on them having an "out of scope" label but I can't figure out the language to use in the filter. Any ideas?

1 answer

4 votes
Alan Parkinson
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October 20, 2015

Have you tried the following JQL?

labels != OutOfScope

or is the Issue with applying the JQL in a particular filter (Agile Board, Quick Filter, etc...)?

Deleted user April 18, 2018

That doesn't work, even if I use quotes around the label text. Well, not entirely. The labelled issues are filtered out but in my case, unrelated issues in other swimlanes are being removed, giving me incorrect (incomplete) results on the kanban board. These other issues do not have the label. Some have no label and others have an unrelated label.

Bastian Stehmann
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April 18, 2018

You have to add an or-clause for the issues without label:

labels != OutOfScope or labels is empty

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Deleted user April 18, 2018

Thanks for the quick reply. Let me restate my scenario to clear up any confusion:

 We have our kanban board somewhat organized so that related issues (ie, "automation" tasks) live in their own swimlane. This neatly puts those tasks in their own place. We have about half a dozen different swim lanes, some of which are governed by label, some by priority, etc. Anything with a 'blocker' priority is in a swimlane called 'expedite'. There are no labels required for that, and it works well.

My boss wanted to filter out the automation tasks so he could see the column totals without those tasks (the automation tasks are handled by a special team, he is interested in monitoring the rest of the work which is done by others). His plan was to create a quick filter that just had labels != automation. In theory, this should have worked by just not showing the tasks that coincidentally were all in the automation swimlane. However, in practice we are noticing that many other issues also drop off the board. These are issues that do not have an 'automation' label and we have not determined why they are also being excluded when this filter is applied.

Deleted user April 18, 2018

Maybe I haven't explained myself. My query is similar to what you suggest, but we are noticing that other issues are also being hidden from view. to be clear, these are issues that do not have a label that matches the filter query. I don't want to also remove issues that have no label (ie. labels is empty) - I still want those to show on the board and *only* remove the issues with my specified label text. 

Bastian Stehmann
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April 18, 2018

Thank your for explanation. 

I think, that you should try my suggested solution anyway. Let me try to explain why.

With a Quickfilter, you define a JQL that selects the issues, that should still be shown on the board. So in your case, it should select all issues with labels (except automation) and all issues without a label, right?

And this is the problem. If an issue has no labels at all, it will not be selected when your JQL selects only issues with labels != automation, it will only be selected, if you also allow issues with no label (and that is, what you select with labels is empty).

 

So the part labels != automation will give you all issues, that have at least one label but do not have the label automation.

The part labels is empty will give you all issues, that do not have a label at all.

As you want to get both cases, connect them with or.

Deleted user April 19, 2018

Thank you for the more in-depth explanation. Using the OR operator has indeed solved my problem, at least on initial testing.

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