Is there a plan to make JIRA search better?

[VP]

Hi there

We're using JIRA across our organization and love it. The main search query is really useless though and we can't make sense of its logic. Feels like when entering a search term in the main search field in the header, priority should be given to:

• tasks/bugs/etc where the term is in the summary
• tasks/bugs/etc assigned to me
• tasks/bugs/etc. not closed
• and THEN only everything else

I know JIRA lets you do a detailed search, but right now the default search is so bad it works 0% of the time without adding search parameters.

Any insights as to plans to make this work better?

[Nicolas Degardin]

I know this issue has been opened for years, but the global search is still so frustrating! When I type the exact name of an issue in the global search field, I would expect it to be the first result, not the search results to return loosely related issues, which force me to click on More results and then browse a few pages, before I can find it.

It makes it incredibly hard to ensure I'm not creating a duplicate of an existing issue. Sometimes I'm quite sure that the need we're speaking about was covered by a recently created issue, but I'm just unable to find it back. And when I finally do, it turns out the description or even the title contained exactly the search words I was using.

I understand that there might be some search results weighing based on status, creation time or some other mysterious criteria, but matching title or description words should be prioritized a lot more.

is there anything feasible to adjust the search engine behavior?

[Jeferson]

It is incredible this is still an issue. If anything, it has gotten worse over the years.

[Perkuto Tech]

Search is still horrible. Does Jira care at all?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

What do you mean by "horrible"?  Could you define something that is not working for you?

(I find it has "weaknesses" rather than "horrible" - most of the time, it works well.  Sometimes, I can't find what I need, but usually find that an app can answer the question.  Jira + an app or two seems to work for most people)

[Nicolas Degardin]

@Nic Brough -Adaptavist- The important word in @Perkuto Tech comment is not "horrible" but "still".

I wouldn't say that "Most of the time, it works well", and I still find my comment valid.
Could you provide more details about "I usually find an app that can answer the question"?

[b1airo]

@Nic Brough -Adaptavist- , if JIRA needs an "app or two" just to make the most basic functionality work (i.e., search) then it is doomed. Unfortunately this also permeates into products built on top of JIRA, like JSM, where search is an even more important and regular part of the workflow for a support agent.

[Philip Rubins]

It's insane how terrible the search function is. I'll type in a word or phrase that I know is contained in the ticket I'm looking for, and there's a 90% chance it won't appear in the first set of results.

[JHC]

The current search is really bad with the word stem issues.   At the very least you would expect a product like this to support better .*substring.* to work.   But the tokenizing, word boundary stuff in JIRA search is really terrible.

So if you are searching for parts of a link you are pretty much out of luck.  It would really help if jira full text search was working better.

[Doug Swartz]

I don't have any answer for you regarding planned quick search changes. 

Unlike you, I find the quick search to be useful, although, as you note, the response often requires additional parameters to narrow to what I want. Your question made me go look at the documentation. I didn't realize if the quick search has a project key as the first word, it will scope the search to the specified project.

I can see where your specified search order would be useful in certain circumstances. Personally, for me, I don't think it would be a better default than the current settings.  I'm almost always looking either across the whole enterprise or looking at history when I use general search. When I want to look at issues assigned to me, or open issues, I'm usually looking at a dashboard or kanban board.

[Hamish Moffatt]

I've just tried typing the project key as the first term and it actually made the search much worse. I find hardly any issues when I do this.

Why is the quick search so bad?