In Magic Estimations for Jira Cloud we developed the issue selection page based on popular JQL (Jira Query Language) which is the most powerful and flexible way to search for your issues in Jira.

This guide has been created to assist in case problems with specific queries.

Jira Query

Queries are a series of simple elements strung together to form a more complex question. A query has three basic parts: fields, operators, and values.

• Field

  – Fields are different types of information in the system. Jira fields include priority, fixVersion, issue type, etc.

• Operator

  – Operators are the heart of the query. They relate the field to the value. Common operators include equals (=), not equals (!=), less than (<), etc.

• Value – Values are the actual data in the query. They are usually the item for which we are looking.

• Keyword

  – Keywords are specific words in the language that have special meaning like AND and OR.

Quick example:

  project = "TEST"

where

• project is the field

• = is the operator

• TEST is the value

Fields

Almost any type of information that characterizes an issue might be used as the field in JQL. Just remember to take multi-word fields in quotes and you’re good to go!

"Story Points" >= 5

Operators

An operator in JQL is one or more symbols or words that compares the value of a field on its left with one or more values (or functions) on its right, such that only true results are retrieved by the clause. Some operators may use the NOT keyword.

List of Operators:

• EQUALS: =

• NOT EQUALS: !=

• GREATER THAN: >

• GREATER THAN EQUALS: >=

• LESS THAN: <

• LESS THAN EQUALS: <=

• IN

• NOT IN

• CONTAINS: ~

• DOES NOT CONTAIN: !~

• IS

• IS NOT

• WAS

• WAS IN

• WAS NOT IN

• WAS NOT

• CHANGED

EQUALS: =

The "=" operator is used to search for issues where the value of the specified field exactly matches the specified value. (Note: cannot be used with text fields; see the CONTAINS operator instead.)

To find issues where the value of a specified field exactly matches multiple values, use multiple "=" statements with the AND operator.

Examples

• Find all issues that were created by jsmith:

  Code Block
  reporter = jsmith

• Find all issues that were created by John Smith:

  Code Block
  reporter = "John Smith"

^top of operators | ^^top of topic

NOT EQUALS: !=

The "!=" operator is used to search for issues where the value of the specified field does not match the specified value. (Note: cannot be used with text fields; see the DOES NOT CONTAIN ("!~") operator instead.)

Note that typing field != value is the same as typing NOT field = value, and that field != EMPTY is the same as field IS_NOT EMPTY.

The "!=" operator will not match a field that has no value (i.e. a field that is empty). For example, component != fred will only match issues that have a component and the component is not "fred". To find issues that have a component other than "fred" or have no component, you would need to type: component != fred or component is empty.

Examples

• Find all issues that are assigned to any user except jsmith:

  Code Block
  not assignee = jsmith

  or:

  Code Block
  assignee != jsmith

• Find all issues that are not assigned to jsmith:

  Code Block
  assignee != jsmith or assignee is empty

• Find all issues that were reported by me but are not assigned to me:

  Code Block
  reporter = currentUser() and assignee != currentUser()

• Find all issues where the Reporter or Assignee is anyone except John Smith:

  Code Block
  assignee != "John Smith" or reporter != "John Smith"

• Find all issues that are not unassigned:

  Code Block
  assignee is not empty

  or

  Code Block
  assignee != null

^top of operators | ^^top of topic

GREATER THAN: >

The ">" operator is used to search for issues where the value of the specified field is greater than the specified value. Cannot be used with text fields.

Note that the ">" operator can only be used with fields that support ordering (e.g. date fields and version fields).

Examples

• Find all issues with more than 4 votes:

  Code Block
  votes > 4

• Find all overdue issues:

  Code Block
  duedate < now() and resolution is empty

• Find all issues where priority is higher than "Normal":

  Code Block
  priority > normal

^top of operators | ^^top of topic

GREATER THAN EQUALS: >=

The ">=" operator is used to searching for issues where the value of the specified field is greater than or equal to the specified value. Cannot be used with text fields.

Note that the ">=" operator can only be used with fields that support ordering (e.g. date fields and version fields).

Examples

• Find all issues with 4 or more votes:

  Code Block
  votes >= 4

• Find all issues due on or after 31/12/2008:

  Code Block
  duedate >= "2008/12/31"

• Find all issues created in the last five days:

  Code Block
  created >= "-5d"

^top of operators | ^^top of topic

LESS THAN: <

The "<" operator is used to search for issues where the value of the specified field is less than the specified value. Cannot be used with text fields.

Note that the "<" operator can only be used with fields that support ordering (e.g. date fields and version fields).

Examples

• Find all issues with less than 4 votes:

  Code Block
  votes < 4

^top of operators | ^^top of topic

LESS THAN EQUALS: <=

The "<=" operator is used to search for issues where the value of the specified field is less than or equal to the specified value. Cannot be used with text fields.

Note that the "<=" operator can only be used with fields which support ordering (e.g. date fields and version fields).

Examples

• Find all issues with 4 or fewer votes:

  Code Block
  votes <= 4

• Find all issues that have not been updated in the past month (30 days):

  Code Block
  updated <= "-4w 2d"

^top of operators | ^^top of topic

IN

The "IN" operator is used to search for issues where the value of the specified field is one of the multiple specified values. The values are specified as a comma-delimited list, surrounded by parentheses.

Using "IN" is equivalent to using multiple EQUALS (=) statements, but is shorter and more convenient. That is, typing reporter IN (tom, jane, harry) is the same as typing reporter = "tom" OR reporter = "jane" OR reporter = "harry".

Examples

• Find all issues that were created by either jsmith or jbrown or jjones:

  Code Block
  reporter in (jsmith,jbrown,jjones)

• Find all issues where the Reporter or Assignee is either Jack or Jill:

  Code Block
  reporter in (Jack,Jill) or assignee in (Jack,Jill)

• Find all issues in version 3.14 or version 4.2:

  Code Block
  affectedVersion in ("3.14", "4.2")

^top of operators | ^^top of topic

NOT IN

The "NOT IN" operator is used to search for issues where the value of the specified field is not one of the multiple specified values.

Using "NOT IN" is equivalent to using multiple NOT_EQUALS (!=) statements, but is shorter and more convenient. That is, typing reporter NOT IN (tom, jane, harry) is the same as typing reporter != "tom" AND reporter != "jane" AND reporter != "harry".

The "NOT IN" operator will not match a field that has no value (i.e. a field that is empty). For example, assignee not in (jack,jill) will only match issues that have an assignee and the assignee is not "jack" or "jill". To find issues that are assigned to someone other than "jack" or "jill" or are unassigned, you would need to type: assignee not in (jack,jill) or assignee is empty.

Examples

• Find all issues where the Assignee is someone other than Jack, Jill or John:

  Code Block
  assignee not in (Jack,Jill,John)

• Find all issues where the Assignee is not Jack, Jill or John:

  Code Block
  assignee not in (Jack,Jill,John) or assignee is empty

• Find all issues where the FixVersion is not 'A', 'B', 'C' or 'D':

  Code Block
  FixVersion not in (A, B, C, D)

• Find all issues where the FixVersion is not 'A', 'B', 'C' or 'D', or has not been specified:

  Code Block
  FixVersion not in (A, B, C, D) or FixVersion is empty

^top of operators | ^^top of topic

CONTAINS: ~

The "~" operator is used to search for issues where the value of the specified field matches the specified value (either an exact match or a "fuzzy" match — see examples below). For use with text fields only, i.e.:

• Summary

• Description

• Environment

• Comments

• custom fields which use the "Free Text Searcher"; this includes custom fields of the following built-in Custom Field Types

  • Free Text Field (unlimited text)

  • Text Field (< 255 characters)

  • Read-only Text Field

The JQL field "text" as in text ~ "some words" searches an issue's Summary, Description, Environment, Comments. It also searches all text custom fields. If you have many text custom fields you can improve performance of your queries by searching on specific fields, e.g.
Summary ~ "some words" OR Description ~ "some words"

Examples

• Find all issues where the Summary contains the word "win" (or simple derivatives of that word, such as "wins"):

  Code Block
  summary ~ win

• Find all issues where the Summary contains a wild-card match for the word "win":

  Code Block
  summary ~ "win*"

• Find all issues where the Summary contains the word "issue" and the word "collector":

  Code Block
  summary ~ "issue collector"

• Find all issues where the Summary contains the exact phrase "full screen" (see Reserved Characters for details on how to escape quote-marks and other special characters):

  Code Block
  summary ~ "\"full screen\""

^top of operators | ^^top of topic

DOES NOT CONTAIN: !~

The "!~" operator is used to search for issues where the value of the specified field is not a "fuzzy" match for the specified value. For use with text fields only, i.e.:

• Summary

• Description

• Environment

• Comments

• custom fields which use the "Free Text Searcher"; this includes custom fields of the following built-in Custom Field Types

  • Free Text Field (unlimited text)

  • Text Field (< 255 characters)

  • Read-only Text Field

The JQL field "text" as in text ~ "some words" searches an issue's Summary, Description, Environment, Comments. It also searches all text custom fields. If you have many text custom fields you can improve performance of your queries by searching on specific fields, e.g.
Summary ~ "some words" OR Description ~ "some words"

Examples

• Find all issues where the Summary does not contain the word "run" (or derivatives of that word, such as "running" or "ran"):

  Code Block
  summary !~ run

^top of operators | ^^top of topic

IS

The "IS" operator can only be used with EMPTY or NULL. That is, it is used to search for issues where the specified field has no value.

Examples

• Find all issues that have no Fix Version:

  Code Block
  fixVersion is empty

  or

  Code Block
  fixVersion is null

^top of operators | ^^top of topic

IS NOT

The "IS NOT" operator can only be used with EMPTY or NULL. That is, it is used to search for issues where the specified field has a value.

Examples

• Find all issues that have one or more votes:

  Code Block
  votes is not empty

  or

  Code Block
  votes is not null

^top of operators | ^^top of topic

WAS

The "WAS" operator is used to find issues that currently have, or previously had, the specified value for the specified field.

This operator has the following optional predicates:

• AFTER "date"

• BEFORE "date"

• BY "username"

• DURING ("date1","date2")

• ON "date"

This operator will match the value name (e.g. "Resolved"), which was configured in your system at the time that the field was changed. This operator will also match the value ID associated with that value name too — that is, it will match "4" as well as "Resolved".

(Note: This operator can be used with the Assignee, Fix Version, Priority,  Reporter, Resolution and Status fields only.)

Examples

• Find issues that currently have, or previously had, a status of 'In Progress':

  Code Block
  status WAS "In Progress"

• Find issues that were resolved by Joe Smith before 2nd February:

  Code Block
  status WAS "Resolved" BY jsmith BEFORE "2011/02/02"

• Find issues that were resolved by Joe Smith during 2010:

  Code Block
  status WAS "Resolved" BY jsmith DURING ("2010/01/01","2011/01/01")

^top of operators | ^^top of topic

WAS IN

The "WAS IN" operator is used to find issues that currently have, or previously had, any of multiple specified values for the specified field. The values are specified as a comma-delimited list, surrounded by parentheses.

Using "WAS IN" is equivalent to using multiple WAS statements, but is shorter and more convenient. That is, typing status WAS IN ('Resolved', 'Closed') is the same as typing status WAS "Resolved" OR status WAS "Closed".

This operator has the following optional predicates:

• AFTER "date"

• BEFORE "date"

• BY "username"

• DURING ("date1","date2")

• ON "date"

This operator will match the value name (e.g. "Resolved"), which was configured in your system at the time that the field was changed. This operator will also match the value ID associated with that value name too — that is, it will match "4" as well as "Resolved".

(Note: This operator can be used with the Assignee, Fix Version, Priority,  Reporter, Resolution and Status fields only.)

Examples

• Find all issues that currently have, or previously had, a status of 'Resolved' or 'In Progress':

  Code Block
  status WAS IN ("Resolved","In Progress")

^top of operators | ^^top of topic

WAS NOT IN

The "WAS NOT IN" operator is used to search for issues where the value of the specified field has never been one of multiple specified values.

Using "WAS NOT IN" is equivalent to using multiple WAS_NOT statements, but is shorter and more convenient. That is, typing status WAS NOT IN ("Resolved","In Progress") is the same as typing status WAS NOT "Resolved" AND status WAS NOT "In Progress".

This operator has the following optional predicates:

• AFTER "date"

• BEFORE "date"

• BY "username"

• DURING ("date1","date2")

• ON "date"

This operator will match the value name (e.g. "Resolved"), which was configured in your system at the time that the field was changed. This operator will also match the value ID associated with that value name too — that is, it will match "4" as well as "Resolved".

(Note: This operator can be used with the Assignee, Fix Version, Priority,  Reporter, Resolution and Status fields only.)

Examples

• Find issues that have never had a status of 'Resolved' or 'In Progress':

  Code Block
  status WAS NOT IN ("Resolved","In Progress")

• Find issues that did not have a status of 'Resolved' or 'In Progress' before 2nd February:

  Code Block
  status WAS NOT IN ("Resolved","In Progress") BEFORE "2011/02/02"

^top of operators | ^^top of topic

WAS NOT

The "WAS NOT" operator is used to find issues that have never had the specified value for the specified field.

This operator has the following optional predicates:

• AFTER "date"

• BEFORE "date"

• BY "username"

• DURING ("date1","date2")

• ON "date"

This operator will match the value name (e.g. "Resolved"), which was configured in your system at the time that the field was changed. This operator will also match the value ID associated with that value name too — that is, it will match "4" as well as "Resolved".

(Note: This operator can be used with the Assignee, Fix Version, Priority,  Reporter, Resolution and Status fields only.)

Examples

• Find issues that do not have, and has never had, a status of 'In Progress':

  Code Block
  status WAS NOT "In Progress"

• Find issues that did not have a status of 'In Progress' before 2nd February:

  Code Block
  status WAS NOT "In Progress" BEFORE "2011/02/02"

^top of operators | ^^top of topic

CHANGED

The "CHANGED" operator is used to find issues that have a value which had changed for the specified field.

This operator has the following optional predicates:

• Code Block
  AFTER "date"

• Code Block
  BEFORE "date"

• Code Block
  BY "username"

• Code Block
  DURING ("date1","date2")

• Code Block
  ON "date"

• Code Block
  FROM "oldvalue"

• Code Block
  TO "newvalue"

(Note: This operator can be used with the Assignee, Fix Version, Priority, Reporter, Resolution and Status fields only.)

Examples

• Find issues whose assignee had changed:

  Code Block
  assignee CHANGED

• Find issues whose status had changed from 'In Progress' back to 'Open':

  Code Block
  status CHANGED FROM "In Progress" TO "Open"

• Find issues whose priority was changed by user 'freddo' after the start and before the end of the current week.

  Code Block
  priority CHANGED BY freddo BEFORE endOfWeek() AFTER startOfWeek()

^top of operators | ^^top of topic

Keywords

A keyword in JQL is a word or phrase that does (or is) any of the following:

• joins two or more clauses together to form a complex JQL query

• alters the logic of one or more clauses

• alters the logic of operators

• has an explicit definition in a JQL query

• performs a specific function that alters the results of a JQL query.

List of Keywords:

• AND

• OR

• NOT

• EMPTY

• NULL

• ORDER BY

AND

Used to combine multiple clauses, allowing you to refine your search.

Note that you can use parentheses to control the order in which clauses are executed.

Examples

• Find all open issues in the "New office" project:

  Code Block
  project = "New office" and status = "open"

• Find all open, urgent issues that are assigned to jsmith:

  Code Block
  status = open and priority = urgent and assignee = jsmith

• Find all issues in a particular project that are not assigned to jsmith:

  Code Block
  project = JRA and assignee != jsmith

• Find all issues for a specific release which consists of different version numbers across several projects:

  Code Block
  project in (JRA,CONF) and fixVersion = "3.14"

• Find all issues where neither the Reporter nor the Assignee is Jack, Jill or John:

  Code Block
  reporter not in (Jack,Jill,John) and assignee not in (Jack,Jill,John)

^top of keywords | ^^top of topic

OR

Used to combine multiple clauses, allowing you to expand your search.

Note that you can use parentheses to control the order in which clauses are executed.

(Note: also see IN, which can be a more convenient way to search for multiple values of a field.)

Examples

• Find all issues that were created by either jsmith or jbrown:

  Code Block
  reporter = jsmith or reporter = jbrown

• Find all issues that are overdue or where no due date is set:

  Code Block
  duedate < now() or duedate is empty

^top of keywords | ^^top of topic

NOT

Used to negate individual clauses or a complex JQL query (a query made up of more than one clause) using parentheses, allowing you to refine your search.

Examples

• Find all issues that are assigned to any user except jsmith:

  Code Block
  not assignee = jsmith

• Find all issues that were not created by either jsmith or jbrown:

  Code Block
  not (reporter = jsmith or reporter = jbrown)

^top of keywords | ^^top of topic

EMPTY

Used to search for issues where a given field does not have a value. See also NULL.

Note that EMPTY can only be used with fields that support the IS and IS NOT operators.

⚠ EMPTY is not equivalent to NOT EQUALS (!=) 

Examples

• Find all issues without a DueDate:

  Code Block
  duedate = empty

  or

  Code Block
  duedate is empty

^top of keywords | ^^top of topic

NULL

Used to search for issues where a given field does not have a value. See also EMPTY.

Note that NULL can only be used with fields that support the IS and IS NOT operators.

Examples

• Find all issues without a DueDate:

  Code Block
  duedate = null

  or

  Code Block
  duedate is null

^top of keywords | ^^top of topic

ORDER BY

Used to specify the fields by whose values the search results will be sorted.

By default, the field's own sorting order will be used. You can override this by specifying ascending order ("asc") or descending order ("desc").

Examples

• Find all issues without a DueDate, sorted by CreationDate:

  Code Block
  duedate = empty order by created

• Find all issues without a DueDate, sorted by CreationDate, then by Priority (highest to lowest):

  Code Block
  duedate = empty order by created, priority desc

• Find all issues without a DueDate, sorted by CreationDate, then by Priority (lowest to highest):

  Code Block
  duedate = empty order by created, priority asc

^top of keywords | ^^top of topic

Request help

If you still have JQL related questions, let us know on support@tech-5.com at support@magicapps.io