How to Search Jira like a Power User
Basic Search
Basic search allows you to search for projects and tasks just like how you would search via keywords and filters anywhere else. There are a few easy steps to follow to use Basic Search:
- Navigate to the header, click “Issues,” and then “Search for issues,”
- Now there are fields like Project, Type, Status, and Assignee that you can drop down and choose what you are looking for as well as a Text Field to look up tasks you know contain certain words.
- That’s it! Now you’ll see the results you are looking for in the table presented on the page.
For example, if you woke up in the morning and wanted to see what tickets are assigned to you, just navigate to the Basic Search, click the “Assignee” drop down and type in and select your name. Now the table will show all the tickets that have you assigned to it!
Advanced Search
Before jumping into how to search using Jira’s Advanced Search tools, it is important to understand what Jira is actually doing behind the scenes when you perform a search. A Jira search is structured as follows:
- Field - this is the name of the different types of information you are searching for like Project, Status, Assignee, to name a few.
- Operator - this is where you say things like “equal to” or “not equal to” as examples.
- Value - this is what data you are looking for in your query
- Keyword - there are 6 keywords which are AND, OR, NOT, EMPTY, NULL, and ORDER BY. These let you string together multiple search operators to get down to exactly what you are looking for.
With these in mind, let’s continue.
Jira uses JQL to allow people from all technical and non-technical backgrounds to have powerful and flexible search. Because data in Jira are stored in databases, using JQL allows you to get exactly the type of data you are looking for by manipulating your search query with Field, Operator, Value, and Keywords.
To navigate to Advanced Search, navigate to the header, click “Issues,” and then “Search for issues.” Here, you will see a button called “Advanced” that you should click. From here, you are able to type in queries to search for anything you are looking for.
For example, a complex query to look for all bugs in your project named MyTestProject that are assigned to John Doe would be:
project = MyTestProject AND issuetype = Bug AND assignee = John Doe
As you can see, these are queries using Field, Operator, and Value and we use the Keyword “AND” to string together another query with the first one. By breaking down the question you want to ask in a way that JQL can understand, you are able to find the answer of whatever you are looking for.
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