In this article we will see why we often need to go beyond the basic Jira search. Today you know how to use the simple search. It allows you to find Jira requests in an intuitive way using a multi-criteria search.
However, after a while, you will find that there are some things you just can't do. And at that point, you have two options. The first is to lament and export everything into Excel for further research, with the limitations of exported requests, etc. The second is to put the data in Excel and export it to a different format. The second is to put into practice what you are going to read in this article and in some of the following articles.
You will see that the advanced search, at first, can be frightening. But then you won't be able to do without it. Here is a set of actions that are difficult or impossible to do using Jira's basic search.
Search all applications for all but one project
Let's say you want to find all the requests that concern all the projects except one. In this case, you open the list of projects and check all the projects except the one you don't want. This can get tedious pretty quickly.
The other concern is that if you add a project to your instance, you will most likely have to revise your filter. Indeed, this new project will not be included in the search results.
Search for different types of applications in different projects
Another example is to look for requests of different types in different projects. You want the "story" type requests from the "Web Browser App" project and the "epic" type requests from the Teams in Space project. You might be tempted to check both projects in the project list. Then check both types of requests in the "Type" list. The problem is that, in this case, you will get both the stories and the epics from both projects. And you will not be able to have the stories of one and the epics of the other.
Search for fields with a numerical value
Another example, if you use numeric fields, you will quickly run into big limitations. Here, I have a numeric field called "Job Value". By convention, I give it a value from 0 to 100 to indicate the relative importance of the requests from a business point of view. I may need to retrieve all requests with a business value greater than 50. Well, in basic mode, this is not possible as you can see.
Obviously, enumerating the list of possible values is not an option. In fact, it is not even possible.
Search for a business value
Finally, a last example, it is not possible to find the requests for which the business value is not filled in. You can search for those for which the business value is zero, in this case, there are none. But you can't search for those for which the value is not indicated.
For all these reasons and many more, I'm sure you already have in mind, you will have to switch to the advanced search at some point.
Now you know why the basic Jira search will not be enough for you. I propose to explore together the advanced search in our next articles: First step in the advanced search of Jira - Introduction to JQL.
