In the Search Area, you can specify a simple text condition, a JQL condition, or a Structure query. To switch between these search modes, click the Search Mode button or press Alt+j. The button displays the currently selected mode.
Simple Search
Simple search mode is selected by default (the button reads "Abc".) In this mode, you can specify the following search conditions:
Condition Type |
Example |
How it works |
|---|---|---|
Simple text |
structural hierarchy |
Look for issues that have all mentioned words in the Summary field. Each word in the search sentence must be present in the summary, or the summary must have a word that begins with the specified word. The words may come in any order. |
Quoted excerpt |
"the quick brown fox" |
Look for the whole phrase in the summary (but see below about Lucene indexes). |
Issue keys |
MARS-1, MARS-331 |
If the text looks like one or more issue keys (delimited by comma or whitespace), search for exactly these issues. |
All issues |
* |
Use single asterisk to search for "all issues". Only issues from the projects enabled for Structure are found. This can be useful when searching outside structure. |
Structure relies on the JIRA search engine to run text searches. The engine is based on Lucene index which has a few peculiarities that may cause unexpected results. For example, short words may not be found. The result also depends on the Indexing Language specified in the JIRA General Configuration.
JQL Search
In the JQL mode, the search condition is treated as a JQL (JIRA Query Language) query. JQL lets you specify arbitrarily complex conditions to find very specific issues.
When the JQL mode is on, the usual JQL auto-complete suggests fields, operators and values as you type. Whenever you have a correct JQL in the search field, the Search Mode button will have white background. When the JQL is incorrect or not complete, the Search Mode button will turn red.
More information on JQL is available in the JIRA documentation.
S-JQL Search
In the S-JQL mode, the search condition is treated as a Structure query. S-JQL is a special language that allows to search for issues by their relations in the current structure, e.g., root matches all top-level issues, root or child of root matches first two levels, and child of [priority = Critical] matches all children of critical issues. See S-JQL documentation for more information.
Unlike other search modes, you can only search for issues within structure using S-JQL search. Also, S-JQL search is not automatically updated when issues are changed in JIRA; click the Go button to ensure you have the up-to-date results.
As with the JQL mode, the Search Mode button will turn red if the specified S-JQL query is incorrect or incomplete.