Mastering JIRA 7: Become an expert at using JIRA 7 through this one-stop guide! , Second Edition

JIRA comes with a powerful feature that will let you find issues quickly and take action. For instance, you can easily search all the bugs of a particular project named cristata (which have been in an open state for the past 2 weeks) using the following JQL query:

project = CSTA AND issuetype = Bug AND created >= -2w 

The preceding query is written in JQL (a language in JIRA to search for issues). However, if you are new to JIRA, then you can also use the Basic search feature to find issues; you don't need to learn JQL for this. Moreover, learning it is not so difficult.

You can switch from Basic search to Advanced search to deal with the preceding query. Let's first take a look at the features provided by the Basic search in the Issue Navigator window.

From the top menu bar, click on Issues | Search for issues, as shown in the following screenshot:

Now you will be taken to the Issue Navigator and the default view is the Detail View:

In the Detail View window, a lot more information about the issue is visible, such as the Details, Description, Assignee, Reporter, and Workflow buttons to transform it into another available state. You can quickly browse through the issue and view the information in the center of the screen.

The List View doesn't display too much information. The issues are displayed in the form of a table. Switch to the List View from the drop-down menu in the top-right corner, as shown in the following screenshot:

By default, a few issue fields are displayed in the List View, but you can always add more columns to your view.

So far, we have not refined the issues for a specific project. The default Basic search option will let you apply several conditions to refine the issues. You will find a set of buttons at the top of the issue list that will let you apply multiple conditions.

Let's refine the...

We just saw how to search bugs that have been open within the past 2 weeks for a particular project. Now, what if we want to perform this search twice a week? Well, you can always go to the Issue Navigator and apply the conditions again or write a JQL query. However, there is an amazing feature in JIRA that allows you to not only save your searches, but also receive the results in an e-mail.

Click on the Save as button at the top of the screen to save the search:

In the pop-up window, enter the Filter Name and click on the Submit button to save the query. In JIRA, these saved results are called filters.

After you save the filter, you can always click on the filter name from the left-hand side panel in the Issue Navigator.

JQL is one of the best features in JIRA; it lets you search the issues efficiently and offers a lot of handy features. The best part about JQL is that it's very easy to learn, thanks to the autocomplete functionality in the Advanced search that offers suggestions to the user based on the keywords typed.

JQL consists of either single or multiple questions. These questions can be combined to form complex questions.

project = CSTA 

project = CSTA and assignee = ravisagar 

project = CSTA and assignee = ravisagar and priority in (Blocker,  Critical) 

When you start using JIRA regularly, you will save time used when carrying out common everyday tasks, such as creating issues, going to the Issue Navigator, performing a quick search, and so on.

When you log in to your JIRA instance, the dashboard will open. Let's say that you want to go to the Issue Navigator window quickly. Perform the following steps:

From time to time, you will need to bring these issues out of JIRA and place them in an Excel sheet where you can create complex pivot charts based on the information retrieved. JIRA will let you export these issues in a few standard formats (such as RSS, XML, and Excel).

At the top-right corner of the Issue Navigator pane, there is a button called Export. When you press this button, you will see several options:

When you click on XML, the issues currently visible in the Issue Navigator pane will open up in an XML format in your browser. You can save this page as an XML file.

Similarly, you can generate an RSS feed for either Issues or Comments. This will give you the URL to access the RSS feed, which you can use in your favorite feed reader. The URL of this feed is the same and whenever there is an update in the list, the RSS feed will be updated automatically.

There are also options to export the issues in Word, Excel (All fields), or Excel ...

Another powerful feature in JIRA is bulk editing in the Issue Navigator. This feature lets you modify the attributes of multiple issues simultaneously. There are several cases when you may need to perform such an action. For example, an employee has left the company and someone else has joined instead of this employee. Now, there might be several hundred issues assigned to him that are not yet closed in JIRA; these issues should ideally be assigned to a new user using the following steps:

In this chapter, we discussed how issues can be searched in JIRA using the Issue Navigator. We covered the Basic search as well as the Advanced search using JQL. Creating filters and subscribing to it were also covered. We also discussed how to modify issues in bulk and how to export issues from the Issue Navigator.

Once you start using JIRA to track issues, it also becomes important to analyze the data to check the progress of the project. In the next chapter, various built-in reports that come with JIRA will be discussed. These real-time reports help managers to check various project statistics and make the right decisions. The dashboards and gadgets will also be discussed briefly.