General Overview
Searching through the Jira maze is a key feature which every user, whether they like it or not, would be expecting to use within Jira. To make this possible Atlassian have powered up JIRA with 3 different search facilities. One can search for anything, forcing Jira to look for the required data across all projects, sections, customers, date created, dates modified in the system. Furthermore, JIRA unlocks the potential of searching using custom fields as a parameter, thus giving the user even more power when searching for information or data.
JIRA provides the additional feature of saving a search as set by the user, allowing them and their colleagues to recall the same search and execute it ample times as required. Using saved searches could make users' life easier and more efficient.
When using JIRA's search tool, one would follow these steps:
Decide on the methodology
Define your search criteria
Modify search results
Save your search
Working with search result data
In this topic we'll be covering the first step, i.e. Deciding onto the methodology
Deciding on the methodology
When users need to search for something within JIRA, the first thing to do is to define your search methodology. Jira offers one of the following three methods, each of which will be the best fit in different circumstances and in line to the complexity of the search:
Quick Search
Basic Search
Advanced Search
Quick Search
One could find this search at the top right of your JIRA interface. This search is the fastest search criteria but on the other hand, is the less precise than the other methods when it comes to complex queries such as defining a particular project or a specific status or a task.
Basic Search
Normally when users need to conduct a basic search one could go to the "Issues" tab at the top of the page and select "Search for issues" in the drop-down menu. This search criteria are way more precise than the Quick search but on the other hand, is it far less complex than the Advanced Search. It provides an interface where one could define the search that needs to be done by just clicking the parameters the user needs to search with.
Advanced Search
The last search criteria are the most powerful of all criteria, this search gave the ability to specify the query as specific as needed not like the other search criteria. However to be able to conduct this kind of queries one would need to learn and get to know the Jira Query Language (JQL).
To use this search criteria, one would need to to go "Issues" Drop-down menu and select "Search issues" then click the "Advanced" button found next to the basic search button.
