Terminology
This page provides a comprehensive list of key terms and definitions used throughout the Enhanced Search for Jira Cloud app and/or within this documentation. Each term is defined concisely to offer quick reference, making it easier to interpret technical concepts. Understanding these terms will help you navigate both the app and the content more effectively and ensure clarity.
Regular expression (Regex)
Definition
A sequence of characters that define a search pattern. Regex allows you to create flexible and precise search criteria. In the context of Enhanced Search JQL functions, such as, versionMatch, componentMatch, issueFieldMatch, and projectMatch, regex helps users find relevant data without manually listing every possible value.
Why use Regex?
Regex enables users to:
- Find text that follows a specific pattern (e.g., versions starting with
"RC", projects with a numeric suffix, components containing"API", etc.). - Perform fuzzy searches without needing exact matches.
- Improve search efficiency by grouping multiple values into a single pattern instead of listing each one manually.
Examples
| Regex pattern | Meaning | Use case |
|---|---|---|
^ABC.* | Starts with "ABC" | Find versions, components, or project names that begin with"ABC" (e.g.,"ABC-1", "ABC-Release"). |
.*Beta$ | Ends with"Beta" | Match any version that ends in "Beta" (e.g.,"1.0-Beta", "2.3.5-Beta"). |
\d+ | One or more digits | Find versions or issues containing numbers (e.g., "V1", "V123"). |
release-\d{4} | "release-" followed by 4 digits | Match project names or versions with a year-based naming scheme (e.g.,"release-2023"). |
`QA | Testing` | Matches"QA" OR "Testing" |
.*API.* | Contains"API" anywhere | Find components related to APIs (e.g. "Backend-API", "UserAPI", "Public-API-v2"). |
Recursive
This applies to the linkedIssuesOfRecursive and linkedIssuesOfRecursiveLimited functions
Definition
Recursive refers to the ability to traverse multiple levels of issue links, not just direct relationships but also indirect or nested dependencies.
A recursive function is one that calls itself repeatedly until a certain condition is met. For example, for linkedIssuesofRecursive:
- Starts with an initial issue or set of issues (from the subquery).
- Finds all directly linked issues.
- Then, for each of those linked issues, finds their linked issues.
- Continues this process until no more new linked issues are found.
For example, for issueFunction in linkedIssuesOfRecursive("epic = EPIC-123")
This query recursively finds:
- All tasks linked to EPIC-123.
- Then, all tasks linked to those tasks.
- Then, all tasks linked to those tasks, and so on...
- It stops when there are no more linked issues to process.
Recursive vs. non-recursive example
Non-recursive: issueFunction in linkedIssues("epic = EPIC-123")
Finds only direct links to
EPIC-123.
Recursive query: issueFunction in linkedIssuesOfRecursive("epic = EPIC-123")
Finds direct AND indirect dependencies, even tasks linked through multiple levels.
Rate limiting
The Enhanced Search JQL Keyword Sync process uses Atlassian APIs to retrieve and update issue data. This can be an API intensive process, requiring many requests both to get individual issue data and to update it with metadata.
Atlassian limits the rate of REST API requests to ensure that services are reliable and responsive for all customers. You can find more information about Atlassian's rate limiting approach and guidance here. We have designed our services to handle API usage with Atlassian's rate-limiting guidance in mind.
Search API
In addition to the main features of Enhanced Search for Jira Cloud, some features also run in the background. The only way to search and retrieve data without access to the underlying databases is by using the Search API.
Enhanced Search works by making simple queries to available APIs, and processing the results in various ways (using pattern matching, comparing, aggregation, etc).
For example:
assignee = currentUser() AND issueFunction in dateCompare("project = DEMO", "created +1w < firstCommented") AND status = "In progress"This contains a nested query. As you can see, the dateCompare function in the middle of the expression is not natively supported by Jira Cloud. The query is parsed, and the dateCompare subquery is processed first. A standard search is made using the subquery "project = DEMO", then a comparison expression is applied to the results. Finally, a search is made on Jira Cloud with the structure:
assignee = currentUser() AND issue in ("10012", "10013", "10055") AND status = "In progress"As seen above, the dateCompare query has been replaced by another query: issue in (..). It contains issue ids/keys that were evaluated from the subquery.