Targeted Searching
Summary
The targeted searching feature, introduced in version 3.2.7, allows user to search additional last comment data types besides the content. Users may now use Jira's advanced search to search for issues whose last comments were made by a particular author (user), group, project role, or created date. The link for advanced search is found in the issue navigator page next to all the filters.
The targeted search will only return results from the last comment added to an issue.
Any of the targeted search functions can be used one-time in JIRA advanced search or they can be used in any filter to return Last Comment results in customized reports.
Prerequisites
JIRA 6.3+
Last Comment Custom Field Plugin version 3.2.7+
NOTE: If you are not getting any results from the last comment search functions (when you know you should) you might be running into a new search limitation we had to introduce in version 4.0.41. We cap the max results the last comment search functions will bring back at 20K issues for node stability reasons. To get your search working add a list of project keys as an additional parameter to reduce the number of index ‘hits’ the search function finds.
Table of Contents
Activating Targeted Searching
The JQL functions require the Last Comment field to use the Last Comment Searcher as its Search Template.
Create a custom field of type CCC Last Comment(if it doesn't already exist) or Edit your Last Comment custom field.
Edit the searcher for the custom field; choose Last Comment Searcher. (Edit the custom field searcher if there's already a Last Comment Custom Field Type)
Re-Index Jira (required)
Once indexing completes you are ready to use the new advanced JQL functions to do targeted Last Comment searching.
Examples of Searching
With the exception of the basic comment content search, the following examples are limited to Jira's advanced search and have no basic search equivalent.
Basic Comment Content Searching
JQL Example Search
"<last comment field name>"~athleteWhere: | <last comment field name> is the name of the Last Comment Custom Field |
Returns: | only issues whose last comment contained the word 'athlete' |
Supported JQL Operators: ~
Last Commented Author (username) Search
lastCommentAuthor( “username” ) and lastCommentAuthor( “<username>”, “PROJECT KEY LIST”)
Supported Fields: | |
Where: | username - this can be the email, the username, or the first and last name of a user PROJECT KEY LIST - an optional list of project keys separated by a space. Use this form if your lastCommentAuthor query refuses to return results that you know exist |
Returns: | only issues whose last comment was made by the targeted user |
Examples
Find issues whose last comment was made by user jsmith. The following examples are equivalent searches since id, key, and issue are aliases of issuekey.
issue in lastCommentAuthor("jsmith")Find issues whose last comment was made by user jsmith by looking only in project’s ABC and DEF.
issue in lastCommentAuthor("jsmith")Find issues whose last comment was made by users who have "john" or "smith" in their display name. This search is not an exact string search. In this example, both "john" and "smith" are separate search terms. Please see next example for a more accurate search for "John Smith".
issue in lastCommentAuthor("john smith")Find issues whose last comment was made by users who have "john" and "smith" in their display name.(i.e. someone named John Smith). The following examples are equivalent. Notice how the search string is encompassed by escaped quotation marks in the first example to indicate it is a single search term.
issue in lastCommentAuthor("\"john smith\"")OR
issue in lastCommentAuthor("john") and issue in lastCommentAuthor("smith")Find issues whose last comment was made by users whose username or display name start with "john". In this example, the * character acts as a wild card.
issue in lastCommentAuthor("john*")
Last Commented Group Search
lastCommentGroup( groupName )
Supported Fields: | |
Where: | groupName - the name of a JIRA security group PROJECT KEY LIST - an optional list of project keys separated by a space. Use this form if your lastCommentAuthor query refuses to return results that you know exist |
Returns: | only issues whose last comment was made by a user in a particular group |
Examples
Find issues whose last comment was by users in the "customer" group. The following examples are equivalent to each other.
issue in lastCommentGroup("customer")
Last Commented Role Search
lastCommentRole( projectRole )
Supported Fields: | |
Where: | projectRole - The name of a project role. PROJECT KEY LIST - an optional list of project keys separated by a space. Use this form if your lastCommentAuthor query refuses to return results that you know exist |
Returns: | only issues whose last comment was made by a user in a particular role |
Examples
Finds issues whose last comment was by users in the "developers" role for a project. The following examples are equivalent to each other.
issue in lastCommentRole("developers")
Last Commented Created Date Range Search
lastCommentCreateDate( fromDate[, toDate] )
Supported Fields: | |
Where: | fromDate - the date to start searching from. toDate(optional) - the date to stop searching. If this parameter is skipped, the current date will be used. This function accepts the following date formats to hard-code the range:
This function also accepts a date relative to the current date.
Any of the date search functions can be used one-time in JIRA Advanced Search but can be used in any filter to return Last Comment results in customized reports. PROJECT KEY LIST - an optional list of project keys separated by a space. Use this form if your lastCommentAuthor query refuses to return results that you know exist |
Returns: | Returns issues whose last commented create date falls after the provided date (1 argument) or between two dates (2 arguments) (inclusive). |
Examples
Find issues whose last comment was created thus far in 2014. The following two date format examples are equivalent to each other.
issue in lastCommentCreateDate("2014-01-01")OR
issue in lastCommentCreateDate("2014/01/01")Find issues whose last comment was created a week ago to the current date.
issue in lastCommentCreateDate("-1w")Find issues that have been commented on since yesterday.
issue in lastCommentCreateDate("-1d")Find issues whose last comment was created on or after February 1, 2026 - and only look in projects ABC and DEF
issue in lastCommentCreateDate("2014-01-15", "ABC DEF")Find issues whose last comment was created between February 15, 2014 and July 04, 2014 inclusive - but only look in projects ABC and DEF
issue in lastCommentCreateDate("2014-02-15","2014-07-04", "ABC DEF")Find issues whose last comment was created between the beginning of 2013 up until 2 weeks ago.
issue in lastCommentCreateDate("2013/01/01","-2w")
Advanced Search Queries
The following examples show how our targeted search functions can work with other JQL statements.
Examples
Find issues in a particular project whose last comment is in a project with the with a key of TEST and whose author is in the "customer" group and also in the "developers" role.
project = TEST and issue in lastCommentGroup("customer") and issue in lastCommentRole("developers")Find issues whose last comment custom field named "Final Comment" contains the words "business" and "strategies" and whose author is in either the "managers" group or the "marketing" group.
"Final Comment" ~ "business strategies" and (issue in lastCommentGroup("managers") OR issue in lastCommentGroup("marketing"))Find issues whose last comment is from an author who is in the "managers" group and the "marketing" group.
issue in lastCommentGroup("managers") and issue in lastCommentGroup("marketing")Find issues whose last comment was created anytime from two weeks ago to yesterday and has an author who is in the "prjmgr" group
This is a relative or floating date (rather then hard-coded) which means that if used in filters in the future it will always give the results relative to the day the filter was run.
A typical last comment search is a report on all issues with comments created by project managers (prjmgr group) for the last two weeks. The last comment search string below used in a saved filter would give management a good idea on the status of all issues worked on by the project managers over the last two weeks. This is invaluable for doing quick status reports.
NOTE: We are also adding a project filter to both of the last comment functions to be sure we don’t hit the 20k hit limit to searchesissue in lastCommentGroup("prjmgr","ABC DEF") and issue in lastCommentCreateDate("-2w","-1d","ABC DEF")