Search Criteria for Work Items

Tips for Searching for Work Items

Use the following tips to help you find work items:

• Searching by ID

  Search by the ID and prefix or just by the ID's numeric portion. For example, if you are searching for DEF00115, you can type DEF00115, 00115, or 115 to return this item. Leading zeros are automatically prepended to your numeric search criteria.

  In addition:

  • When searching by ID, you can use wildcards anywhere in the search string (beginning, middle, or end). Keyword searches do not allow you to use wildcards at the beginning of the search string.
  • You must use a wildcard to search using a partial Item ID, unless you are only leaving out leading zeros. For example, to search for NET000057, you could enter 57, but not just 7.

    To find all the issues where the numeric portion of the ID is at least 100 (and assuming the item ID is 6 digits long), you could enter BUG0001*.

  • Searching by whole Item ID may return extra results if the prefix contains characters that are recognized as delimiters. These characters include (but are not limited to): _, -, ?, {, }, +, *. This means that if the Item ID prefix is DEF-, a search for DEF-000001 would separate into a search for DEF and 0000001. This includes using a wildcard character in mid-search string like DEF*123.
  • Searching with a partial match in the rightmost digits in the Item ID will not provide results. For example, if the following Item IDs exist:

    DEF100123
    DEF110123
    DEF120123

    A search using 123 will not return any of these issues; it will only find DEF000123 (assuming it is present). This is because the searchable token for 123 does not resolve to these work items. The searchable tokens for the three items listed above are: 100123, 110123, and 120123.

    You could use wildcards in the search query like *123 or DEF*123 to find all three of those items.

• Searching by Keyword
  Search for work items by single words or phrases. Values in most field types can be searched. For example:

  • Include a user name in a search to find items the user submitted, owned, updated, or is referenced in any field.
  • Include a project name along with other search criteria if you know which project contains the work item you need.
  • Include a state name along with other search criteria if you know which state an item resides in. Note, however, that a large number of results may be returned if common words, such as New and Assigned, are used for state names.
  To maximize your search:

  • Use an asterisk (*) at the end of the search criteria as a wildcard character. For example, upgrad* returns results for upgrade, upgrades, upgrading, etc. No results are found if you prepend the asterisk (as in *pgrade).
  • Use a question mark (?) in the middle or at the end of a word to replace a single character. For example, pro?ect returns results for project and protect. You can also use more than one question mark to replace multiple characters (as in p??ject or p?o?ect).
  • If the search contains any of the following common words, they are ignored by the search engine: "a", "an", "and", "are", "as", "at", "be", "but", "by", "for", "if", "in", "into", "is", "it", "no", "not", "of", "on", "or", "such", "that", "the", "their", "then", "there", "these", "they", "this", "to", "was", "will", "with". Note that when "and" "or" and "not" are capitalized (AND, OR, NOT), they are treated as operators and not common words in the search criteria.
  • Use quotation marks to search for phrases and limit your results.
    • Terms that are inside the quotes are treated as though an AND is used. Terms that are outside the quotes are treated as though an OR is used. For example, if the phrase is:
      • "SocketException connection refused" — Any matches must contain "SocketException", "connection", and “refused”
      • SocketException connection refused — Any matches must contain "SocketException" or "connection" or "refused", but not necessarily all three terms
    • You can also use the available facets to narrow the results. This enables you to potentially filter the results by active/inactive status, project, application, etc.
    • In the search results, higher relevance is given to phrases that have fewer occurrences of common words between key terms in the search phrase. The relevance score also applies to the order of terms; phrases with ordering that closely matches your search phrase are given higher relevance.
    • Key terms (words that are not ignored) must be in close proximity (within 10 words) to one another in an item. For example, in a search that contains a phrase like “label in transition form”:
      • Any matches must contain the terms “label”, “transition”, and “form”
      • The terms “label”, “transition”, and “form” must be in close proximity (within 10 words) to one another in an item
  • If your search contains a hyphen or underscore, the search engine treats these characters as whitespace. This enables the search engine to return results for “wifi” whether you specify wi-fi, Wi-Fi, Wi–Fi, or WIFI.  If you want results that contain “wi-fi enabled” and “wi-fi ready” you could append a wildcard character wi-fi* to return both terms. 

  You can also create search expressions. The following characters are used by the search engine as functional operators: '*' , '?' , '(' , ')', '"'. Note the following to avoid errors when using these operators:

  • You cannot use a wildcard character such as '*' or '?' as first character in the search phrase.
  • Parenthesis are used for building complex search conditions unless they are wrapped in double quotes, in which case they are treated as part of the search string: e.g. Found the following "issue(".
  • Double quotes are used for exact searches. To avoid lexical errors, you must wrap the portion of a search phrase that contains special characters in double quotes. For example:
    • "2 * 2" = 4
    • Found the following "issue("

    However, you cannot wrap double quotes around an open quotation mark (as in the search phrase "quotes"inside"). Parsing fails in this scenario because the open quotes cannot be escaped.

  Your search criteria can contain any combination of Item IDs, user names, and keywords. Use quotation marks, parentheses, and operators (AND, OR, NOT) to maximize your search. For example:

  • Darren AND "Log File" may find items that reference Darren and that contain the phrase "log file."
  • "Darren Jones" AND "Log File" returns results are limited to fewer Darrens in the system.
  • (Darren OR Laura) AND Release Project may find items that reference Darren or Laura in the Release Project.
  • Search for "Connection refused" AND SocketException may find items that contain the phrase Connection refused and the word SocketException.
  • (Laura OR Darren) AND "connection refused" may find items that reference Laura or Darren and contain the phrase "connection refused."
  • (Laura NOT Darren) AND "connection refused" may find items that reference Laura, but not Darren, and contain the phrase "connection refused."

  Note: AND and OR operators must be capitalized. If these words are not capitalized, they are treated as common words. In addition, NOT cannot be used with a single search term, such as NOT Darren.
• Search Using a Regular Expression

  You can search for work items using a regular expression, which is a text string that you provide to identify a matching pattern. In order to use the RegEx search option, the Enable regular expression search option must be selected in your user profile (under Settings | Search).

  Restrictions:

  • Regular expressions cannot be used with operators (AND, OR, NOT)
  • Regular expressions are always case sensitive
  • Search using a regular expression affects all searchable item fields, but does not search in attachments and File fields to prevent performance issues
  • Regular expressions that contain search phrases with a whitespace are not allowed

  For a list of supported operators, see Regular Expression Operators.

• Searching in My Project Items

  In My Project Items, you can select specific projects and sub-projects to search in before performing a search. Your project selections are saved in the browser's local storage.

  Note that sub-projects are only included in the search if you explicitly added them. To quickly add sub-projects, select the checkmark for a parent project.

  

  My Project Items selections are application-context sensitive. This means project selections under one application will not appear in another. However, the project selections that you make in each application will appear in My Project Items when you are working in the All application context.

  If you select All Items and perform a search, the search is performed automatically each time you change application contexts. If you select My Project Items, the project selection list is displayed for you to make changes (if necessary) and you must click the search icon to perform the search.