How to perform JQL search from Backlog using JIRA

[Andy]

How do you write a JQL query to look for people who are currently working for the company and people who are NOT currently working for the company for a given sprint?

Here is an update. I would like to add the following to this thread:

Here is some more information on my specific issue. I have redacted some names out because they are real people:

project = APFM AND issuetype in (Epic, Story, Task, Bug, Improvement, "New Feature")
AND sprint is EMPTY AND reporter IN(m.cole, a.marston) AND resolution = Unresolved and status != Closed AND sprint = "Sprint 2018.12" ORDER BY createdDate

I am lacking here 2 names of employees who no longer work for the company. I assume I can put their names in anyways? I can do it like this: ...reporter IN(a,b,c,d) correct?

Also for some reason a.marston is not showing up in any data returned but should be. Can anyone help me figure out why I get no results returned in this JQL query?

Thank you in advance,

Andrew

[Andy Heinzer]

You can still search for issues in Jira when the users are inactive.  However there is a design limitation is current versions of Jira, where the JQL autocomplete for a username will not work for inactive users.   Details on this in https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRASERVER-59274

What this means is that for active users, you can start typing a user's name and Jira can help you find the correct value much more easily.  But for inactive users, you have to get the username exactly right yourself without the help of this autocomplete.

I would recommend trying to go into Jira's user management page and find this inactive user account first in order to make sure you are using the exact username Jira has for this account.

You are correct that using the syntax

reporter in(a,b,c)

will return issues reported by any of the 3 users.  However from looking more closely at your JQL, I can see something that will prevent you returning any issues at all as well.   In your JQL you have the terms

sprint is EMPTY

AND

sprint = "Sprint 2018.12"

and these two statements are connected by AND statements.  No issues can have an empty sprint field AND belong to that specific sprint at the same time.  Hence you will never get any returned issues with that specific JQL query.