A way to flag a custom field when an issue has been returned to the backlog?

[Paul Ashkar]

Hi,

I'm writing a VBA script to read a JIRA export of a current sprint. The report totals points in each of custom status column (to do, testing, done etc). It also works out original amount of stories in sprint, newly added stories to sprint and stories that have been returned to backlog.

Stories that are in backlog usually have a sprint field that is empty. And a quick filter "sprint Is Empty" can return all issues that are in backlog... well so I thought.

The Problem: 
When a story has previously been in a sprint and then returned to backlog - the sprint field still points to any previous sprints it has been apart of, even if its now returned to backlog. This seems to be default JIRA behavior and a bit of a nightmare when i issue search by sprint, as it will return both issues that are currently in sprint and issues that were previously in the Sprint. 

Note this problem also exists for viewing Sprint via Sprint Report, issue shows up in Sprint Report even though it has been returned to backlog

Is there anyway for me to flag a custom field when issues have been returned to backlog? So that I can use the field to more accurately filter issues in sprint? Or find an automated way to removed Sprint field data from stories returned to backlog?

Kind regards,

[Hung Nguyen]

Isn't backlog depending on certain Statuses ? When an issue is returned to Baclog, it actually got the statuses defined by Backlog column. Can't you rely on these Statuses to know that an issue is still in Backlog?