How can I create a JQL search to check all issues that have changed their start date?

[David McMahon]

I am trying to create a filter in JQL to track down every issue where the custom field "Start Date" has been changed after it was moved into the "Review" stage of the workflow.

I am having trouble working out what to apply after

AND "Start date"

That checks for any changes in the "Start date" field.

[Yuliia_Borivets__SaaSJet_]

Hi @David McMahon 

As an alternative, you can get the report as below with Issue History for Jira. It helps to see updates for any specific field within the scope of issues without JQL. 

The app is developed by my team. It's free for teams of up to 10 users, and there is a free trial. Available for Cloud and Data Center.

[Stephen.Lugton]

@David McMahon with standard JQL this is not possible, unless nothing else has changed since Start Date was updated, in which case you could use 'updated' to search against, but this can't be relied on.

This is because JQL looks at the current state of any field and not previous states or when a field changed state, although there are a couple of exception for the following fields:

• Assignee
• Fix Version
• Priority
• Reporter
• Resolution
• Status

For these fields only you can use Was, Was In, Was Not In, Was Not and Changed e.g.:

• status WAS NOT "In Progress" BEFORE "2011/02/02"
• status CHANGED FROM "In Progress" TO "Open"

Even using automations with Smart Values won't let you get past this limitation.

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However, there may be apps that track when fields change, but if one exists it will only work for changes made after it was installed.

[David McMahon]

Thank you for the explanation. I suppose I'll have to try something more manual like adding labels whenever a date is changed.

Appreciate your help Stephen

[Stephen.Lugton]

@David McMahon if you don't mind adding a label like that then you could set up automation along the lines of:

But note that this will only add labels for start date changes after you implement the automation

[Matt Parks]

You could create an Automation rule that populates a field whenever the Start date field is updated.

If all you care about is whether the Start date field changed, the new custom field can just be a text field where the Automation populates a value of Yes (or whatever you want) and you can then query on all issues that have Yes in the value of the custom field.

If you care about when the Start date was changed, the new custom field can be a date (or date/time) field and the Automation rule will populate it with the {{now}} smart value, which will allow you to query all issues where the Start date was changed before/after/during a particular timeframe.

[Amay Purohit_RVS]

Hi @David McMahon 

Welcome to the community !!

If you would be interested to try out our add-on for better reporting capabilities and viewing multiple issues history at once, take a look at  

Issue History Reports

You can view the complete change log for your filtered issues, including custom fields, in a simple and effective way. Also the app will pull up all the historical changes as well.

Example below shows the changes to the due date.

Disclaimer : I am part of the team which developed this app