Folders were among many new features introduced in Structure 3.0, and now they're S-JQL friendly.

What are Folders?

Folders are a special type of Structure item that let you separate, contain and group JIRA issues^* in structures.

They display aggregate data (progress, time, story points, etc.) in exactly the same way JIRA issues do, but they're not JIRA issues and they won't appear anywhere in your backlogs and reports.

Their contents, however, can be accessed using S-JQL (Structured JQL) queries.

Dazzle your team with the magic of folders and S-JQL

What is S-JQL?

In a nutshell, S-JQL lets you search for issues within a specified structure and constrain results based on the position of issues in the structure hierarchy.

It's a powerful tool that lets you do things like finding Stories with no sub-tasks, open issues that are blocking critical tasks, and much more. Have a read of the S-JQL cookbook for some handy real-life examples.

From Structure 3.3 onwards, S-JQL can search within specified folders in a structure.

What can I do with Folders and S-JQL?

Folders can contain issues added both manually and with Automation. They can embody team backlogs, initiatives, releases and other 'things' associated with collections of issues.

S-JQL lets you retrieve their contents anywhere that JQL is accepted, so for example you can define your teams' backlogs using folders in Structure and retrieve them in Agile boards using S-JQL.

Stay tuned for more details on these examples, and in the meantime feel free to play with folders in our public Structure demo where nobody will ever get mad at you for breaking things.

^*For automatically grouping JIRA issues by field, see the Automation Group feature.