Searching for Parent showing lots of extra results

[Karen Gwynn]

I had seen a post in the past couple of months related to this issue, but I'd like to bring it up again, as it is really annoying.

when I want to add a parent story to user story/defect, if I put in the exact user story number and whether I press return or not, a lot of stories come up and the exact one I am looking for is not at the top.This is really annoying and time consuming since I need to scroll down through a list to find exactly what I want.

I can understand that if I put in something vague, trying to search by name, that I would get a lot of hits. But if I put in the exact user story number, I should only see that user story in the search results. Not every other story related to the one I'm looking for. 

This is happening on the User Story Details page when I click the + on the Parent field. BTW, this is a recent "enhancement." Previously putting in the exact user story number resulted in only that story being displayed.

BTW, we also use parent stories to group together defects. These stories are all called Parent story for ... defects. I used to be able to search "Parent story for" and only see those stories with the name I'm looking for. Now, once again, I get user stories that are related to these stories. It is, in sum, a hot mess and I'd really like the search returned to the way it use to be.

thanks!

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Karen Gwynn
--just trying to get by
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[Nik Antonelli]

Hi Karen,

Unfortunately, I cannot reproduce what you are seeing. If I type an unformatted ID number (e.g. 34) into the search, I get all those stories that have 34 as an ID number or have 34 in their title ( i.e. I get F34 and US34 and a story entitled "Work on defect DE34", also US341, US342,etc.). If I put in US34, I only get stories that have a FormattedID that starts with US34 ( e.g. I get US34, US341, US342, etc.). When you have thousands of stories, then I have to admit the list can be long if I only put a two digit search pattern in.

Can you send me a screen shot of the search not giving you what you would expect?

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Nik
Ask me a question, I'm All Ears!
Rally Sales Engineer
Rally Software
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[Mitch Goldman]

Let me see if I understand this right.  In the top-right search box, if you type US1, you get:
US1, US10, US11,.....US100,US101, ...etc.....?

When you search "Parent story for blah blah blah" are you putting that phrase in double quotes?

[Nik Antonelli]

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Nik
Ask me a question, I'm All Ears!
Rally Sales Engineer
Rally Software
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[Karen Gwynn]

Hey Mitch,

no. What is happening is this: I want to select US4665 as the parent for the story I am editing (viewing in User Story Details). When I enter US4665, in Choose a Parent, instead of the search returning only US4665, I get 37 user stories. All of which are children of US4665. In this list, US4665 is 32nd in the list.

This is relatively new behavior and only happens when I'm searching for a user story. If I search for a feature, and enter F45, only F45 displays. Not F4, not F450.

As for the issue with the parent stories for defects, if I'm adding a new defect and I want to add it to the correct parent story, but I don't know the number, I use to be able to type "parent story for" (without the quotes) and the list would filter to only stories with the name "parent story for ..." . If I entered "Parent story for data system" I get all the stories that start "parent story for data system" (Parent story for data system import defects; Parent system for data system integration defects; etc.)

My main frustration in all this is that the behavior has changed and, IMHO, not for the better.

[Mitch Goldman]

I see.  You are right and the problem is exacerbated by a larger set of data.  Even the double quotes is ignored in the search, as seen in this example.

Depending on if and how you have work broken down into projects, and if you happen to know where the work your searching for resides, then the project drop-down might help you there. The list does load in descending order by ID#.  Clicking the column header to reverse that order might help in some instances too. But again, the larger the dataset, the less likely that is to help.

[Nik Antonelli]

I did just notice this though:

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Nik
Ask me a question, I'm All Ears!
Rally Sales Engineer
Rally Software
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[Karen Gwynn]

So, it all depends on where you are doing the search as to the results. Nik, the examples you are showing are not from the view I'm using when this occurs. the issue is when I'm on a User Story Detail page, not a Dashboard.

Also, I just noticed that this issue is not occurring when selecting a parent story from the Test Case Detail page. There, the search works as expected. When I enter US4665, that's the only story returned in the search.

Don't know if that helps any, but its all I got right now.

[Nik Antonelli]

Hi Karen,

If you look at the images again, you should see that I am doing this from the Quick Details Page, not the Dashboard - the small arrow beneath the "Choose A Parent"  panel is the giveaway. The User Story Details page should be using the same underlying technology as in my examples. However, to be sure, I will check that out tomorrow.

Can you check whether there are entries in the Description field that mention the same story ID?

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Nik
Ask me a question, I'm All Ears!
Rally Sales Engineer
Rally Software
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[Karen Gwynn]

OMG, I just now realized what you mean: You asked if the user story was referenced in the Description. When I first saw that I thought you mean the Name. Dang, if this isn't a weird case where the user story is, in fact referenced in the Description of these other user stories.

so, egg on my face! Thanks for all your help.

[Mitch Goldman]

@Karen Gwynn, you can limit that search box by prefixing the user story id# with ID:

For example, in my workspace if I enter US7933 in the search, it returns US7933 and another user story in which someone typed US7933 in the body of the story.  But if I search on "ID:US7933" (no quotes), then the tool returns only US7933.  Give that a shot. ​​

[Nik Antonelli]

Hi Mitch, that was a good tip. I also reduced it to just 'D:US118' and that only found the one story. I have no idea how the search actually works because you can put in "mickeymouse:US118" and it still finds just the one.

It seems to boil down to "aTextString" + ":" + FormattedID

Weird, huh?

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Nik
Ask me a question, I'm All Ears!
Rally Sales Engineer
Rally Software
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[Karen Gwynn]

thanks for the tip Mitch. I just tried it. the still came up with multiple results, but the story I was looking for was at the top. 

thanks again for everyone's help.

[Mitch Goldman]

@Nik Antonelli

Oddly enough just D doesn't work for me. With that I get multiple results. I actually get multiple results with many single letters, except for Q and Y, which both return just a single result.  Using the letter U returns every user story in our collection.  No idea why any of this works like this. I can't imagine it's anything but an untested bug in the code. But yes, mickeymouse works. So, we have that going for us!​