Understanding field searchers

For any information system, capturing data is only half of the equation. Users will need to be able to retrieve the data at a later stage, usually through searching, and Jira is no different. While fields in Jira are responsible for capturing and displaying data, it is their corresponding searchers that provide the search functionality.

A custom field searcher determines how the data stored by the field will be indexed, and this will have an impact on how you can search its data. For example, a text custom field will index its data as raw text so you can run a fuzzy search such as the text starting with a particular character. A select list custom field, on the other hand, will index its data differently, so you can run searches against a particular option value or a list of option values. If a field does not have a searcher applied, then its data will not be indexed, and you will not be able to search its data.

All fields that come with Jira have...