GitHub Issues: Dashboard updates 🚀

[rileybroughten]

🌐 New and improved Issues dashboard

You'll now see an updated Issues dashboard page at github.com/issues, allowing you to easily find and create issues across repositories and organizations. This page can be accessed through the global navigation menu under Issues.

These improvements include:

• A new filter bar with autocomplete and syntax highlighting to make building searches fast and easy.
• The ability to perform advanced searches using AND and OR keywords as well as nested searches. For example, (org:github AND type:bug) OR (org:dizzbot AND has:sub-issue) allows you to find issues across multiple organizations. Note that a space between filter fields acts as an AND search.
• The ability to create issues directly from this page by selecting New issue and choosing a repository.
• A new Recent activity view in addition to the Created by me, Assigned to me, and Mentioned views. This view finds relevant issues that involve you.

Tell us what you think in the comments! 👇

[cremor]

Seems like the default was changed to "Assigned to me". Previously it was "Created by me". I'd like to have this changed back, but I assume neither default is good for everyone. How about using the new "Recent activity" as default?

[martincostello]

➕ - I like the design change, but I'm more interested in things I make compared to things I'm assigned

[rileybroughten]

Thank you for this feedback! We will keep you posted with updates on the default view 👍

[rileybroughten]

This isn't possible currently, but I will keep you posted with any plans or updates!

[Euan-McVie]

Pros:

• Overall like the idea and do feel the side bar is a little more friendly than the tabs were, especially as vertical space is more constrained for me than horizontal.

Cons:

• I frequently used to jump straight to recently closed issues created by me to retrieve the link to pass to others, but this now requires me to switch from mouse to keyboard to alter the filter.
• When opening the issue there is no reference to the the repo on screen and also no direct links to it. It is mildly annoying as now have to click on the [ ] view issue link to re-open the issue in the repo to find it all. Maybe just adding the repo name (as a clickable link) directly under the issue title?

[rileybroughten]

I frequently used to jump straight to recently closed issues created by me to retrieve the link to pass to others, but this now requires me to switch from mouse to keyboard to alter the filter.

Thank you for this feedback. We're discussing ways we can make it easier to change and save views 😁

When opening the issue there is no reference to the the repo on screen and also no direct links to it. It is mildly annoying as now have to click on the [ ] view issue link to re-open the issue in the repo to find it all. Maybe just adding the repo name (as a clickable link) directly under the issue title?

We're working on this currently!

[rileybroughten]

You can now see the repository and visibility!

[usernamehw]

1. Any way to configure the default (assigned/created/mentioned/activity) or the input value itself is:issue state:open archived:false assignee:@me sort:updated-desc?
2. Switching between closed/open is easier with a button (compared to the input)

[rileybroughten]

Noted on this feedback and I've passed it along to the team, thank you!

[usernamehw]

When both states specified open+closed - there's no error/warning:

is:issue state:open archived:false assignee:@me sort:updated-desc state:closed 

[rileybroughten]

Thanks for this feedback, I'll note it on our side to make this invalid filter more clear, given this filter will always return 0 results

[rcomer]

Minor point, but the way the titles remain on the views seems off. For example, if I click on "Created By Me" and then in the search box change author:@me to involves:<someone-else>, the title right above this list still says "Created By Me".

If I then remove "created" from the url, I see I still get the search and the title is just "Issues", which seems more sensible. It does not seem to be possible to navigate to a fresh issue search box without one of the new specific view titles though.

[akselinurmio]

I would like the issue view to open on its own page, without the issue list being left under a gray overlay on the left. Issue list is a listing with links, I would prefer the links to really be links and not just open an overlay.

[rcomer]

• The ability to create issues directly from this page by selecting New issue and choosing a repository.

I'm not sure this is a good idea. At least for open source repos, before creating an issue you should search the existing issues to check whether the thing has already been reported. I don't see an obvious way to do that from this dashboard.

[pixelzoom]

The dashboard seems to have broken the URLs that I've bookmarked for various searches. For example, the URL below formerly selected issues across 5 repositories that are part of a product "suite", but now returns "No results".

https://github.com/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+repo%3Aphetsims%2Ffaradays-electromagnetic-lab+repo%3Aphetsims%2Fgenerator+repo%3Aphetsims%2Fmagnet-and-compass+repo%3Aphetsims%2Fmagnets-and-electromagnets

Was this intentionally changed? How are more complex searches specified from the dashboard?

[pixelzoom]

It looks like I need to add the (new?) OR keyword to search across multiple URLs. For example:

is:open is:issue (repo:phetsims/ph-scale OR repo:phetsims/ph-scale-basics)

https://github.com/issues?q=is%3Aopen%20is%3Aissue%20(repo%3Aphetsims%2Fph-scale%20OR%20repo%3Aphetsims%2Fph-scale-basics)

Guess I'll be spending some time fixing my bookmarked URLs. This feels like a breaking change that should be announced.

It would also be nice to have a way to opt out of this dashboard for those of us who aren't focused on the workflow supported by the sidebar. Or better yet, provide a way to add views to the sidebar!

[TimMnz09]

I would also be nice to have the option to manage our own filters, like we can already do in the notifications view.

[ntap-bmegan]

We used to be able to include is:public to limit results to issues in the organization's public repos (there are a mixture of repo visibilities in the organization) but this stopped working after the dashboard was updated.

[rileybroughten]

We are working to add support for filtering by a repository's visibility and will keep you updated when this is out 👍

[rileybroughten]

@ntap-bmegan you should now see the is:public/private suggestions! Let me know if you have any issues

[ntap-bmegan]

Thanks!

Out of curiosity is there any chance that repo topics will ever be added? They weren't there before, it's just that they would be very helpful working with a large organization.

[rileybroughten]

We do not have plans to support repository topics, but I've logged this feedback on our side and will keep you posted with any updates 👍

[nekto-kotik]

Hi!
Issues could be reorganized in Milestone view, there was a drag-and-drop thingy for that, which isn't there anymore (when clicking Issues > Milestones > click on a Milestone; not when just filtering Issues by a Milestone).
(It was essentially the same as a drag-and-drop priority of the new sub-issues.)

Is this Issue ordering in Milestone feature removed forever now?

I've been using this sorting in Milestones to set Issues' priorities and now I almost cannot use Issues at all.

[labudis]

Hi @nekto-kotik, this feature has been removed but due to popular demand we are bringing it back in the next few weeks! https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/148713?sort=new#discussioncomment-12724220

[nekto-kotik]

Thanks, great!

[rileybroughten]

We're working on bringing saved views to the GitHub Issues dashboard at github.com/issues, allowing you to build and save queries so you can quickly find and access your important work ✨

If you'd like to try this out and provide feedback, I'll just need your username so leave a comment in this thread!

[rileybroughten]

You've both been added! Let me know your thoughts and feedback!

[ntap-bmegan]

This is going to save me so much time!

Two minor suggestions, one of which is general to the new page rather than just the saved view function, and an enhancement request.

• The type-ahead in the query field is pretty good but sometimes it doesn't show what I'm looking for.

  For example, I know that if I type owner:<organization-name> I can limit the query to one of the organizations I work in. But I don't remember where I found that and typing owner doesn't show any hint that it's working, like typing some of the other criteria will. So while I know about owner there could be others that would be useful that I don't know about.

  There's no obvious help link for the query field on the page, and either treating all supported criteria identically in the field or adding a link to the relevant docs would be helpful.

• On the saved queries, it wasn't obvious to me that I could change the icon.

  I happened to have this discussion open and noticed in your screenshot that you had different colored icons. Once I moved my cursor, I did see the tool tip and was able to update the icons, which helps differentiate views with similar names if I don't want to make that column wider.

• It would really help if we could get discussions in here as well. (Also in projects.) I know that this is a reach, but I figured it was worth mentioning.

  I'm an owner on two very active organizations and we use discussions as a precursor to issues.

  I personally use the notifications page rather than email notifications. That page is the first tab I open each day and I check it at least 20 times a day. When I stumbled on the updated issues page, I bookmarked involves:@me updated:@today sort:updated-desc so that I could find items that I created or commented on during the day, which notifications won't show. It's now open in a tab all the time as well. But of course, it doesn't show discussions.

[TimMnz09]

I totally agree with @ntap-bmegan, this will be such a great enhancement when working with issues and pull-requests!
Two more ideas from my site:

1. Make list of views sortable
   currently the list of views on the left is sorted by creation timestamp (at least i guess). It would be great to create my own sort by using drag&drop. If this is too much effort, maybe you can update the default sorting to a more useful one. like alphanumeric order, or sorting by icon + color.
2. Introduce filtering by topics
   Currently it is not possible to filter issues by using the topic of a repo. We have hundreds of repos in our organizations and use topics to organize those. It would be really helpful, if we can have the option to also filter by it.

[rileybroughten]

Thank you both for this feedback! I will keep you posted on any updates and improvements as we gather early feedback 👍

[ntap-bmegan]

Another thought - I wish I could edit, hide (collapsible section?), or delete the default ones, which I personally don't use. For instance, the built-in query for Recent activity is:

is:issue involves:@me updated:>@today-1w sort:updated-desc

But I want to see:

involves:@me updated:@today sort:updated-desc

I can save that as a custom query, but the ones I don't use are still at the top of the page.

[astout]

@rileybroughten I am curious if it is known that there was an unfortunate deprecation in Github Projects around the time of this release. I suspect this release because of its changes to the issue search functionality.

I used to be able to filter things (namely repos and milestones) with * wildcards, but this has been broken for 4+ weeks. Any ideas if this functionality will come back?

[astout]

Here's another example using Github's Roadmap project

[rileybroughten]

Thank you for raising this, I've passed it along to the team to investigate and will provide updates!

[astout]

That's great! Thanks for your diligence!

[thehale]

I'm currently trying to build a view that lists the open issues/PRs on repositories under my namespace (e.g. thehale/*) or the namespaces of organizations I control. I would love to see the same list on both desktop and mobile.

Desktop ➡️ Mobile

On desktop I can create a view that closely approximates my goal.

Note

user:@me approximates showing all issues in repositories under my personal namespace. Ideally, I could use a pattern match like repo:"thehale/*", but that appears unsupported for now.

But on mobile (Android 14), the corresponding shortcut has no results. Editing the shortcut shows some awkward parsing of parentheses and the keyword OR.

Mobile ➡️ Desktop

Out of curiosity, I tried building my desired list on mobile.

Note

Here the Involved setting appears to be the closest approximation to capturing my personal repositories, but via mobile that setting appears to be AND-ed with the other organization filters.

But, on desktop, the corresponding saved view shows no results.

My guess is that the mobile shortcut implicitly ORs the organizations, but upon transfer to desktop, the organizations become AND-ed.