Query by System field not working.

Question

Hi.

I'm struggling with this query and I'm wondering if the system has some type of block to query work items by some fields.

I use two System fields to keep the department information: System.AreaLevel1 and System.AreaLevel2.

This information composes the System.AreaPath.

I can query normally by AreaPath and AreaLevel2 but there is no way to make the API return the items when I add the query by the AreaLevel1, even when I only query by this field.

This works: query = { 'query' => "SELECT Id FROM WorkItems WHERE [System.AreaLevel2] = 'E2E'" }
Also this works: query = { 'query' => "SELECT System.AreaLevel2 FROM WorkItems WHERE System.AreaPath under 'PMO Marketing E2E\\E2E\\'" }
But this not: query = { 'query' => "SELECT Id FROM WorkItems WHERE System.AreaLevel1 = 'PMO Marketing E2E'" }

The last query returns an empty set, and I have more than a thousand work items satisfying the query. I tried every operation available for string fields.

How it could be possible?

Thanks in advance