How is issue ranking supposed to work?

[Swaroop Rao]

Based on what I have experienced, it looks like we need to have the clause "ORDER BY Rank ASC" in the filter query for a board in order to use the drag-and-drop feature to organize the backlog. My question is: how is the ranking supposed to be interpreted? If we order the backlog by ascending rank, that means that the higher ranked issues will be at the bottom of the backlog. So, does a higher rank translate to a lower priority? I want the highest priority issues to be at the top of the backlog so that I can easily drag them into a sprint. I tried searching the help/support pages to no avail. Also, what is the default rank for a newly created issue?

[Alexey Matveev]

Hello,

If you use the Rank field, you rank your issues yourself. You use the drag and drop to rank issues. Drag higher and the issue will have a higher priority than all lower cards.

[Swaroop Rao]

I think I understand that part. What confuses me, however, is why does JIRA disable drag-and-drop if my filter query has "ORDER BY Rank DESC"?

[Alexey Matveev]

Because you use a custom filter. If you want to use the drag and drop then do not change the order by rank clause.

[Swaroop Rao]

I'm OK with that. When I switch to the default filter, it means that the higher ranked issues (numerically) are at the bottom of the backlog and lower ranked (numerically) are at the top of the backlog, since the issues are in ascending order by rank. So, if I'm pulling issues from the top of the backlog, I'm essentially pulling issues that are lower ranked (numerically). So, I'll repeat my original question: does a higher rank (numerically) translate to a lower priority?

[Alexey Matveev]

It does not really matter as long as Jira correctly shows you the result. And rank is not a number, it looks like this 0|i0005z:. Rank is not supposed to set manually.

[Swaroop Rao]

Wow, this is getting really difficult to explain. OK, let's ignore my earlier assumption that the rank is numeric. Let's focus on the default filter query which ends in 'ORDER BY Rank ASC'. 'Ascending' means increasing or rising from low to high. Can we agree on that? So, is it safe to assume that issues with low values of Rank are at the top and issues with high values of Rank are at the bottom of the page? So, this means that issues with a lower Rank value are considered higher priority. So, when I'm dragging an issue from the top of the backlog to a sprint, I'm really dragging an issue with the lowest value of Rank. Is my understanding correct?

[Alexey Matveev]

I understand what you mean, but my point is that it really does not matter. If you make JQL query like order by Rank in the Issue Navigator, you will not get the same result as in the board.

[Alexey Matveev]

It is just a way to let Jira know that you want to use the in build functionality with the Rank field