How to sort the Backlogs in Board by priority? (in 2024 Jira)

[누띠Nutti]

Hello! Sorry for poor English.

I am one of the Jira users in Korea. Our team use only two things. Roadmap & Board. 

I made almost 100 tasks so I need to sort them by priority. (Highest, High, Medium, Low, Lowest) I tried to adapt these filters.

#1
order by Priority ASC

#2
order by Rank ASC

But none of them works...😥

How to sort the Backlogs in Board by priority? Did I do wrong? Or are they kind of bugs in Jira JQL?

[Jack Brickey · Accepted solution]

Are you wanting to always sort by priority? If so change the board's filter under board configuration - general adding the "order by priority ASC" to the very end of the filter. Please note that if you do this instead of RANK then you will not be able to drag-drop the issue order in the back log. Also understand that what you see in the active board will depend on how you set up swimlanes.

[Jack Brickey]

You might consider swimlanes by priority if that is your goal. In my opinion, you should always use by rank so that you can manage the backlog for planning purposes.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Quick filters can not override the sort order of the board filter, they would break the board if they did!

[누띠Nutti]

@Jack Brickey 
Thank you for your comment!
But... I think it didn't work. Could you check my screenshot?

I tried even to name the filter in English. However, nothing happened.

[Jack Brickey]

As Nic mentioned order by won't work in your quick filters. This should be used in the board filter if desired. What is your ultimate goal? Maybe you should have a quick filter to show only high priority and one for medium priority, etc.

[누띠Nutti]

@Jack Brickey @Nic Brough -Adaptavist- 
Oh, I understood! 👍 So I can only show one priority at a time through quick filter methods.

My goal is... Listing the tasks in each swimlanes in the Board by priority. Like this picture which I drew.

Can I do this??

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Yes, if you change the board filter to order by priority instead of rank.

This will break your ability to rank the backlog and the issues on the board though.

Also, your screenshot is of the admin section of a team-managed project.  You can not change the board filters on the project boards (they are always "project = X order by rank")

To do this, you will need to search for "project = X order by priority", save the search as a new filter, then go into a company-managed Jira-software project and create a new board, using the "create board from filter" option.

I suspect your best option is going to be what Jack recommended - use swimlanes by priority, so that you don't lose the ability to rank.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

By the way, I should be more clear when talking about swimlanes, because some people mistakenly think swimlanes are columns.  Your screenshots are boards with a set of columns.  There are no swimlanes in them.

A swimlane goes across a board, it is not a column.  If you add swimlane by priority then your board, using the same examples given in your diagram, would look like this:

	To do	In Progress	In review	Done
Critical	ABC-5			ABC-20
High	ABC-9 ABC-12	ABC-78		ABC-42
Medium	ABC-22 ABC-33	ABC-14 ABC-7	ABC-55	ABC-43
Low	ABC-4	ABC-8		ABC-67
Trivial	ABC-6 ABC-19			ABC-87

[누띠Nutti]

@Nic Brough -Adaptavist- 

Wow your answers are very helpful! Especially the explains of swimlanes. I totally misunderstood that concept.

Thank you so much!! 🥰