Sorting advanced JQL searches to show a specific Task at the top regardless of other criteria

[NP]

My first Atlassian Community question!

Among many other things, we are using JIRA cloud as a service desk ticketing system. We have a Project solely for tickets and as a service technician I have many filters for that Project.

Additionally, we have a Project for each department for deploying new equipment. This way each new device is a Task with several Sub-Tasks within the department Project by itself. this is the best method for us, as there are many actions that require the device to change hands before the device can be deployed. 

Therefore, we have created 3 templates within each department's technology deployment Project. We will clone one of these templates based on the the criteria of the equipment and the tasks/sub-tasks that are required.

*Question*

I need to create a filter that will sort this Project in a way that these templates (Tasks) will always be at the top. In spite of the template being at the top I need to sort the clones of this template. (the clones will be tasks as well)

In other words, my templates always need to be at the top no matter how I choose to sort the instances of the clones (which will be renamed once they are cloned).

currently my search is:  

project = OTDP AND resolution = Unresolved AND issuetype != Sub-task ORDER BY priority ASC, summary DESC, updated DESC

Thanks for your help!

[Ollie Guan · Accepted solution]

Hi @NP,

Do you want these templates always have the highest priority, at the top of the query result.

The other issues were followed closely in order of priority?

[NP]

The templates could all potentially be a critical priority..

Metrics are important to my organization, I am "deferring" all of the templates and the status would change once the Task is cloned. Although I have reservations making them critical (one reason I don't know how that would affect our metrics given that they would never be "Done") but I also would not like all of these templates to show up in the Que that we have set for Critical Tasks. In total there are 39 some templates spread out over all of the department deployment Projects. 

I hope that made enough sense to still weigh in.

[Ollie Guan]

Hi @NP,

You can customize a field of a numeric type and assign values to several templates, such as 1, 2, 3.
Sort the custom fields first, then sort the system field priority, creation date, etc., but the cloned Issue needs to clear the value of the custom field, otherwise it will affect the final result.

[NP]

So I was hoping that there would be a field I could sort by..  that we would already HAVE to change when we created the clone. I even added "_" to all of the templates hoping that I could sort by Summary (this would be a field that we would HAVE to change when we clone the template). Confusingly, sorting by the Summary with "_Template..." did not affect the sort order.... ( I wonder if I have the field name wrong??)

Ultimately, you don't think that there is a uniform way to sort by a field that I will have to change when I clone... and I could manipulate the template so that that field is always at the top?

Thank you for your interest Ollie!

[NP]

Clarify: the Summary is titled "_Template..." when I clone the template I would need to rename it to the device the person etc. 

So if I could make some characteristic in the template that sorts it to the top... Then after I create the Clone, I change that characteristic through normal naming conventions... Which would push it below the Template based on the same characteristic.

Also, even status and priority is based on alphabetizing, so our status "Awaiting on..." would even show up before deferred. Priority is ranked based on discrete variables, but then things must be labeled Critical -- when they are not critical.