What should I do to enable automatic sorting ?

[Deleted user]

I am creating the necessary filter for the automatic prioritization of tasks on the board. 'Filter: project = abc order by priority ASC.' However, unfortunately, when I create a new task on the board, it doesn't place the task according to its priority. What should I do to resolve this?

[Trudy Claspill · Accepted solution]

Hello @[deleted] 

Welcome to the Atlassian community!

Are you working with a Kanban board or a Scrum board?

Are you working with a Team Managed project or a Company Managed project?

Are you using that as the filter for your board?

Can you show us an example of an issue not placed correctly, showing us the value for its Priority field and the Priority field value for the issues above and below it?

Are you referencing the built in Priority field or a custom field of your making?

What are the values you are using for that Priority field?

[Trudy Claspill]

Based on the response you provided to @Ash Yadav I can see that you are working with a Company Managed project.

Can you go to the General page for the Board Settings and show us what you have for the Filter Query for the board?

Example:

You would need to be using your saved filter here in order for the issues on the board and in the backlog to be sorted based on the value of Priority.

[Deleted user]

Yes, you right. I can't see my filter. How can i change this filter ?

[Ash Yadav]

Click on Edit Filter Query 

This should allow you to specify the JQL you want to use. 

You can see currently that your filter query is set to order by ascending rank instead of priority. 

Kind Regards, 

Ash 

[Deleted user]

The filter shown is a filter created by someone else. Unfortunately, the filter I created does not appear when I press Edit. It throws it directly into the existing filter.

Also, although I am an admin, I cannot delete this previously created filter.

[Ash Yadav]

If you can't edit the original filter, and you have saved your filter already, you can just click on the filter itself in the board settings and select one of the options as you can see here: 

Are you able to see the dropdown with your filter now?

Let me know. 

KR, 
Ash 

[Deleted user]

Finally :)

Huge thanks Ash for your help. 

Right now, it is automatically sorting based on priority. What I need is simply this: How can I move a task up or down within its own priority group on the board? Currently, it doesn't allow me to move it.

[Trudy Claspill]

You can't drag and drop issues to reorder them unless you sort them by Rank.

If you want to group them by priority and then have an updatable order in each priority grouping you will have to use a second custom field to set another value that you can use as a secondary sort option.

For example add a custom field of type Number and name it Sub-priority. In each priority group fill this field with numbers to indicate which is #1 priority in that group, #2 priority, and so on. Then in your filter change the ORDER BY clause to be

ORDER BY priority ASC, Sub-filterASC

[Deleted user]

Thanks for the answer Trudy. 

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @[deleted] 

As other posters have not mentioned this impact yet...

If you change a board filter to sort by anything other than Rank, the drag-and-drop features which makes ordering issues easy will stop working.

The reason is that ORDER BY Rank ASC is using a reliable mechanism (called LexoRank) to handle add / remove / reorder of items.  Anything else you do with ORDER BY may not provide uniqueness to ordering, and so drag-and-drop ordering will not work.

Kind regards,
Bill

[Deleted user]

Thanks for this important info Bill. 

Actually, I also removed the other filter and applied only the sort by priority filter, but still, as I said, when I created a new task, it did not automatically sort.

[Bill Sheboy]

I suggest that context is important for what you describe as not everything in Jira updates instantly...even for Cloud views in a browser.

For example, if you are on the backlog view and make some issue changes, one often must refresh the page to see the changes.  For a board, I wonder if the same is true because you are using a different sort ordering for the filter.

And even if it did automatically sort...I suggest that although you would see some differences by priority ordering, without other sort criteria the order would be random after that point.  That is because priority only has a few values, which is not enough to distinguish between to issues with the same priority (e.g., if both were Low priority).

[Ash Yadav]

Hi @[deleted] welcome to the Atlassian Community! 

Have you tried configuring swimlanes on your board? You can specify where high priority issues should appear on the board based on JQL or just the priority for example. 

See screenshot below: 

It would help if you shared what your board looks like currently and it's configuration. 

All the best, 

Ash 

[Deleted user]

Yes, as you mentioned, I tried to do it with JQL like this, but it didn't work, so I deleted it. That's why you didn't see it when you checked. Even though I did it this way, it doesn't work. When I create a new task, it is placed at the bottom of the board, despite having a high priority.

All the best,