Ranking Epics on Kanban Board without Backlog

Question

We have a team that prefers to use a Kanban Board that does not have a Backlog (because they want the Baclog to appear as a column on the Board). That means it also does not have the Epics panel. They use swimlanes based on Epics. Is there any way to change the ranking of the Epics?

The only way I found to do that is to activate the Backlog by mapping some status to it on the Board's configuration, reorganize the Epics using the Epics panel, and then change the configuration back to not use a Backlog.

I guess we could create a second Kanban Board just for this purpose, but surely there must be another way to do this?

Thanks,

Jozef

Jozef Vandenmooter · Answer

Thanks Trudy. We just created a separate Board just for ranking Epics!

Trudy P Claspill · Answer

I can't think of any other ways to manipulate the ranking of Epics other than having them displayed in either a Board view or a Backlog view for an agile board.

I found this post on using the API or Automation for JIRA feature to manipulate issue ranks, but I don't think that necessarily addresses your question. Maybe it will give you some ideas.

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Marketplace-Apps-Integrations/With-the-Automation-plugin-is-there-a-way-to-set-the-rank-of-an/qaq-p/1087874

Jozef Vandenmooter · Answer

That's a neat trick, however, it does not work for us because the Epic has statuses that are not represented on the Board (they're different from the other issue types)