How can I copy the value of Scripted Field to a Global Rank field?

Question

We have a scripted field, which calculates the business value for us.

Now we want to use this field to rank our backlog, but as it is not a global rank field, we can't create sprints anymore (Error: "The board must be ordered by rank in order to add a sprint").

A workaround would be to copy the Scripted Field value to a Global Rank field.

How can we do this and as the global rank field is not a string, which conversion would I need to apply?

Thank you for your help!

Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted Answer

Steve is right, ranking uses a system called "lexorank".  You can't just jam in any old "value" in there.  Same as you can't just take a string and jam it into a user field and expect it to be a user.  Wrong format and incompatible.

You'll have to write code that will work out where in the ranking each issue should be placed (i.e. you need to know which issues are immediately above and blow it) and then work out the rank object from there.  Then do the indexing and rebalancing as well.  Have a look at https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirakb/lexorank-management-779159218.html to start getting a feel for how much "fun" that could be.

A better option would probably to use the JIRA API to manage it, but even that's not particularly simple - last time I looked at this, it was https://docs.atlassian.com/jira-software/6.7.12/com/atlassian/greenhopper/manager/lexorank/LexoRankManager.html but I don't know if you still have to handle the balancing, indexing etc.