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rank and priority sorting

Jira Median

Hi,

The backlog is ordered by default by rank and we have the rank functionnality to have the drag n drop functionnality.

But is it possible to sort by rank ASC and by priority DESC and have the drag n drop functionnality ?

because when we add the priority sorting we don't have anymore the drag n drop.

thanks

Accepted answers

Ignacio Pulgar

Ordering by Rank ASC is a requirement for the drag&drop to work; no workarounds for that.

The best you can do is reordering them manually, possibly by taking advantage of multiple selection capability > mouse right click > send to top/bottom.

All comments

Ignacio Pulgar

Ordering by Rank ASC is a requirement for the drag&drop to work; no workarounds for that.

The best you can do is reordering them manually, possibly by taking advantage of multiple selection capability > mouse right click > send to top/bottom.

unknown

Not really user friendly as the whole concept of the backlog is implementation according to priority. Is the status still the same?

Nic Brough -Adaptavist-

Yes, it has not changed, and it won't change either. The concept of a backlog implementation is that you put your issues in order, which you can't do with priority, you have to do it with a rank.

unknown

Thanks, can you help a bit on to use ranking? Is it just the manual order that you put your self in the dashboard backlog, when I add the field it look more like a code than a usable thing for user.

Nic Brough -Adaptavist-

Yes, it's the order you put things in on the backlog. The field it is in is not really human readable, don't bother putting it on screens.

Matthew Jevne

Technically not solved. No solution isn't a solution

Nic Brough -Adaptavist-

There's a reason the flag is called "accepted".

Also, there is no "solution" - if you want to rank a list, you have to use a rank.

lukas.bohrmann

I understand that there is no solution for ranking and also ordering by priority inside of one sprint. But if I prefer to order my sprints by priority, why am I not allowed to use the right-click and move from one sprint to another. I see no contradiction.

Mikaela Bertucci

Shouldn't this be a simple query.. group by priority and then order by rank????????????????

JQL doesn't allow group by.. how come??????????

Mikaela Bertucci

Ok so I just made a work around.

I created false sprints for each of my rankings.

Must Have,

Should Have

Could Have

Won't have

Then I ran a filter with order by priority asc .. which then sorted my backlog quickly. Then selected all of the Must Have's right clicked and added them to the false sprint Must Have.

And then I did the same for Should Have, Could Have and Won't Have.

Then changed the backlog filter back to order by rank asc

So now the false sprints act like group by

Nic Brough -Adaptavist-

That can't work because you couldn't then rank the issues.

There's no "group by" because JQL is a search for issues, it has nothing to say about what you report the list on.

Markus_COGNITIFF

I interpret the meaning of “rank” more broadly. The decision to assign an issue specific rank is typically based on some underlying business rule. For example, issue X ranks higher than Y because it has more customer value (or takes less time to implement). The execution of that decision in the default Jira implementation is manual – users arrange issues in the desired order using drag-and-drop, and the resulting ranking is stored in the rank system field.

I think the inconvenience that people mentioned arises in situations where the data that feeds into the ranking decision already exists in Jira, like Priority or Story Points. So, for example, ranking all issues in a backlog by Story Points in descending order requires moving issues up and down by hand, even if each has a story point value. Understandably, it can get frustrating.

One way to accomplish the above sort order is to add Priority (or Story Points) to the ‘order by’ clause of the board query. But as Nic says, since issues are no longer sorted by rank but by Priority directly, drag and drop stops working. It is logical if you think about it – drag-and-drop cannot change the priority or the story points of an issue.

Another way is to use a plugin that works with the rank field. The plugin will update the rank based on a rule that you define. You can have a look at Sort by any Field plugin our company (COGNITIFF) developed for this purpose, since we were facing the same issue.

Ignacio Pulgar

Cool solution! Upvoted!

By the way, it would also be great if it supported a given calculation, like Value / Story Points, or something like that.

Promising app. Will test it soon!

Regards

John Worrall

I teach my product owners to use rank to determine the order in which they want things worked on, which is not always the same as priority.

Something may be a high priority ask, but may not be urgent. Something could be a low priority, but easy to deal with, and the person who knows how to do it best may be going on vacation next week, etc etc, and you put it at the top of the list so that they see it, even if the work itself is not a burning hot priority.

Priority in Jira is a terrific way to quickly see how important a ticket is, and if you want to, you can run queries to see how well your team handles A-level, B-level, etc... but in terms of actually managing your workflow, Rank determines where people will see the ticket in a list, and to me, that's what matters more (unless for some reason I'm filtering a list by priority, which I try to avoid doing, because it ignores rank).

I hope this makes sense to folks.

ChalkyNZ

Yeah I’ve found myself wanting both, but if you had both, and a new issue is created, how would it be sorted?

Also if you’re only ranking within same priority, can have a board with swimlanes priority but ordered by rank.

Elisabeta Kozak

This should be simpler than that:

ORDER BY priority DESC, Rank ASC

would allow ordering by priority and within the same priority to drag and drop (and update the rank)

Nic Brough -Adaptavist-

I'm afraid that won't work - for ranking to work, you need to be able to rank across priorities. Ranking and prioritisation are not the same thing.

Oleg Andreyev_gjjg9k

Idk migrated from GitHub Board where they have sorting by two fields and drag-n-drop so it’s totally possible, but for some reason Jira Devs are refusing it.