Default Suggestion sorting for Sprint Field?

Question

Does anyone know how the Sprint field "Suggestions" are sorted by default (before you start typing anything that it will filter and automatch)?

We have a large number of future sprints set up for our project, with months as part of the sprint name, and I originally assumed the suggestions were alpha-sorted by name (April2019, Aug2019, Dec2019, etc.), but when I tested changing names, I found this was not the case, so then I assumed they were sorted by the backend number JIRA assigns to the sprint, but was quickly able to determine that wasn't it either. By extension, it doesn't appear to be related to the order the sprints were originally created, nor the order the sprints are arranged on the sprint Board.

Once I started looking at the default values for other users in the same project, I realize that each user seems to have a unique sorting per machine, and that the only universally shared axiom is that none of them put an active, or relatively near term future sprint near the top.

My personal instance appears to prefer "xFuture_Jan2020" over anything else on the list for reasons I cannot fathom.

An unrelated article from 2014 suggested that they are shown in the order that you have "viewed" a sprint, which makes sense from other JIRA fields, but I have tried "viewing" sprints via boards and such in several ways, but it doesn't seem to change the order, perhaps there is a right way to "view" a sprint that I haven't thought of?

If anyone *knows* how this field is sorted, or how to "view" a sprint properly, I would love to know so that perhaps I can manipulate the properties of the sprint to get them in a useful order, or at least instruct my users to do whatever they have to do locally to get current sprints showing near the top of their list.

Thanks in advance for any insight.

Stephen Sayler_mxqrzm · Answer

I have the same question. I would like the sprints to be presented in sequential order. Feels like they are shown in random order.

Maybe Jira is doing some capacity calculation and suggesting sprints that have available capacity for new stories, if that's the case it'd be nice to toggle between that and a simple sequential view.

unknown · Answer

Thank you for the reply Gabriele,

The number of sprints displayed is not as much a concern to us as the order they appear in. Do you have any insight into what causes a particular sprint to appear at the top of a sorting list?

A quick repro to perhaps explain more clearly what I see:

1. On a project with several sprints (past, present, or future), execute a basic search.

2. Select "More" and then "Sprint"

3. Look at the pulldown menu, and note the order that the sprints are "suggested".

4. Now imagine a project with 20+ sprints. The list appears to automatically truncate to 5 of them randomly chosen, followed by the statement "14 more options. Continue typing to refine further."

5. In my experience, the active sprint never appears on this default list, although it does seem to favor future sprints over closed ones.

Gabriele Franck · Answer

Hi, Bert

Sprint is a global field that shows all existing sprints in your instance.

Since sprints can span to multiple boards and projects, in Create/Edit Issue Screen, JIRA will show all Sprints in the Suggested Sprints and there is no way to only show Sprint for the selected project or to manipulate these suggestions.