Restrict who can modify Rank for backlog priority; allow anyone to change custom Global Rank field in their own boards

[Nathan Nantais]

We use the JIRA standard Rank to do backlog prioritization, by drag-drop via agile boards. We don't want all our users to be able to adjust Rank (backlog priority order), so we restricted the "Schedule Issues" permission to only project leads and admins.

Some engineering teams want to rank their issues (i.e. drag-drop reorder) on their own boards, to provide input into our backlog prioritization process. We want to let them do this without modifying the true Rank, so we created a "Team Rank" custom field of type "Global Rank". Then we set up their boards to order by "Team Rank". It worked, in the sense that drag-dropping items on their boards changes "Team Rank" and has no effect on the overall Rank that we use for backlog prioritization.

The problem is the "Schedule Issues" permission seems to prevent users from modifying the custom "Team Rank" field. We wish to allow all users to change the custom "Team Rank" field by drag-drop in boards which order on "Team Rank", but we wish to restrict global Rank changes to only project leads and admins. 

Can anyone help?

Thank you.

[Steven F Behnke]

So, there is a problem here – You're creating a custom rank field to solve your problem, but the operation of ranking issues is the actual fault here.

The rank fields don't have associated permissions, since they aren't editable directly by users. (only the system can modify rank) The rank operation is associated with the permission level Schedule Permission. This is why we're encountering our problems.

Honestly, I'm not sure where to turn... I wrote a bit on this use-case on the following Feature Request – https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/GHS-6887. Perhaps boards configured to use the Rank field are hidden from other users?