Reshuffling issues when one of them is edited

[Henri Tchoi]

Hi, 

I want to set up a simple automation to reshuffle issues when one of them is edited : basically, I have a custom field for the priority (1, 1.1, 1.2 and so on) and when we re-prioritize with my team, I would want all the issues with a lower priority to be shifted down one rank.

For example : let's say one issue is re-prioritized as 2.1, I would want the previous 2.1 and all the issues below to be shifted down to 2.2 onwards.

We had been previously manually shuffling epics around by dragging and dropping, but it is getting a bit too tedious and prone to errors.

If anyone has better ideas, I'm all ears, thanks in advance !

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

There is no Automation that can do this - it does not yet have any re-ranking functions.

Even if it did, it would not be a "simple" automation to create.  Ranking does not work by shifting things up and down - it was specifically built to replace a system that does (because it doesn't scale).  It works by working out where the current issue should be relative to the issues above and below it on the list.

So your automation would have to read through the backlog, work out where the end of priority X is and where Y starts, and then guess where within Y the issue should be ranked.

You'd need quite a lot of code to do that.

So, TLDR: No, this can't be done.

But it also begs the question of why you are using priority as a proxy for ranking?  A priority is not supposed to be used like that, if you need to do it, you should just be directly ranking the issues.  Priority is information that the team may find useful when ranking, but it's not the only thing that should inform it. 

[Henri Tchoi]

Thanks a lot for the detailed answer, it really helps a lot !

If by directly ranking the issues you are referring to shifting up and down the epics from let's say the roadmap view, we had been using this method but are running in performance issues : the UI becomes so laggy that it is not a viable option anymore. If you have any advice regarding this point, it would also be greatly appreciated.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

That implies you've got too much in your roadmap that should probably being managed elsewhere.  Is there a performance issue when you rank things where they normally should be?  (Team's individual backlogs)

[Henri Tchoi]

We do have constantly in our roadmap 80+ epics for the whole team and we do need a consolidated priority for the larger team taking into account the teams' priorities, hence the use of that view.

The backlog view is much soother, and using the epic panel, I could reshuffle epics around, but filtering on them is not possible so it is not ideal.