Atlassian Connect add-on - sort backlog

[Arturas Rimkus]

I'm trying to create an add-on for JIRA Cloud. What I want the add-on to do is sort the backlog (on the Backlog Screen) by some property, for instance, estimate, so that issues with highest estimates are on top of the backlog and that with the lowest at the bottom.

Can this be done?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

I'm not sure that a Connect add-on can get to the sort order on the surface, and even if it could, the best you can do with it would be to remove the ability to rank issues.  I'd recommend not trying to do this, as ranking is quite important to backlogs.

[Arturas Rimkus]

Hi Nic. I wouldn't be removing the ability to rank issues. I just want to sort by a property (I guess this means updating the ranks of issues), and then the user change the rank manually. So, do you know if an add-on can update issue ranks?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

The backlog takes the sort order from the filter for the board.  So, there's basically two ways you could sort by another field - change the filter to have a different sort order (which breaks ranking because you have to sort by rank in order to rank things), or update the issues by re-ranking them all in your new order (which breaks ranking because it destroys all the ranking the users have done).  Either way, ranking is broken.

The third option is to rewrite the whole backlog screen, either by hacking the JIRA Software code, or duplicating it into a new add-on with your sort order added.  Neither of those can be done on Cloud.

[Arturas Rimkus]

Updating issues by re-ranking them is the option I'm after. And, of course, this would be done with the user's consent, so it would not break ranking per se.

So, to explore this option, is it possible to change issue ranks? Could you please point me to the right bit of documentation?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Ok, I'd recommend a very strong warning before just doing this in your add-on - be clear "If you confirm doing this, you will destroy all your ranking information that you've been doing in backlog grooming and planning, for the entire team"

Your Connect add-on will need to use the REST endpoint - I found https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/45323 was a bit more human friendly than the docs.

[Arturas Rimkus]

Thanks Nic, very helpful.

[Arturas Rimkus]

Hi @Nic Brough [Adaptavist]. I have been able to sort the backlog as per our discussion here. I now need to reload/refresh the Backlog screen in order for results to update, yet I cannot find the right API in documentation. Do you know where I can find it? Thanks.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

I don't know, it's not something I've needed to do.