Best way to organize backlog items

[Misty Evans]

I am new to Jira and want to develop a way to organize organize our backlog.  We have our boards and would like to categorize items such as reports.  If one of our developers would like to build a report, they can locate a report in the backlog they would like to work on.  What would be the easiest way to accomplish this?  Thank you for any input.  

[Stephen Crandell]

One way is to create an Epic and add the stories/tasks to the epic. Then you can group all your backlog stories/tasks by Epic. You can also limit the view of the stories and tasks in the backlog by selecting the related epic from the left side menu.

[Jimmy Seddon]

Hi @Misty Evans

Building on @Stephen Crandell's answer, part of having a backlog is to be able to prioritize the most important work at the top of the backlog so that it's easy for the developers to see what task they should be working on next. 

I'd recommend using a combination of re-ordering the most important items to the top of the backlog and/or filling in the priority field to help identify what work should be picked up first/next.

-Jimmy