How do I sort my story-swimlanes on a kanban board?

NathanG
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January 9, 2015

I have a kanban board that is showing issues and their subtasks and we like having the swimlanes set to be the story.  (This is because we are focusing on the subtasks).

However, I can't figure out how to re-rank the main stories on the same board: I can't drag and drop the stories (which are swimlanes).

I have figured out that I can create a separate kanban board called "sorting" (which has NO swimlanes) and use that board behind the scenes to re-rank my stories... then when I refresh my main board the stories are sorted to match the changes I made on my other board.

Is there a better way to re-sort my swimlanes (which are my stories) on my main kanban board?

Thank you~!

3 answers

2 votes
Christie Coster December 26, 2019

Hello All, 

I came here looking for the same answer and then stumbled upon a solution. 

First, what I have going on; My Kanban board is showing my Stories sorted into Swimlanes.

Base Swimlanes on "Epics"

When I first set this setting my Epic Swimlanes were placed in order by when they were created. My organized mind wanted them to be sorted by what is most important to me. So I did the following:

Go into settings - Base Swimlanes on "None"

Go to Kanban board - (all of my Epic issues are in the Backlog column) move the "Epic" issues up and down in the column in the order I want them (most important at the top). 

Go back into settings - Base Swimlanes on "Epics"

Go back to Kanban board and the lanes were then in the order I wanted. 

 

Hope this helps. 

David.Werner June 10, 2020

Thanks... This works

Stefan Khan-Kernahan September 14, 2020

Under Board Settings -> Columns, enable the Epics Panel. Then, in the backlog view, the order you arrange the Epics in the Epics Panel will be the order in the swimlanes, no need to toggle back and forth.

1 vote
Chris Solgat
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July 21, 2015

Unless you add a sortable field to your project, there is unfortunately no better way.  Actually if you're just looking to have a singular board, you can use a Scrum board for your Kanban team.  Then you can rank your stories in the backlog and they will be in the same order.  The only catch to that is, you have to have an active sprint in order to use the Work/Active Sprints mode.

0 votes
Graham April 9, 2015

Hi Nathan,

I have the same issue - did you ever find a better solution?

Cheers

NathanG
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April 10, 2015

Nope :-(

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