How do I update a numerical field across all issues in a project at once?

[Christina Sheehan]

I'm looking to create a project-specific rank field that will be auto-updated if a rank on another ticket changes. This would not be using the Jira global rank feature, but a separate custom numerical field. 

For example, if in project A I have the following issues:

A-100, Project Rank = 1

A-200, Project Rank = 2 

A-300, Project Rank = 3 

If A-100 is closed and I remove the number from the Project Rank field, I'd like to have A-200 move to Project Rank = 1 and A-300 move to Project Rank = 2 automatically.

Any thoughts on how to do this?

[Matt Doar]

"This would not be using the Jira global rank feature" the first thing I would do is ask "why not?". What are the advantages of being able to see a number to represent an ordering?

If you still wanted to go ahead with this, you could have an external service that extracted the current value and status of each issue in the project, calculated what the current values should be and updated the issues. As the project grows over time this service would run more and more slowly though

[Christina Sheehan]

@Matt Doar Thank you this is helpful. Surfacing a number ranking has been helpful for our teams (we currently do this manually, but it's tedious of course) to quickly align on their project's priority relative to others being worked on in the same time period. It's been helpful to enable better trade-off discussions, etc. Any suggestion on an external service?

[Hannes Obweger - JXL for Jira]

@Christina Sheehan

I agree with @Matt Doar that using the Jira global rank feature would be the easiest.

Just to think outside the box for a little: Where (as in, in which views) would you want to surface this simplified number rank? If it's in lists of issues (where you could have multiple lists, each powered by their own filter) I could actually think of a decent solution. Happy to elaborate more if this sounds like a way forward.

If you'd want to see this number rank kinda "everywhere" (e.g. on the individual issue views) etc., you'd really need the scripting/automation that Matt mentioned, which I agree would be very difficult to get right.

Best,

Hannes