How to i prevent issue reordering from the sprint board?

[cl1motorsports]

When moving items across the Board it reorders them in the sprint. How do I prevent this? I want them to always stay in backlog/sprint order.

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @cl1motorsports 

Welcome to the Atlassian community.

According to this document:

Rank an Issue 

You can only rank issues if ranking has been enabled (see Enabling ranking), and if you have the 'Schedule Issue' and 'Edit Issue' permissions for the issue you want to move.

So, remove the Schedule Issue permission from all but the most trusted users who prioritize the backlog, and that should prevent the rank from being changed when users move issues between columns on the board. That will also prevent those users from modifying the Due date field of the issues.

https://support.atlassian.com/jira-cloud-administration/docs/permissions-for-company-managed-projects/#Schedule-issues

[cl1motorsports]

I do both, this will not fix the problem.

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @cl1motorsports 

What do you mean that you "did both"? Did you remove both the "Schedule Issue" and "Edit Issue" permissions for a user for a project, and that user was able to change the rank of an issue in that project?

How are you confirming that the rank has been changed?

I recommend that you check the rank using the same filter that is used by the board, viewing the results in the View All Issues screen. Check where an issue appears in that list before it is moved from one column to another by  a user that does not have the Schedule Issue permission. Then check its position in the list again after the user moves it between columns.

How have you confirmed that the user does not have the Schedule Issue permission?

I notice that the tags on your post indicate that you are using the Free version of the product. Is that accurate? If so, you cannot actually modify user permissions within projects, as per this document. All users that are granted access to your Jira product will have full permissions in all projects. In order to modify the permissions you would need to use a paid subscription.

[cl1motorsports]

I both move items across the board, and I also am responsible for ordering the backlog. I can't keep/remove my permissions from one without affecting the other. 

[Trudy Claspill]

Thank you for clarifying what you meant by "I do both". I had misunderstood.

When you drag a card from one column to another you are changing the Status of the issue. It is also possible to change the issue's rank during that move. The only way to prevent a user from changing the Rank of an issue is to remove the Schedule Issue permission for that user.

If it is not possible to remove that permission then I think you have two choices:

1. Change the issue status via the Status pull down rather than dragging the issue between columns. That will be ensure that only the Status is change with no impact to the Rank.
2. You could consider creating a second board that uses a filter that selects the same issues but does not have the order by Rank  clause. In that board also ensure that the Ranking option does not get enabled.
   
   Use the secondary board if you want to drag cards between columns. With Ranking disabled for the board, that should prevent changes to the issue rank when dragging cards. I'm not 100% sure that will work. I have not tested it out.

In both cases you may have trouble preventing other users from making changes to issue Rank if you are on the Free plan, because users in a Free plan have Project Admin access to all projects and permissions can't be modified in a Free subscription.

[Walter Buggenhout]

Hi @cl1motorsports and welcome to the Community!

I am not entirely sure what you mean by "moving across the board". But that is not too important, I guess. The thing is that issues in Jira have a unique rank relative to any other issues in your Jira instance. When you reorder them (no matter where that happens), thus positioning them in a different place relative to other issues on your sprint, that will inevitably reflect there as well.

Ordering of issues in a scrum board is determined by the Order By Rank statement at the end of your board filter. In a company managed board, you can remove that part from your board filter, but that will then apply to both the active sprint as well as the backlog. If you still want to reorder your issues in the backlog view, this is not an option anymore after you would change that. And that is probably also not what you are after.

Hope this clarifies!

[cl1motorsports]

I want the people moving items across the board (e.g. from "In Progress" to "Ready for Review") to not be able to change their rank order. Currently, if someone moves an issue from "In Progress" to "Ready for Review" it will change the rank of the issue being moved. I don't want that. I only want it to update the status and leave it in its current rank. In Azure Devops, it's just a setting that prevents rank order changes while moving items across the board. I don't find a setting like that in Jira. I need it because it is becoming difficult to figure out what was originally highest priority based on backlog order when the order keeps changing.

For example, when something doesn't pass review and gets put back into the "In Progress" column at the bottom, it is now ranked lower than all of the other items in progress in the backlog when it was originally above them.