instead of drag and drop, can you enable numeric ranking on issues?

[Laurie Childers]

This question is in reference to Atlassian Documentation: Ranking an issue

We are coming to JIRA from a different tracking system.  And, with a large backlog, we rely on numeric values for ranking rather than drag and drop.  Is there a way to enable numeric ranking that automatically flows through the various related boards and reports OR do we have to add a custom field for this and create our own custom views and reports to display the numeric value?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

No, because it's not a number.  An older version used to use a number as the rank, but it became unwieldy and slow because as usage grows, you have to start updating swathes of issues to make space for updates.  It's using a "lexorank" system now, which can't really be translated into numbers.