Sorting Swimlanes -> How to automatically move ticket to "Top of Swimlane" after being added

[Jon Thompson]

We are using a Feature Request process where we transition reviewed tickets from To Review -> Rejected or To Review -> Reviewed. We are dragging and dropping the ticket into the swim lane and both swim lanes have previously touched tickets that are sorted manually based on priority. 

When we drag a ticket into a swimlane with 100+ tickets, the browser scrolls all the way to the bottom of the page. We then have to right click and "Top of Swimlane" and then we have to scroll to the very top of the page. 

Is there a way to automatically have the ticket assign to the top of the swimlane then we can manually move it around for priority? 

[John Funk · Accepted solution]

Hi Jon,

Jira use a complex method of sorting issues on a board. If you have the ORDER by rank added to your board filter, this will allow you to move cards up and down inside the Column/Swimlane. It also use that default method of sorting. 

Upfront, I have no idea of the mechanics and exact algorithms used. However, my experience is that cards are basically ranked (sorted) by column based on when the card moved onto the board. So cards that have been added recently will almost always move to the bottom of the column/swimlane when moved to a new column. 

Most Kanban processes rely on the FIFO method, so cards already in a column should be worked before new cards that enter the column. Regardless, that's more or less how Jira boards work in my view. 

Your only other option is that to do a sorting by another field - for example, ORDER by created DESC. That would put the most recently created cards at the top of the swimlane. But then you lose the ability to move the cards up and down - in ANY column. 

So, the bottom line in my opinion, is that you are more or less stuck with the method you are using now. 

[Bill Sheboy]

Agreeing with @John Funk on the limitations/work-around...

There are suggestions in the automation rules backlog to support creating a rule to "move to top" as needed, such as on a status change:

https://codebarrel.atlassian.net/browse/AUT-919

https://codebarrel.atlassian.net/browse/AUT-1074

Best regards,

Bill

[Ryan Scougall]

I'm not sure how to get access to code barrel, but out of curiosity, did an automation ever get made that moves specific tickets to the top of the swimlane?

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Ryan Scougall 

Short answer: no

Longer answer:

The old Code Barrel backlog is no longer publicly available; I found a new item in the public AUTO backlog items for this suggestion: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/AUTO-850

It is theoretically possible to write an automation rule to re-rank issues by calling a REST API function with the Send Web Request action, although I have not tried that in years (and was only as an experiment).  Doing this in the context of swim lanes would be much more complicated.

Kind regards,
Bill

[Ryan Scougall]

Appreciate the update Bill.