New kanban backlog - priortization

[Amrita Nair]

Hi Is there a way to display the 'not prioritized' issues at the top of the backlog. Currently the new issues appear at the bottom of the list and get missed :(

[Andy Heinzer]

Most boards are using Rank in order to arrange items.  If you're boards is using this to sort, then all issues are automatically getting a rank value immediately after they are created. 

However if you are using a priority field, you could create a quick filter for the board with a JQL value of

(priority = low OR priority is empty)

In order to see issues without a priority value or with a low value.   This could help you quickly view only issues that match that query and the board's main filter.  

The field configuration scheme for the priority field in this project will determine if the priority field is a required field or not.   And if it is, then in that case, you might have some other field value such as 'none' that issue get by default if the user doesn't set a value.

[Amrita Nair]

Thanks for the response Andrew. I am referring to the new backlog section in the Kanban project. I am unable to get the newly created tasks arranged based on priorities here (not sure how and where to apply the filter)

I am trying to get the 'not prioritized' issues (new ones) appear at the top of this backlog so that we don't need to scroll through all the issues to check for the new ones.

[Andy Heinzer]

Yes, I understand what you are trying to do here.  This is why I suggested the use of a Quick Filter.    A quick filter can be used as a toggle button on a board (and in the new kanplan backlog) that you can click in order to quickly hide issues that do not match that filter's criteria.

So first we need to understand exactly how your new issues are different than the ones you don't want to see.  You mentioned prioritization, so I thought you were referring specifically to the Jira field called "Priority".  Perhaps that is not what you meant to use here exactly.  That's okay if you don't want to use Jira's priority field to sort/filter these issues.  But if we don't use that field, then we need to understand how these new issues are different than the other issues.   Will they all have a particular status? a specific custom field value?

Once we understand a way that Jira can distinguish between these two types of issues, we can then create a new quick filter for that board and then use that to quickly find these new issues.

[Amrita Nair]

Hi Andrew, thank you! Yes, I am using the priority field for prioritization. The new tasks that are raised are appended at the end of the backlog. They don't appear on our board unless we explicitly move it to TODO just like on scrum boards.  I am trying to get these new ones (with priority = not prioritized) to appear at the top of the backlog list itself.

i.e items in my backlog do not appear on the board (only the ones in Todo and onward appear on the board). Just wondering isn't the quick filter specific to the board? 

I am assuming you are suggesting to add the below JQL

<status = backlog and priority = Not prioritized>

in the 'quick filter' section of configure board

However I am confused about:

Will adding this as quick filter help in getting the 'not prioritized' tasks show up on the top of my 'backlog' list

Thanks a lot for your patience and for helping me resolve the problem :)

[Andy Heinzer]

Ok, creating a quick filter can help you to only see those issues that match that filter.  So yes, I believe it can help here, but let me try to be more clear about this;

Using a quick filter won't change the order in which the issues appear on the board.  

All it would do would be to hide the other issues that don't match that quick filter from this view temporarily while the quick filter is toggled on.   Perhaps that is not what you are looking for here.

Most boards in Jira Software are arranging issues based on that issue's Rank value.  You can see this in the specific filter that the board is set to use (Under board settings).  This looks like a 'Order by Rank ASC' in most cases.   When you are ordering a board by Rank, it allows you to drag and drop issues vertically in order to give them a higher or lower rank than the other issues that appear on that board. 

You could technically change the filter on a board to order issues by some field other than Rank.  However if you do this, you lose the ability to change the order in which issues appear by dragging/dropping them vertically.  You can still drag and drop in order to transition issues into different columns, but you can't change issues by the field the filter is ordered by.

If the Quick filter is not a desirable solution here, then you might consider instead copying this existing board, and then modifying the copy to use a different filter.  By using a modified issue filter that orders by another value, you could still see all the same issues but in a different order.   Also by creating a copied board, and leaving the existing filter as is, you could still go back to the previous board whenever you needed to adjust the ranking of issues quickly.