Issue ranking (Lexorank)

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Configuration Manager fully supports migrating issue ranks for all ranking fields.

What is ranking?

Issue ranking is the order of Jira issues in an instance. The ranking is global configuration - this means that issues keep the same order across projects and boards. For example, issue1 and issue2 are used in two agile boards. Since ranking is global, if issue1 is before issue2 in Board1, that is also true in Board2.

Multiple ranking fields

If you’d like to order issues differently on different boards, you must create an additional ranking field and sort the issues using the board’s filter according to this ranking field.

Migrating issue ranks with Configuration Manager for Jira

When you create a snapshot with issues, Configuration Manager exports the rank values for all snapshot issues based on each ranking field.

When deploying the snapshot, Configuration Manager assigns new ranks to all imported issues based on these exported values.

Existing issues. Boards spanning across multiple projects

Configuration Manager will rank all new issues after the existing issues.

Configuration Manager will not change the rank values of existing issues. Please take this into account if you have boards spanning across multiple projects.

Locking existing rows in the Lexorank table

Ranking with locking Lexorank table (default)

Currently, Configuration Manager locks the existing rows in the Lexorank table during the issue ranking phase of snapshot deployments. This ranking approach ensures that no conflicts occur during the ranking and speeds up the deployment process. Note that users cannot rank issues manually in Jira during the issue ranking phase of the deployment. When deploying on very large instances (>1M issues), locking and unlocking the ranking table might take several minutes.

Ranking without locking Lexorank table

There is an option in the General Settings called “Do not lock the Lexorank table when ranking issues during deployment“ that allows you to change the ranking method. You can disable the locking of existing rows in the Lexorank table during the ranking phase of deployment. Read more about the ranking setting in this document.

When you enable this setting, Configuration Manager will not lock any rows in the Lexorank table during the issue ranking phase of snapshot deployments. With this option, issues can still be ranked manually during the whole deployment process, although there is a small likelihood that an identical rank can be assigned to two issues. The conflict can be fixed after the deployment by manually ranking any of the two issues in Jira. You can find the issue with the wrong rank in the AO_60DB71_LEXORANK table. In Jira, reorder the issue manually on any board.

This option is generally used for doing small deployments on a large live instance.

Having issues with duplicate ranks does occasionally happen through normal Jira usage, hence the Lexorank integrity check. The Lexorank integrity check reports the number of issue ranks in each bucket but does not fix the issue.

You can fix the wrong ranking values by finding the issues in a board and reordering them manually.

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