Managing LexoRank
LexoRank is ranking system that Jira Software uses which provides the ability to rank issues in Jira Software instances. The user interface can be found in 
> System > Lexorank management. It provides a user interface for several of the key areas of LexoRank administration.
Balancing
As per the screenshot above, the UI provides the user with details on the distribution of issues in each bucket, and whether or not a balance is in progress or if it's disabled. Running a balance is similar to running a re-index of Jira, there isn't any guarantee it'll fix a problem unless the problem is specific to the ranking data.
The Rank Status column provides details about the status of the ranked issues. Each issue has a unique rank relative to the issues around it. This rank is stored as a string. As the amount of issues grows and you perform more ranking operations, the length of these strings increase. At some point, the length reaches a threshold, and a rebalance is scheduled within the next 12 hours.
A rebalance will evenly distribute the ranked issues, and significantly reduce the rank length. During a rebalance, ranking operations can continue as normal.
Should the length reach a second threshold within 12 hours, an immediate rebalance is started.
Should the length reach a third threshold before rebalance is finished, all rank operations are disabled until the rebalance completes.
The Rank Status field has these properties:
| Property | Possible values |
|---|---|
| Status |
|
| Length | <current length> / <maximum length> Maximum length indicates when rank operations will be disabled |
| Next rebalance |
|
In addition to the above, the field will tell you which project has the issues with the longest rank. This can be useful to diagnose the cause of a rapid increase in rank length.
If you're encountering issues and don't know why, or are unsure whether or not to balance, review the integrity checks first and contact support if need be as per the below details.
A breakdown of the service status is below:
| Service | Notes |
|---|---|
| Balancing disabled | If this is
|
| Balancing suspended |
|
| Balance handler running |
|
| Balancing in progress on a node of the cluster |
|
Integrity checks
This runs a series of tests against the LexoRank data and returns a true / false result based on the test. The tests are detailed below.
| Check | How to Fix Failures |
|---|---|
| Marker rows present in table for rank field. | If this fails, the minimum or maximum marker rows are missing. |
| Marker rows correctness check. | If this fails, the minimum or maximum marker rows exist, however they have the incorrect rank. This can be fixed by updating the rank on the row returned in the check to be the expected value. |
| Marker rows in valid bucket check. | When a balance is in progress, the marker rows are moved to another bucket to indicate where the new rank values should be. The only time they should be is in different buckets is if a balance is in progress. Valid states for the marker rows are the below.
This test fails if the marker rows are not in those buckets, and is likely caused by exceptions thrown during the rank creation or balance operation. Please check the logs for those and verify them against known problems. |
| Rank out of bounds check. | Please refer to our How to Fix Rank Out Bound Error KB article for the fix. |
| Duplicate ranks check. | This can be fixed as detailed in How To Fix Duplicate Rank Values For a Rank Field. |
| Issue ranks different from marker ranks check. | The below SQL will identify records that have ranking values the same as the min/marker rows. Deleting these records will correct this problem (and also result in a loss of ranking data for those issues only).
|
| Issue rows in valid bucket check. | If a balance can't fix this, it would need detailed analysis from Atlassian Support. |
| Balance status check. | Attempt a balance, and check the logs to see if there are any exceptions. It's likely the balance is failing due to a exception in the logs, or one of the other checks above may be failing. |
If you're unsure how to proceed, please feel free to contact support for further assistance.