Summary

When the rankings of Epics in Jira are pulled into Jira Align, amendments are made to the Program rankings of the corresponding Features in Jira Align. This process is discussed in How to sync backlog rank between Jira Align and Jira Software 

As the Program Rank list contains all Features, with or without a valid Program Increment (PI), going back to the very start of the Program and also includes Features that exist in the Jira Align Program but were never synchronized to Jira (due to not having a Jira Project set), this list can be confusing as the numeric rank positions cannot easily be compared with Jira. All a viewer can do is look at the relative order - and if there are a large number of features, then this is difficult to do.

This article provides a method to display the ranking of Features in Jira Align within their Program Increment  which is then easier to compare with the ranks set in Jira.

Environment

Jira Align

Solution

1. In Jira Align, go to Program > choose your program > Backlog 
2. Remove the selected PI from the left menu bar so that All Time is displayed
3. After the screen refreshes, make sure the Viewing drop-down at the top is set to Feature, then click Pull Rank > Pull rank from External System
   
4. Allow enough time for the sync to complete and the latest Jira Epic ranking data to be pulled into Jira Align's Feature Program ranking.
5. Once the sync is complete (the Pull Rank from External System menu option has re-appeared), go to the left side bar and select your desired Program Increment. The screen will refresh and a pop-up will briefly display stating that the ranking has changed to Program Rank View - Program Increment Specific
   
6. At this point, the list won't be ranked to match Jira. It will still be ranked based on the last ranking changes that were made in Jira Align.
7. Click Pull Rank > Use Program rank to sort Features (the below image was captured before completing this step so the list of example Features is shown in creation order)
   
8. The screen will refresh to display the Program Increment specific ranking of the Features for review.
   
    
9. These rankings have not yet been applied. To apply them, click the Apply button in the blue box located near the bottom right of the screen.
10. Once the above actions have been taken, all Backlog views (List, Kanban > State View, Kanban > Process Flow...) will reflect the ranking order from Jira
    

Notes:

• Jira maintains a flat list of rankings across all work items. Jira Align maintains multiple separate ranking lists for different areas and work items - see this article for more information: Prioritize/rank work items in the backlog
• Pulling ranks from Jira is not automated on a schedule, when required it has to be manually performed by a Jira Align user