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Documentation for GreenHopper 6.2.x. Documentation for earlier versions of GreenHopper is [available too].
GreenHopper allows you to set up rankings for your issues to help you organise tasks in your product/sprint backlog more effectively. Rankings allow you to prioritise issues at a more granular level than issue priorities in JIRA, as rankings can help you to determine whether a single issue is more important/urgent than anothersingle issue. For example, you may have two separate issues which both have a priority of 'Major'. Using GreenHopper, you can assign one of the issues a higher ranking than the other.
To rank issues in GreenHopper Classic,
You need to set up a Ranking field before you can rank issues. Please see Configuring your General Project Settings for details.
You can drag-and-drop one or multiple cards with your mouse. Just hold down the 'CTRL' key on your keyboard (if selecting multiple issues), click the card header (i.e. the top section of the card, containing the issue key) to select the desired card(s), then drag to the desired destination.
Screenshot: Dragging and dropping a card
You can move an issue(s) between pages by dragging the card(s) up to the pagination controls (e.g. '1', '2', '3', '>>', etc) and then onto your chosen page in the desired location.
Once you have dropped a card in a new location, the other cards are immediately reorganised.
If you drag and drop an issue with sub-tasks, all of the sub-tasks will also be moved together with the parent issue. You cannot drag and drop a parent issue onto a subtask nor a subtask onto a different parent issue.
77 Comments
evamonsen
Is there a way other than drag-and-drop to assign ranks to issues, such as editing the Rank field directly?
I have many issues whose ranks need updating and drag-and-drop is inefficient. Some issues need to move from the top of the list to the bottom, requiring the window to scroll for several seconds while dragging.
Ideally, I'd like the Rank field to be shown in the List view of the Planning Board. Normally I'd add it using the Card Styles configuration screen. But Rank does not show up in the list of available fields. Is there another way to add it?
Nicholas Muldoon [Atlassian]
Hi Eva,
Yes, you can edit the rank via the JIRA Edit Issue screen as an alternative to the drag and drop.
One reason we have avoided displaying the rank field on the card itself is that the value of the field displayed is an 'absolute' rank while the data stored in the field is relative. As such, any update of the rank field on one card we would require a reload of all other cards, so that they could obtain their new 'absolute' rank value.
Thank you Eva.
Regards,
Nicholas Muldoon
Ramon van Alteren
I can't seem to get the rank field to show in the JIRA edit issue screen even though the field has been added.
Any special magic that needs to be performed ?
The release notes seem to indicate that this is disabled and only drag&drop is supported in the GH UI....
This is really annoying some of the people here, since they have to do prioritisation over 4000+ issues in some projects and drag & drop is not really an ideal solution to that
Anonymous
I don't see it either. Is it supposed to be there or not?
Rosie Jameson [Atlassian]
Sorry, there is a problem with this at the moment – we are working on it.
You may like to watch/vote on GHS-3967 - Getting issue details... STATUS
Anonymous
I agree.
Ingo Schmidt
I have exactly the same problem:
The ranking field cannot be added to the templates and thus does not show in any of the views.
Anonymous
Similar problem, except across pages. I have not found a way other than 'edit' of the story to move one storte to the end of the list across multiple pages. If I want to move the first 15 stories to the end of 200 stories, i have to edit 15 stories one by one. If there is a better/faster way, please let me know as it would save a LOT of time.
Thank you
Nicholas Muldoon [Atlassian]
A better way to do this is to select all cards, either with a Shift-select or a Control-select, and then drag them up to the pagination and to the final page.
You can then drop the cards at the end of the last card, on the final page of the pagination.
Thank you.
Regards,
Nicholas Muldoon
Anonymous
I found I could use Preferences to select the number of cards on a page - which I increased to > than the number of assks that I had. Then I did not have a page boundary to try to move rank across.
thanks
Maury Richards
Dragging and dropping between pages is not working for me. I select a story on the third page, drag it to the page selecter until it opens up the pop-up with the page's stories, place the story I am dragging in the correct location on the new page and drop. As soon as I do, poof, the story is back where it was before I started the drag and drop. Is there some setting that I need to change? I am able to change story ranking within a page, just not between pages.
Anonymous
I'm having the same problem. I changed my view to show more issues on a page hoping for a work-around. No luck though. I drag, drop, refresh and the issue jumps back to it's original location. Anyone know of a work-around?
Nicholas Muldoon [Atlassian]
Hello,
There is no setting that you need to change to get this to work. Can you please ensure that you are using the latest version of GreenHopper.
If you are on the latest version of GreenHopper please raise a support request.
Thank you.
Nicholas
Maury Richards
I found out what was wrong. For some reason when I applied the Greenhopper project template to my new project it did not correctly set the Ranking field to Rank. Rather it was not set at all. I have since set the Ranking field to Rank and I am now able to rank my stories correctly.
Anonymous
Seems to me if you were able to drag-and-drop on a single page, Rank must have been setup correctly.
I am having the same problem: I can D&D within a page, but not across pages.
Perhaps I'm not "aiming" for the right place. Do you drag to:
1. right on top of the destination page marker?
2. Just a bit to its right?
3. to the top of the large grey box that appears when you hover over a destination page?
4. As above, but drop the source item somewhere within the large grey box?
5.?
Anonymous
One aspect I found that wasn't described above in the Important Information box above is that ranking only works if your context is set to sort by the rank field.
I had set the sort order to be by Priority for temporary purposes, and then the Drag and Drop resort stopped working.
Al Mecklenburg
(Adding this reply just be shown as logged in (which I had forgotten to do above) and watch this page.)
Marco Wlotzka
I am wondering, why changing the rank is not reported in the history?!
Nicholas Muldoon [Atlassian]
Hi Marco,
More discussion on the topic can be found here. In short, whenever you rank one issue it could change a relative rank on all other issues in the project, which would lead to a lot of noise and not much value (plus a large number of notification emails).
Feel free to join the discussion on GHS-347
Thanks,
Nick
Anonymous
Hi All,
Am new to this GreenHopper in jira. Actually i have a associated the Rank Field to my Project and
i have placed it on Create Screen of the Corresponding Issue Type.
Question1: when i create the issue i got the Rank Field but the text at right of the Field displays
as disabled?
Question2: Can i pass any value into that field of create Screen or the plugin automatically set the
Ranks for our issues?
Question3: After i create an issue when i click on the planning board i see lot of cards where am
unable to see any rank for the issues?
Question4: On which Screen i have to place this Field?
I think i have done correctly till associating the Rank Field with Project and issue type,after
that what i have to do that am not aware please help me out......:(
Thanks in advance.
Nagul Shaik
Nicholas Muldoon [Atlassian]
Hi Nagul,
You will need to ensure that the Rank custom field (of GreenHopper Ranking type) is available for all issue types in your JIRA Project. Please also ensure that you have the Context set to Sort By the same Rank custom field. Once you have done this the issues on the Planning and Task Boards are displayed in rank, sorted ascending.
You can change the Rank field upon issue creation via the New Card dialog on the Agile tab. You will probably also want to add the Rank field to the Default screen.
Thank you Nagul.
Regards,
Nicholas Muldoon
Anonymous
Hi,
I'm working on an customizedView by making a xml-export and embedding xsl. Which format do CustomFields of type "Rank" have?
For example i get "5.5e8" for a value in htmlview of "54"...
or in which table is "rank" saved? there is no entry in "customfield"-table.
thx in advance
John Price
In case this helps anyone:
I have a scenario where a single "DEV" JIRA Project has multiple backlogs within it based on different saved filters with Component restrictions. Also, I wanted to keep track of the top requests from each department, which often cross the product backlogs. I was able to do this in the following way:
It's a bit of an odd setup but it works for us. We don't really publish versioned products - instead we are an internal dev team who does tons of ad hoc reports, intranet pages, tools, etc. We just have sprints marked 2011.7.1, 2011.7.2 etc. (first and 2nd sprints of July 2011) and we drag a mess of stuff in there.
Hope this may help someone.
Michael Tso
Hi I have developed a UI to interact with the JIRA SOAP API. I have successfully changed the ranking value, yet I could only change the "absolute" value of the ranking, which often leads to a wrong "relative" ranking (which Greenhopper actually shows). Does anyone know the ranking mechanism that Greenhopper uses?
Is it allowed for me to edit the rankings for all the issues in my project and then upload them all at once?
Nicholas Muldoon [Atlassian]
Hi Michael,
It is a bit of a black box at the moment. Best bet, raise a feature request for the ability to update the rank field via an interface.
We'll likely do this via a Java and REST API for the Global Rank field closer to December. Note, the Global Rank field is only used on the Rapid Board and we'll be migrating the GreenHopper Rank custom field to this.
Thanks Michael,
Nicholas Muldoon
Michael Tso
The Greenhopper Ranking field is not supported by Athlassian.
Nicholas Muldoon [Atlassian]
Hi Michael,
The GreenHopper Ranking custom field is supported by Atlassian, it is a core component of GreenHopper which is a supported product.
Did you have difficulty getting support for its configuration or usage? If so please let me know.
Regards,
Nicholas Muldoon
Skype: nickmuldoon
Twitter: @nickmuldoon
Jason Erickson
In general, the newest things are the most important things for us. Is there any way that the default rank could be at the top of the list instead of last?
Anonymous
+1 for this
Anonymous
+1 for this
Gandalf
Hello,
What is the best practice for ranking issues? We have difficulties to rank unscheduled issues. We prepare in front always a release and some sprints and keep a lot of issues unscheduled. Different users can add new stories, epics...
However, moving (drag & drop) is taking some time and as requests, priorities...changes very often, it's very difficult to keep the unscheduled issues with a proper ranking.
We use some custom fields in order to identify some priority aspects of our issues like:
Each of those priorities have a value from 1-10. Finaly, taking into aspect the story points we obtain [(user value + time value + IDV) / story points] = Weighted shorted jobs First (SWJF) which is in fact an "objective ranking" of the issues (but some issues can have the same value).
My question: is it not possible to rank issues based on a filter [Defining an order based on whatever criteria (e.g: order by WSJF or any custom field)]?
The purpose would be, that the project manager could apply an automatic ranking based on a defined filter. After this ranking, the project manager could still change the ranking based on subjective criteria (drag & drop) and chose whenever he wants to reset the ranking based on a filter.
Does this kind of functionality already exist or is there some work around or is this a feature request? This would help us (as project manager) numerous hours of planning, adjusting... and still have the flexibility of manually adapt the ranking if necessary.
Many thanks for you feedback.
Kind regards,
JJ Courtens
Adlogix
skype: jjcourtens71
Anonymous
I have the same question/request. Using JIRAs filter to assign ranks is the most wanted feature for GreenHopper ranking system.
Looking forward for the answer.
Vadim Goryunov
Anonymous
Hi. same issue here. I have a JIRA query by priority and a few other fields that i want to use as the base rank, then manually triage.
Gandalf
By the way, we're using JIRA studio
Thx,
JJ
Anonymous
Is there a way to limit the rights to force rank in Unscheduled/Product Backlog bucket to Product Manager role only?
Anonymous
This is explained in details at: http://www.greenpeppersoftware.com/site/posts/list/344.page
Anonymous
Hi,
I noticed that only issues that have sub-tasks are correctly ranked on a Task Board. On planning board issues are sorted in a right way (according to set rank), but on the task board issues with no sub-tasks go to "other issues" tab. Is it a known bug?
Nicholas Muldoon [Atlassian]
Hello,
It sounds like you have the Outline Mode enabled on the Task Board. You may wish to switch to the Compact (Kanban) Mode. More information can be found on Using the task board modes.
Thank you.
Nicholas
Anonymous
What is the difference between Rank and Global Rank?
Rosie Jameson [Atlassian]
"Global Rank" is a new type of custom field which was introduced in GreenHopper 5.8 (for details, please see the GreenHopper 5.8 Upgrade Notes).
Anonymous
Is there a way to get 1) the relative ranking of the current open issues. 2) the relative ranking within a fixVersion (sprint)?
Nicholas Muldoon [Atlassian]
Hello,
You will see the relative ranking of the issues within your project on the Planning Board, to see all issues use the Project Overview mode.
To see the relative ranking of only those issues within a Fix Version please switch to the Version mode on the Planning Board and then select your desired version.
Thank you.
Nicholas Muldoon
Anonymous
Not sure if this is the right place for this - is there any way for new stories that are created to be prioritised highest instead of lowest? In our environment there are multiple people who capture stories and this would force the PO to see them and push them down explicitly rather than not seeing them at all...
Nicholas Muldoon [Atlassian]
Hello,
I believe the functionality you are looking for is covered in this story. Please view, vote and comment on that issue to show your support.
It is not on the backlog at present.
Thank you,
Nicholas
Anonymous
Hi,
I have a problem regarding the rank-field (I think). When first creating a story within my project, I get the Rank-field alright and are able to create the story. When I later try to view my story in Task Board, I receive the following exception:
org.apache.velocity.exception.MethodInvocationException: Invocation of method 'getPagination' in class com.pyxis.greenhopper.jira.boards.VersionBoard threw exception class java.lang.NullPointerException
The story has then disappeared from the Planning Board and are categorized as an "other issue". The only way to see my story after this point is within the regular issue context (non-greenhopper), and when I try to edit my issue here I receive the following exception:
The issue is also undeletable at this point (will confirm deletion, but won't actually delete the issue).
Any suggestions what to do or directions to correct and faulty configuration regarding Greenhopper/Rank-field?
Thanks!
Nicholas Muldoon [Atlassian]
Hello,
Please raise a support request for assistance with this issue.
Thank you,
Nicholas Muldoon
Tanel Tenso
Hello,
This issue still exists in GH 5.8.6. Its related to AO and in some point under heavy load following exception will be thrown:
After that exception com.atlassian.greenhopper.service.rank.RankDao does not work anymore and gives following exception:
This means that due to AO exception a row remains into manual transaction tracking table (AO_60DB71_ISSUERANKINGLOG), that will prevent RankingDao to continue as functional part in Jira. After restart in init a executeOutstandingTransaction() method is called that will remedy this situation.
Does it only seem to me, or is this logic a bit screwed?
But anyway, the first AO exception seems to come from the AO core. We've gotten it from our custom plugin also, which uses AO for data storage and is totally unrelated to Ranking functionality.
The solution to current problem isn't worked out yet but we'll hope that it will be in the near future. I'll try to post here an update if somebody cares.
Regards,
Tanel Tenso
Anonymous
For anyone lost like me - set your ranking field using these instructions.
Anonymous
Sorry I meant these instructions....
http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/GH/Configuring+your+General+Project+Settings
Rosie Jameson [Atlassian]
Thanks - I've updated the page to include a link.
Anonymous
As a Jira / Greenhopper Admin I should be able to veiw the 'Add Global Rank' button. But When I try to :-
Enabling Drag-and-Drop Ranking
To enable ranking of issues by drag-and-drop, and grouping of sub-tasks under their parent issue:
Click the 'Add Global Rank' button
I do not see "Add Global Rank" button !!
What could be the cause ?
Screen Shot - https://picasaweb.google.com/111990409777684508952/December112011?authkey=Gv1sRgCN_O76aTgZTrEg
Rosie Jameson [Atlassian]
Can you please advise which version of GreenHopper you are using? Also, did you upgrade from a previous version and if so, did you have a Ranking field configured prior to the upgrade?
Many thanks
Anonymous
We are using GreenHopper- 5.7. Yes we did have the ranking feild enabled prior to configuring the upgrade. Currently I can see the new "Global Rank" feild but unable to edit it.
I can view the "Global Rank" feild on the ticket but am not sure where to go to edit it. Also when I try to re-prioritize tickes on the rapid board I am only able to move the tickets from one swim lane to another and am unable to prioritize the tickets.
Nicholas Muldoon [Atlassian]
Hello,
Can you please upgrade to GreenHopper 5.8, that will allow you to take advantage of the new Global Rank functionality.
Thank you,
Nicholas Muldoon
Anonymous
Hi - we are a bit confused by this change to ranking. In our dev environments our rank field disappeared with the 5.8 upgrade so we have postponed the upgrade until we better understand how to proceed. We often edited that field in Jira - especially on initial issue creation. We would also reference it and sort by it in the issue navigator as a guide for bulk edits, updates etc. We would rank in Greenhopper as more "fine tuning" but initial rank we set at issue creation time with the rank field. Is this no long possible? If so I don't understand the rationale - we found the rank field very useful.
Nicholas Muldoon [Atlassian]
Hello,
A bit of background, we changed the ranking functionality from being per-project to global to enable teams to plan and rank stories across multiple projects.
In doing this we removed the ability to edit the rank on the JIRA View / Edit Issue screen as it no longer made sense - ie, you were no longer ranking within a project, you were ranking within the global context in JIRA. Instead, the way to rank issues is in GreenHopper using the drag and drop or keyboard shortcuts in your selected Rapid View (Rapid Board) or Project/Context (Planning Board).
When creating the issues via GreenHopper (using the 'c' keyboard shortcut for instance) you can set the initial rank of the issue you are creating. You can also still sort by the rank field on the Issue Navigator.
More information on the future direction of GreenHopper can be found on The Future of GreenHopper page. A discussion about the ability to edit the rank via the JIRA Edit Issue screen can be found here.
Thank you,
Nicholas
Mark Ellison
As a project manager, I have a developer working on issues within two different Jira projects, Project A and Project B. I have used Greenhopper to rank all issues assigned to this developer within each project, so that he knows which issues to work on first relative to other issues within that project.
However, the developer still does not which issue to work on first: the top-ranked issue from Project A or the top-ranked issue from Project B.
What I need is a way to rank issues globally, across all Jira projects. So the project manager can rank issues within a project, but then rank all issues across all projects as well. That way, as a developer, I can login to Jira, see my dashboard, and know exactly which issue to work on first regardless of project.
Does Greenhopper support global rankings in any way?
Rosie Jameson [Atlassian]
Yes it does – via the new Rapid Board (also please see Ranking an Issue on the Rapid Board)
Magic Software Enterprises
All my users seem to have the ability to adjust rankings. How can I restrict the ability to drag and drop so that only the admin can do it?
Nicholas Muldoon [Atlassian]
Hi Stephanie,
By default the Resolve Issue Permission is used when identifying those users who can rank issue. You can change this to the Schedule Issue Permission if you wish.
Thank you,
Nicholas
Magic Software Enterprises
What are they losing if I remove the Resolve Issue Permission - the developers are actually managing tasks on the Task Board and resolving them when they are complete.
grant luna
I have enabled ranking and setup a ranking context to sort my issues on the agile planning board. That works fine and I can drag and drop cards. However, I would prefer to rank issues by versions. Is that possible? Here is my setup..
I use the versions functionality to define my sprints. I want to rank the issues within each sprint in an order of 1 - N...
version "Sprint 1" has 20 issues....would like those issues to have a ranking system of 1-20 (and allow drag and drop re-order of ranking).
Anonymous
Hi, is there any possibility to load all issues from VersionBoard view SOAP? Thanks.
Nicholas Muldoon [Atlassian]
Hello,
There is a REST API for the ranking. This sounds like a question for Atlassian Answers.
Cheers,
Nick
David Corley
We've got the following setup:
Epic assigned to user X for Sprint 1
Epic-subtasks created for same sprints but assigned to user Y for Sprint 1
Within User Y's planning board context for Sprint 1, we have the Epic sub-tasks mentioned above and a handful of other tasks.
The Epic Subtasks are all grouped together at the top of the list view. The following behaviour is observable:
In our case, we don't want all of the sub-tasks to be completed as the top priority items. However, we cannot move the sub-tasks to a position lower on the planning board.
Correspondingly there's no way for us to move one of the tasks into a position higher than the sub-tasks.
Is this expected behaviour?
Nicholas Muldoon [Atlassian]
Hi David,
Yes, this is expected behaviour on the Planning Board for parent issues and their sub-tasks. The sub-tasks will 'stick' below the parent, allowing you to rank the sub-tasks amongst themselves but not against other parents.
Thanks David,
Nicholas
srinivasp
Hi,
I created custom fileds "Rank" and "Story Point" and configured to render on Defect/Enhancement creation screens. "Story Point" is rendered on the screens but not the other one. Am i doing some thing wrong? Greenhopper is enabled so is that the reason?
Thanks,
Srinivas
Tim Bogaert (Suits, Spectre)
Hi, in planning board our sub-tasks don't stick with their parent. They randomly get attached to another task in planning mode (the data is correct when you open the single items though)
Any idea how we can repair this issue? Reïndexing didn't help.
We are using greenhopper 5.10.1 (on demand version)
Anonymous
is there a way to group the linked issues together on the rapid board? We see the issues and subtasks at the top of the screen, but the linked issues are at the bottom of the screen. We want to be able to see all of the issues grouped together on the screen.
Anonymous
good Evening,
Our clients like to rank issues in a more user friendly manner using JIRA priority fields our developers prefer the granular green hopper ranking - in order to appeasecboth groups - is it possible to set up default mappings / cascading updates between these fields so that when our clients sets the priority, the ranking field automatically updates based on a rule set .
Please let me know if it's possible to achieve this kind of set up - even by alternative means
many thanks!
Barry merrill
Anonymous
Hi All,
I don't have the 'Rank' Context field available so I cant drag and drop to schedule tasks, can anyone help me with this?
thanks.
James
Margaret Snyder
We have noticed that when using the ranking functionality, we can set the ranking but it is not maintained. We have set the ranking by drag and drop in the Planning board. If you navigate away from the Planning board, the ranking is not maintained. This also appears to happen across users. The rank is set as one number for 1 user but another for another user. Is there something we need to change for the Rank to function properly?
Rick Trudeau
Not being able to specify a Rank at Issue Creation time as of GH 5.8 is a real problem for us.
Our users will regularly break down a ranked Issue into several other issues, all of which we want to keep the same ranking for. Now, when we break down an issue (by cloning it), the new Issue gets ranked to the bottom of the list forcing users to then go to the Agile side and manually drag and drop the new Issue to the spot below the initial ranked item. This is a massive headache for us. Is there a workaround to this?
mir(yam) gillian
Can the JIRA REST API be used to order stories for the Rapid Board?
Maarten van Malland
I want to make a filter which gives me the issues from which the rank has been changed.
We are using the ranking functionality to give priority.
So I want to know the issues for which the priority has changed.
Something like this:
project = PROJECT and "Rank" changed BEFORE endOfWeek() AFTER startOfWeek()
Rosie Jameson [Atlassian]
You could try like this:
priority CHANGED BEFORE endOfWeek() AFTER startOfWeek()
(the JQL "CHANGED" operator supports the "Priority" field, but only a few other fields)
Maarten van Malland
This is indeed the idea but then on the Ranking fields instead of the Priority field.
I got the idea that this is not possible, so I will create a manual process for this; too bad.
Maybe something too consider for some future enhancement.
If somebody has some alternative way to quickly find the issues that have been re-ranked; pls let me know