"ORDER BY priority" in the Swimlane query doesn't seem to work

[Ian]

Hi everyone,

I'm stuck with a rather weird issue. We have a Jira Service Desk project, and I have created a personal Kanban board based on a filter (shows all open tickets).

I have set up several Swimlanes that are based on queries and discovered that I can use the ORDER BY in the swimlane JQL query. Now I want to sort certain swimlanes by issue priority.

I have disabled any sorting in the filter the board is using, the rank is also disabled.

Now I want to do something like this for the swimlane:

"Time to first response" = completed() ORDER BY priority DESC

But the "order by" part seems to be completely ignored in this case. Although this

"Time to first response" = running() AND "Time to first response" >= remaining(2h) ORDER BY "Time to first response" ASC

works fine.

What could be the issue?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

> "discovered that I can use the ORDER BY in the swimlane JQL query"

Who told you that?

Swimlanes can't do anything with order by, because the board filter determines the order on the board and swimlanes are part of the board.   It's valid JQL, so the system accepts it in the JQL definition, but it doesn't do anything with it.  (Slightly annoying that it passes validation, there's an open request for the swimlanes to reject order-by clauses, and a closed-won't-do one with enabling sort in swimlanes)

[Ian]

Well, that was my conclusion based on that is auto-suggests it and accepts it. 

Indeed, I have double-checked and it doesn't work at all. This is really confusing and I don't see why this can't work in theory. A higher-level (higher than filter order) order by would be a neat addition.

Thank you.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Yeah, it's a pain.  A quick fix would be a warning on the quick-filter and swimlanes screens that says "don't bother with order here, it ain't going to do anything", a better fix would be to not validate JQL if it includes a sort. 

I'm not sure implementing sortable swimlanes would be a good idea without thinking through the UI/UX very carefully - I know just sorting swimlanes in the current UI confuses people (expereinces from doing it with post-its that matched the board)