How do I sort my story-swimlanes on a kanban board?

[NathanG]

I have a kanban board that is showing issues and their subtasks and we like having the swimlanes set to be the story.  (This is because we are focusing on the subtasks).

However, I can't figure out how to re-rank the main stories on the same board: I can't drag and drop the stories (which are swimlanes).

I have figured out that I can create a separate kanban board called "sorting" (which has NO swimlanes) and use that board behind the scenes to re-rank my stories... then when I refresh my main board the stories are sorted to match the changes I made on my other board.

Is there a better way to re-sort my swimlanes (which are my stories) on my main kanban board?

Thank you~!

[Christie Coster]

Hello All, 

I came here looking for the same answer and then stumbled upon a solution. 

First, what I have going on; My Kanban board is showing my Stories sorted into Swimlanes.

Base Swimlanes on "Epics"

When I first set this setting my Epic Swimlanes were placed in order by when they were created. My organized mind wanted them to be sorted by what is most important to me. So I did the following:

Go into settings - Base Swimlanes on "None"

Go to Kanban board - (all of my Epic issues are in the Backlog column) move the "Epic" issues up and down in the column in the order I want them (most important at the top). 

Go back into settings - Base Swimlanes on "Epics"

Go back to Kanban board and the lanes were then in the order I wanted. 

Hope this helps. 

[David.Werner]

Thanks... This works

[Stefan Khan-Kernahan]

Under Board Settings -> Columns, enable the Epics Panel. Then, in the backlog view, the order you arrange the Epics in the Epics Panel will be the order in the swimlanes, no need to toggle back and forth.

[Chris Solgat]

Unless you add a sortable field to your project, there is unfortunately no better way.  Actually if you're just looking to have a singular board, you can use a Scrum board for your Kanban team.  Then you can rank your stories in the backlog and they will be in the same order.  The only catch to that is, you have to have an active sprint in order to use the Work/Active Sprints mode.

[Graham]

Hi Nathan,

I have the same issue - did you ever find a better solution?

Cheers

[NathanG]

Nope :-(