Portfolio Initiatives changing order when Epics are added to them

[Mike Silva]

My team is using Portfolio to manage a company-wide project that spans 20 JIRA projects, ~80 Epics, and hundreds of Engineers.  We are new to Portfolio.  The Initiatives are created, and we're finding that when we add existing Epics to them, it changes the order of the Initiatives when viewed in Portfolio.  I know, however, that the rank order of the Initiatives is NOT changing, based on a simple Filter I created based on Rank order.

What could possibly be happening that is causing this?  Is the JIRA instance-wide Epic rank affecting the order of the Initiatives in Portfolio view when the Epics are added to the Initiatives?  If so, can I prevent that (and is that an 'ok' practice)?

Thanks,
-MikeS

[MattS]

There is some useful info in the comments of https://community.atlassian.com/t5/JIRA-questions/Epic-ranking-in-Portfolio-2-0/qaq-p/198306 that may provide some insight