Sprint ordering in agile reports dropdown lists and backlog page
Platform Notice: Data Center Only - This article only applies to Atlassian products on the Data Center platform.
Note that this KB was created for the Data Center version of the product. Data Center KBs for non-Data-Center-specific features may also work for Server versions of the product, however they have not been tested. Support for Server* products ended on February 15th 2024. If you are running a Server product, you can visit the Atlassian Server end of support announcement to review your migration options.
*Except Fisheye and Crucible
Summary
While reviewing Agile Reports at the boards (Sprint Report, Burnup Chart, etc.), you may notice that in some cases, sprint ordering doesn't seem to follow any reasonable pattern — sprints aren't sorted in the alphabetic order (by sprint name) or in chronological order (by sprint start/end date).
Solution
In fact, sprints are not sorted alphabetically or by start/end date, and instead, a more sophisticated algorithm is used. Every sprint entry has its own unique ID and SEQUENCE number. The ID is unique identification while SEQUENCE is responsible for the ordering of the sprint on the Board (when you move the sprint up or down on the board):
"AO_60DB71_SPRINT" listing
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jiradb=# SELECT "CLOSED", "ID", "NAME", "RAPID_VIEW_ID", "START_DATE", "COMPLETE_DATE", "END_DATE", "SEQUENCE"
FROM "AO_60DB71_SPRINT"
WHERE "RAPID_VIEW_ID" = 24 ORDER BY "ID" DESC;
CLOSED | ID | NAME | RAPID_VIEW_ID | START_DATE | COMPLETE_DATE | END_DATE | SEQUENCE
--------+----+-----------+---------------+---------------+---------------+---------------+----------
t | 45 | Sprint 05 | 24 | 1657302240000 | 1656949917736 | 1658511840000 | 41
t | 44 | Sprint 04 | 24 | 1657215840000 | 1656949910062 | 1658425440000 | 45
t | 43 | Sprint 03 | 24 | 1657129440000 | 1656949925505 | 1658339040000 | 42
t | 42 | Sprint 02 | 24 | 1657043040000 | 1656949748195 | 1658252640000 | 44
t | 41 | Sprint 01 | 24 | 1656956580000 | 1656949900944 | 1658166180000 | 43
(5 rows)When you switch to the Reports page, Jira makes a request to /rest/greenhopper/1.0/sprintquery/<board_id> to retrieve a list of sprints. The received response has a list of different values included, like 'id', 'sequence', 'name' etc. Jira sums up the 'id' and 'sequence' numbers and sorts sprints based on the received sum. In the case of some sprint's sum of 'id' and 'sequence' will be equal, then the sprint with a higher sequence number will go up.
So, taking into account this algorithm, the sprints from the above SQL query will be sorted in the following order:
Sprint 04 > Sprint 02 > Sprint 05 > Sprint 03 > Sprint 01
The same algorithm would be also used for active sprint ordering at Backlog page (in case Administration (⚙) > Jira Software configuration > Parallel Sprints option is enabled).
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