Manually prioritizing projects
Asked by Kelly Goodrich:

I understand that Jira does not natively have a Priority value that covers an entire project. How can I use JQL to manually enter projects in the sequence I desire? I then want to apply this to a filter that I can assign to a gadget on a dashboard. The end goal is to have a list of projects-- the highest priority to the lowest priority displayed on a dashboard gadget.


Answers:
author: Jerrold - Empyra
body: Hi [@Kelly Goodrich](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/5056039)

If your end goal is to bring a dashboard with projects displayed by their priority from highest to the lowest, it can be achieved through the project categories.

What we can do is create project categories as follows:

P1 - Highest

P2 - High

P3 - Medium

P4 - Low

P5 - Lowest

To create project categories:

Global settings \> Projects \> Project Categories.

![ac-1.PNG](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/342617i5C80C80A4D1874CA/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "ac-1.PNG")![ac-2.PNG](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/342618i16F59A10636C59BA/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "ac-2.PNG")![ac-3.PNG](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/342619iA9B4CF2770C71A18/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "ac-3.PNG")

After creating these Project Categories, you can go to each project's settings and assign them to a category:

Projects \> Project Settings \> Details \> Categories

![ac-4.PNG](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/342620iC2B10E81A0D05A5D/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "ac-4.PNG")![ac-5.PNG](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/342621iFF5654669E5F6DE6/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "ac-5.PNG")

(In the category dropdown, you will find the Priority which we created)![ac-6.PNG](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/342622i1559DC367BD940BF/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "ac-6.PNG")

After adding all the categories to the projects, you can now go to the dashboard and add the native gadget called Projects.

![ac-8.PNG](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/342623iE6627D8A14DAA913/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "ac-8.PNG")

In the Projects gadget:

More actions (...) \> Configure \> Under **Projects and Categories**, check/select All Categories.

![ac-9.PNG](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/342624iC7B6A1B4436D1443/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "ac-9.PNG")![ac-10.PNG](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/342625i63680CD5E0188CFC/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "ac-10.PNG")

Now in the Project Gadget, you will be able to see the projects displayed by their priority from highest to lowest.

![ac-11.PNG](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/342626i5C4668A2D394ED3C/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "ac-11.PNG")

Thank you.


author: Walter Buggenhout
body: Hi [@Kelly Goodrich](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/5056039),

Assuming that you refer to *projects* as the containers you use to store issues in, the ones you access from the *projects* menu, I'm afraid that is not possible.

JQL searches for and allows you to sort issues and nothing but issues. As you are on a premium plan, it would be quite common to set up an issue type that represents your actual projects (now referring to the concept you would use in your company to represent real life business or IT projects) and add this to your Jira's [issue type hierarchy](https://support.atlassian.com/jira-cloud-administration/docs/configure-the-issue-type-hierarchy/) as an additional level above epics. Once you have this in place, you can determine the order of your project issues like you would be able to do with any other issue type.

Hope this helps!


Tags: cloud

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