# See work that sits out of request order

The business keeps its requests in an order on a request board. The team keeps
its backlog in an order of its own. A board of backlog items can compare the
two: point it at the request board, and every item that sits below where its
request says it belongs is marked. Each reader can also sort the board by the
requests' order, to see the backlog the way the business ranked it.

Nothing here writes. The marks and the sort read the backlog and the requests,
and the backlog's own order stays exactly as it was. To make the backlog follow
the requests, use **Take priorities**, which reorders it after a preview: see
[Put the backlog in the order of its requests](https://anykanban.com/docs/move-work/take-priorities-from-requests/).

## Before you start

You need a request board: a board whose cards are requests, of a type that sits
on no backlog, ordered by its order field. [A board for what the business asked
for](https://anykanban.com/docs/guide-business-requests/) builds one. Each request is Related to the
backlog work that delivers it, on the backlog item itself or on an item above
it, such as its feature or its epic.

The request board must be shared, under a team's group or the project board
list, so that everyone who opens the backlog board can read it.

## Steps

1. Open the board of backlog items, for example a board of user stories, and
   open **Settings**.
2. On the **General** tab, under **Card order**, choose the request board in
   **Request board**, and press **Save**.
3. Read the cards. An item that sits below where its request says it belongs
   carries **Out of request order** in its state row.
4. To see the board in the requests' order, open the **…** overflow and choose
   **By request rank**. Choose it again to go back to the backlog order.

## What you should see

The mark sits beside the age, and its tip names the request and the request
board: *Its place in the backlog disagrees with the order of its request, #51
Claims intake, on Requests.* When the request is linked to an item above, the
tip names that item too: *Its place in the backlog disagrees with the order of
its request, #51 Claims intake, on Requests, through Epic 200.* The **List**
view marks the same items, beside their titles.

The board marks the fewest items that would have to move to put the backlog in
request order. When two items disagree, the lower one is marked, because that is
the work sitting below where its request says it belongs. Items on the same
request are in order whatever their order between themselves. Two requests with
the same rank are told apart by their id, as the request board lists them, so
the item under the lower id comes first. An item with no request is never
marked.

An item whose request has no place on the request board yet belongs after every
item whose request has one. Such items form one group at the end of the request
order, in their backlog order between themselves, and one of them is marked only
when it sits above an item whose request is ranked. Its tip says so: *Its
request, #53 Fleet quote, has no place on Requests yet, so it belongs after the
items whose requests have one.* When that request is linked to an item above,
the tip names that item too: *Its request, #53 Fleet quote, through Epic 100,
has no place on Requests yet, so it belongs after the items whose requests have
one.*

While **By request rank** is on, each column, and the whole List, shows the items
by the rank of their request, the backlog order inside one request, and the
items without a request last. A line above the board says *Ordered by request
board Requests. Cards keep their backlog rank, and dragging is off while this
order is shown.* A card can still move to another column. Moving a card up or
down in its column, and Move to top, bottom and position, are off until the
backlog order is back. The choice is yours alone and is kept for this board.

## Notes

**Which request counts.** An item's request is a work item of the request
board's type that is Related to the item, or to the nearest item above it that
has one: the item itself first, then its parent, then the parent's parent. Of
several requests on the same item, the one ranked highest counts. A request in
another project is ranked by its own project's order field. If the request type
carries no order field in that project, the items under that request cannot be
judged, and the board says how many.

A request in a finished or removed state no longer counts. An item whose own
requests are all finished takes the request of the nearest item above it that
has one still open, exactly as an item with no request of its own does. A
request that is open but has no place on the request board yet still counts: it
puts its item in the group after every ranked request.

**Which items are compared.** The items of this board's query, in every column
whose state is not finished or removed, that carry an order of their own. The
filter changes what you see, not what is compared.

**The marks and Take priorities.** A mark judges an item by its own request or
by the nearest one above it, so it shows, on this board's level, every item
that would have to move for the whole hierarchy to follow the requests. Take
priorities, with the choice its preview starts with, moves only marked items
that have a request of their own, and not always all of them: a marked item
can already be in order among the items that have a request of their own.
With **The whole hierarchy** chosen it also moves the marked items that take
their request from an item above, so that they follow it. Either way its
preview says how many of the marked cards move in this run, and for each of
the others why it stays where it is.

**What the board reads.** Nothing until it names a request board. Then, with
every load, a few reads that do not grow with the number of cards: the request
board's settings and its query's text, one read per level of items above the
cards (two for stories under features under epics, however many stories there
are), and one read of the requests. The request board's query is not run.

While the board is open, a request reordered on its own board, and a link
added or removed on an item or on an item above it, show within one refresh.
That holds whichever end the link was written from, such as a request linked
to an item from the request's own form, or an item added under a new parent
from the parent's form. Replacing an item's request with another in a single
change shows within one refresh too. The board also reads the items above the
cards again every five minutes, which brings in the rare change no refresh can
see there: a link to an item that is neither a request nor above the cards,
or to one you cannot open, swapped for another link in a single change. On an
item on the board itself, such a swap shows when the item next changes or the
board is opened again.

**When nothing shows.** An **As of** snapshot shows no marks. Nor does a board
whose cards do not follow the backlog order, because its query sorts by another
field or its items carry no order field. Nor does one whose request board orders
its cards by its query rather than by rank, has items with no order field,
cannot be found, or is itself a board of backlog items. In each of those cases
the **Request board** setting says which. If the board cannot follow every link
from some cards, because an item above them or something they link to cannot be
read, those cards are not marked, and the board says how many it could not
judge. If the requests cannot be read again while the board is open, the marks
stay as they were, and the line above the board says they may be out of date.

**What travels.** Exporting the board keeps the request board it names.
Importing it keeps that choice when the request board comes in the same file as a
shared board, or is already shared here, and drops it otherwise.

## Related

- [Put the backlog in the order of its requests](https://anykanban.com/docs/move-work/take-priorities-from-requests/)
- [A board for what the business asked for](https://anykanban.com/docs/guide-business-requests/)
- [See everything the query returned, in one list](https://anykanban.com/docs/find-and-analyze/everything-the-query-returned/)
- [See what changed since the plan was set](https://anykanban.com/docs/find-and-analyze/what-changed-since-the-baseline/)