This question came to me via email and I thought I'd post it here, as well as any replies in case other people can benefit from this information:

Hi Max,I have a question about some options in reporting:  Can I sort w/o alphabetizing?  Right now the column that I’m sorting does so alphabetically… can I choose the order? Thank you!

~<name withheld>

It is possible to sort your data by any visible (or invisible) property.

In Report Builder, it looks like the data will automatically sort alphabetically by the first column of data.

If you'd rather sort by some other property, insert that other data item in your report, select that new data column and sort; then, delete that column of data and choose to retain the sorting.  You will be prompted to do so.

Give that a try and let me know!

Thanks,

Max

Hi Max,

I think I didn't ask the right question.  I grouped data according to phases, but instead of maintaining the order that the phases were in, Daptiv alphabetized them.  I do not want that... is there a way to rearrange the grouping order?

 Thank you.

 ~ashwina.

Hi Ashwina:

I understand your question now!  Sorry I didn't quite get it before.

The answer is yes.  The data field you are looking for is called "Phase Number" and it corresponds to the individual phase settings for your projects.  Add it to your report, sort by it, and you'll get the desired order of phases.  See screenshot for example:

Hi Max,

My fault.  Is there a way to hide a column?  I'd like for the phase number not to show up on the report, it now looks the way i need it to look aside from the phase numbers.

 Thank you!

 ~ashwina.

Yes, you can certainly hide a column -- even one by which you're sorting.  Go back to my original response above, and that's the part of your question I answered first.

Basically, add the column, apply the sorting, then DELETE the column; you'll be prompted about whether you want to keep the sorting intact or not.  And you do, in this case.

Did that work for you? 

-Max

No... I was not asked if I wanted to keep sorting intact.

The reason you were not prompted to keep the sorting is because you hadn't actually applied an explicit sort to that column of data.  You were seeing the output sort correctly, in effect, simply because you inserted the Phase Number column as the FIRST column.  The FIRST column always sorts (automatically)!  Therefore, deleting that column didn't create a prompt to retain the sorting.

If you go ahead and *explicitly* apply a sort to Phase Number, and *then* delete the column, you will get the prompt.

case
when [Priority] = ('High') then 1
when [Priority] = ('Medium High') then 2
when [Priority] = ('Medium') then 3
when [Priority] = ('Medium Low') then 4
when [Priority] = ('Low') then 5
end