Introduction
Within Craft.io views, hierarchy, grouping, sorting, and filtering settings work together to control how your data is displayed.
Configuring a view is about shaping what is visible and how it is structured. Instead of exporting spreadsheets or creating duplicate reports, you can manage your views directly, adjusting the level of detail, organization, and focus to generate a new perspective on the same underlying data.
Visualizing hierarchy in your views
Hierarchy determines which item levels appear in your view.
By default, most views display a single hierarchy level, typically Epics. This keeps the view clean and focused at a high level, which is ideal for strategic planning and roadmap discussions. However, this is fully customizable in all views.
Changing the hierarchy level
If you want to focus on a different level of work, you can adjust the hierarchy:
Click the Hierarchy action in the top bar of your view.
Select the level you want to display, such as Epic, Feature or Story.
This allows you to shift the focus of the view depending on the conversation you are having. For example:
Show Epics for strategic alignment
Show Features for planning and prioritization
Show Stories for execution-level tracking
Using flexible hierarchy for a more textured view
If you want to see multiple levels at once, enable Flexible Hierarchy:
Click Hierarchy in any view
Turn the Flexible Hierarchy toggle on (blue)
Select additional hierarchy levels via checkbox
Ensure Sort By is set to Hierarchy
When Flexible Hierarchy is turned on, you can display parent and child items together in the same view, such as Epics alongside their underlying Features.
💡 When using Flexible Hierarchy, set Sort by = Hierarchy to maintain the correct parent-child structure
Grouping items in your views
Grouping organizes items into sections based on a selected field. It helps you understand distribution across a specific dimension, such as status, team, release, or priority.
You can group by any available field, including both system fields and custom fields. To group items in your view:
Click the Group by dropdown in the top action bar.
Select the field you want to group by.
Once grouped, items reorganize automatically into clear sections.
💡 Grouping works slightly differently across view types. In Capacity Planning, items are grouped by timeframe, such as Quarter or Sprint. In the Swimlanes View, you can introduce a second dimension using Swimlanes, allowing you to structure your data across two dimensions, for example by Quarter and Team.
Sorting items in your views
Sorting controls the order of items within your view.
To sort your view:
Click the Sort by dropdown
Select the field you want to sort by
Toggle ascending or descending order
You can sort by nearly any field, including custom scoring fields, priority, dates, or hierarchy.
Sorting is useful when you want to:
Prioritize high-impact items
Surface upcoming deadlines
Keep backlog items ranked
Maintain parent-child order when using Flexible Hierarchy
💡 Rank sorting allows for simple drag-and-drop reordering of items. Select 'Rank' in the Sort By controller and rearrange items as desired. Note that rank sorting is a global option, affecting the order across all applicable views (table, Kanban, and Swimlane).
Filtering your views
Filtering narrows down what appears in your view. It allows you to focus on a specific subset of work without removing anything from the workspace.
To apply a filter:
Click Add Filter
Select the field you want to filter by
Choose the relevant values
Remove filters by hovering over the name of the filter and clicking x, or remove all filters by clicking Clear all filters
Filtering is especially useful when you want to:
Show only specific labels or categories of items
Focus on a specific release
Remove internal-only work before sharing
Create a customer-facing or leadership-specific view
💡 Add multiple filters to create focused views for specific audiences. For example, filter by Release, Status and Dependencies for a sprint review.
Saving your view changes
After creating and customizing a collaborative view with hierarchy, grouping, sorting and filtering tools, it's crucial to save your changes for future access in Craft.io.
Click Save Workspace changes
If you're uplifting a personal view to a collaborative view, click Actions and Save as new workspace view
💡 Personal views (or My Views) auto-save for your user, therefore any changes to the hierarchy, grouping, sorting or filtering in these views don't require a manual save.
Bringing it all together
Hierarchy, grouping, sorting, and filtering work together to help you shape your view for the conversation you need to have.
By adjusting these settings, you can use the same underlying data to support very different use cases. A clean executive roadmap, a detailed and textured backlog, a release-specific planning view, or a customer-facing slice of work can all come from the same source without duplicating information.
What’s Next?
Now that you understand how to configure hierarchy, grouping, sorting, and filtering, you can begin building purpose-driven views for your workflow.
Try creating:
A leadership roadmap using Epics grouped by Objective
A backlog refinement view showing Features and Stories with flexible hierarchy
A customer-facing view with internal fields filtered out
From here, you can move into deeper topics such as executive roadmapping, capacity planning, progress dashboards, or Live Share for stakeholder communication.
Need more guidance? 🙋 Our LIVE support team (at the bottom right corner of your screen) replies to ANY question!