Improve Visibility of Assignee / Improve Sort Options on Merge Requests List Screen

Description

The merge requests screen (e.g. {group}/{project}/merge_requests) shows on the left the title of the MR, number, who opened, and on the right its status, a tiny icon for who it is assigned to, and then the number of comments.

On this screen there are two common usecases that I have that are not satisfied:

• easily see who an issue is assigned to
• sort by assignee or author

Proposal

I think if the assignee were more verbosely stated (as the author is) rather than being relegated to a tiny gravatar, this would be helpful. Also, being able to sort by author / assignee would be very helpful

What would be awesome is if you sorted by assignee or author if you had a header that grouped merge requests by that field. For example, if I sorted by author, I would get something like:

== (header) Author: Jeremy Thomerson ==

--> MR row as it currently is
--> MR row as it currently is
--> MR row as it currently is

== (header) Author: Joe Somebody ==

--> MR row as it currently is
--> MR row as it currently is

(and the same concept for assignee)

If you're managing a team and need to check on work status, this is very helpful to see who has which MRs and how they can be rebalanced if needed.