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185 VOTE
Status Shipped
Categories Releases
Created by Christopher Keele
Created on Jun 10, 2016

Support Release Notes

Given the astounding amount of work I've seen that goes into making Aha's own stellar release notes comprehensive, detailed, and rich with media, I thought first-class support for release notes might be a nice addition to our workflow–as well as others.

 

Details

Currently a basic implementation of this could be done with a custom note field on either Features or Releases, or both. To get truly peerless experience, though, I think we could do a couple of neat things if we made them first-class. Here's how I envision this feature:

Essential
  • Add a release note note field to Features
  • Add a release notes view for seeing these in aggregate per Release
Negotiable
  • Each feature's release note could be displayed in the order the Feature is positioned within the Release
  • Each feature's release note could be editable from this aggregate view as well
Optional
  • Allow adding this release notes view to Notebooks

Being able to view each release's feature's release notes in aggregate, in a single place where they can be edited or added to notebooks, exported, etc, cannot be done in custom fields alone.

 

Benefits

The real gain here is enabling out-of-band collaboration on these notes within Aha! by presenting them in the right places at the right times with the right amount of context to the right people.

It allows the person who owns a feature, when transitioning it through their workflow to indicate its completion or readiness for review, to take the opportunity to jot down any important information while it's still on their mind, and add screenshots and other media right at the moment when they've been vetting its quality and getting ready to share its completion with others. They don't have to navigate through a larger note elsewhere in the system to find the place to add such details, it's right there in the context the feature owner cares about, independent from other features or release details. Furthermore if the feature gets moved around its notes follow rather than an external note having to be updated. Finally, any revelations that come up in discussion in the comments section on a feature can be immediately injected into the release notes at the moment they're noticed.

Meanwhile, the PM who owns releases can, when transitioning it through their workflow to indicate its completion or readiness for publication, see all important info about its features at once without having to mine the discussion for each feature for information in the myriad of places such discussion might occur. They can polish them right there, or delete them entirely if the feature isn't worth mentioning in the release notes, without having to navigate elsewhere in the UI. Seeing this live aggregate data in Aha! would also help prevent small features slipping through the cracks in a large release.

Allowing these to be added to a 'Release Notes' notebook affords an effortless way to keep release notes data fresh and easy to publish for consumption by stake holders and end users all within Aha! without introducing any new publishing concepts into the application. Even if the PM didn't use notebooks to publish these notes publicly, if they're made exportable to HTML/Markdown/Plain Text it'd give them a great head start. However, even without publication options I think this feature would enhance the release preparation experience.

 

Thoughts

I think the trickiest point in the implementation would be ensuring that the published view hides features with empty release notes entirely, but still displays them in edit mode to prompt PMs to add them if they deem it appropriate. Both omitting notes for some features, and being prompted to enter in notes for features that have none, seem non-negotiable to me.

Possibly the aggregate view could allow for custom ordering of notes for publication, but using their release order seems a sane default.

In the event that this clutters the UI of feature or release drawers in any way, or necessitates adding a navigation element to the main Aha! menu or submenus, this feature should probably be toggleable in Project settings (much like Ideas) so that the extra surface area can be opt-in. I imagine that many projects would never need this feature, even if the ones that do would benefit greatly from it.

If the individual release note for a feature that originated in the idea portal somehow made its way back to the idea creators and watchers, I think it would give them even more closure and pride, encouraging further interactions and contributions. Being able to not just point at an idea that got released because of me, but see the actual official company announcement for something I had suggested, would be a very rewarding moment. Perhaps these idea portal users could even be automatically mentioned or thanked in the published release notes themselves (of course configurable, perhaps per note). Little hat tips like that go a long way to building an impassioned community of customers around your product.

 

In summary, I think adding first-class Release Notes in Aha! could greatly lower the friction for PMs to create comprehensive, detailed, beautiful documentation about their releases by making it easier for other people to contribute to the notes well before release time rolls around, and by seamlessly hooking them into the excellent Aha! content editing and publishing experience.

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  • Attach files
  • Admin
    Kelly Sebes
    Reply
    |
    Feb 10, 2022

    We have left this idea open to continue tracking feedback for a specific release notes solution. Please let us know more about how you would like a release notes capability to work, different from what you can already accomplish today. Thanks!

  • Eva Altass
    Reply
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    Feb 10, 2022

    Thanks but not good enough, I pay enough for the roadmaps software that included ideas from the beginning, would be nice if it was included with that as well, it is cost prohibitive to get aha ideas advanced

  • Guest
    Reply
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    Jun 25, 2021

    I find that the reports can do much of what I need, which is in essence prepare a list of released items and highlight the new/changed functionality. I do this with a simple list of:

    • Feature name

    • Feature description and/or feature comments

    • tag: new, changed, improved, fixed

    Then I filter the report by release and run it once a month. Only items with a status "shipped" make it into the report.


    BTW, I second the note from Brian W. below. It would be great to have an ability of adding bug fixes.

  • Guest
    Reply
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    Nov 10, 2020

    The ability to publish release notes would be great. I can almost hack the ideas portal to do this!

  • Brian W
    Reply
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    Mar 27, 2020

    Questions for fellow voters:

    (1) Has anyone hacked a solution within AHA based on current functionality?

    (2) Assuming your release notes also include Bug Fixes and possibly even Known Issues, how would you envision incorporating these into AHA release notes in an automated fashion? We currently integrate AHA with Azure Devops, but don't sync Bugs. Anyone sync bugs? How would you even do that? I believe their is an AHA recommendation to track these within AHA as a pseudo requirement (https://big.ideas.aha.io/ideas/APP-I-464), but not sure how practical that is when bugs are managed in AZDO as a Bug work item type.

    Thanks,

    Brian

  • Guest
    Reply
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    Jul 25, 2019

    This will be great addition. 

  • Admin
    Austin Merritt
    Reply
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    Mar 13, 2019

    Hi there. We appreciate the interest in this idea. We do not currently have plans on our roadmap to implement this, but we are continuing to monitor customer feedback on it.

  • Joe Carpenter
    Reply
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    Mar 12, 2019

    Any status as to this?

  • Kashyap Kuchipudi
    Reply
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    Aug 29, 2018

    Totally agree, this would be a great addition to the suite of things we are able to do with Aha!. 

  • Dave Tucker
    Reply
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    Jul 14, 2018

    I currently spend hours formulating high quality release notes. Customisation of these would be very helpful 

  • Tom Beck
    Reply
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    May 31, 2018

    I have tried several approaches using out-of-the-box capabilities of Aha!, including custom fields.  This idea is very appealing and would solve the challenge of creating non-connected notes and documentation that can be time-consuming to create and maintain.  

    A couple of additions that I would also like to have considered include the ability to re-brand the release notes and to specify distribution.  I have re-branded the idea portal with just a subtle nod to Aha! to aid casual users that this is a company solution and not just a random third-party solution.  I have also utilized terminology customizations to better match what we call things.  Today, I cannot re-brand the messaging that goes out when a release is shipped.  Stakeholders that are not familiar with our product management tools and processes receive messages from Aha!, which they frequently know little about.  In terms of distribution of the release/ship notifications, watchers are included.  Many times, I want to include other recipients in release notes only and don't want them to receive notifications of the myriad changes that happen on the journey to release.  To that end, it would be helpful to have a way to specify distribution of the release notes independent of watchers and other actors involved in the PM process.

  • Guest
    Reply
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    Jan 26, 2018

    TL;DR - Build release notes as you go on a feature by feature basis.  Export for consumption at the end of a release.

  • Guest
    Reply
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    Oct 19, 2016

    I totally agree.  We are doing all the work on planing the releases and track in Aha, it would just make sense to be able to have a page showing my releases.

    I would start it simple. A comment field and somehow make each release note a hyperlink, clicking on it would list the features added to that release (included in notebook flag checked). 

    Release page would look like this example with the drill-down page to show the list of features for that respective release.

     

    Oct 15, 2016 (5.2)

    Sep 20, 2016 (5.1)

    Aug 20, 2016 (5.0)

  • Guest
    Reply
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    Sep 29, 2016

    Agreed, it would help round out the release process all being within Aha! and it would certainly add value to an already valuable tool. The original post is also an extremely well written Idea, I vote for it being the best in this portal.

  • Shri Iyer
    Reply
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    Jun 30, 2016

    Release notes are a very important feature that should be added to Aha. Given that all ideas, features and requirements exist in Aha and tracking of those features within releases and against initiatives is in Aha, it makes sense that release notes are created, generated in Aha and shared from Aha (an internal share and an external share with customers). This is a very important need for the the release notes process right now is being done externally.

  • +85
12 MERGED

Add release notes link to an Idea that has shipped

Merged
As an Aha idea portal user, I want to be able to click on a link when viewing an idea that has shipped, so I can easily read the release notes and learn how to implement that feature in my Aha configuration.
Guest about 6 years ago in Ideas 0 Shipped