I'm building Release templates to help standardize the planning process across products in our organization. The "Copy existing release" option in the Create Releases > Copy existing Release has two important challenges:
The “Copy existing release” radio button should have a default setting to copy the release, as-is, for those users that want to clone the Release exactly. I am suggesting that when you click the "Copy existing release" radio button, there should be another radio button that is created "Copy with changes".
The second radio button would pop up a version of the Feature > List > Bulk Edit, and allow you to reset all the Features in the release.
However, what is critically needed in the Feature > List > Bulk Edit is the ability to clear the logged time and other history so you have a clean Feature.
Additionally, what is need is the ability to choose a "Shipped" Release to copy. These are both basic requirements for creating a template.
Today, if you copy a Release with Features that have logged time history, you can't use the Features, because the logged time is locked in. There is no way to delete the logged time, or use the Estimate field.
The workaround is to use a "Copy feature", which resets the history, and then delete the old Feature.
In general I think you should add to the Feature > List > Bulk Edit the ability to clear out the logged time history as well as other history. However, you want to be able to keep the Original Estimate for a Feature to manage estimation across Products.
Thank you for your idea. Our recommended approach would be to create the template release as a parking lot as described in this support article. You can then copy this release when needed and track time, workflow status, etc directly on the copied release and never on the template.
At this time we do not have plans to make changes here, but we will continue to monitor customer feedback on this idea.