Features 2.0 ✌️

JUNE 15, 2022

Overview

Today we release the second of several significant improvements designed to streamline and enhance the estimation workflow. You no longer have to open a new window to edit or view features, and you can estimate in any time period.

• Streamlined features UX with inline tasks and estimates,
• Enhanced tasks with improved layout, rich-text descriptions and time-periods on estimates
• Dynamic time periods so you can estimate effort (and define rate cards) in any time period (hours, days, weeks, sprints, months or years).
• Single-phase proposals now look more awesome, with improved templates that adapt to the number of phases
• Improved member permissions - introducing a new manager role, and improved read-only browsing for editors and viewers

Streamlined features UX

The feature detail page has been replaced by an expandable features UI that includes inline tasks and estimates - so you can access everything without navigating to a new page

Inline tasks and estimates

• Expand and collapse features as a tree
• Set priority and risk directly on a feature
• Add, remove and reorder tasks inside a feature
• Edit task description and estimates inline

Keyboard controls

We've added some keyboard shortcuts for working with features and lists without a mouse.

From within the feature list

• Press option/alt + up/down arrow keys to move focus between rows (or content within rows)
• Press cmd/ctrl + up/down arrow keys to reorder rows
• Press cmd/ctrl + enter to create a new item (at the current level)

Task descriptions

To add a description, type Enter at the end of the task title.

The new description editor supports numerous formatting and layout options, including headings, bold, italic and strikethrough, bulleted and numbered lists, redo/undo and copy/paste from clipboard.

You can access these text and paragraph formatting options from the inline menu that appears when description text is selected/focused, markdown shortcuts (e.g. **bold**)and keyboard shortcuts (e.g. ⌘ + b)

Copy and paste

We've spent a lot of time refining the behaviour of copy and paste to ensure it's as easy as possible to format existing content

• When pasting into an empty task, the first line will automatically be converted to a heading
• Name + description can have a total of 1024 character (additional characters will be ignored when pasted)
• Pasting plain text, markdown or html. In the case of html, the editor will try to maintain as much external formatting as possible.
• Text is copied to the clipboard as plain text markdown (for maximum compatibility)

We've tested pasting content from numerous platforms and formats - but if you find something that is still problematic, please let us know!

Estimate time period

You can now estimate resources in any work-time period - either hour, day, week, sprint (2 weeks), month or year) . Estii automatically calculates the total units (hours) for each estimate, task and feature so you can easy compare size and cost.

Dynamic work-time periods

One of the top feature requests from customers was the ability to estimate rate cards and estimates in hours instead of just days. We've gone one step further - and added the ability to control, estimate, and convert time periods across the space!

• The default rate period is used to price rate cards (either days or hours). It can be managed from the global card settings on the roles page.
• Estimates and role costs default to the rate period, however you can use any of the following time periods: hours, days, weeks, sprints, months or years.
• When you set a time period, Estii automatically calculates the total effort/price in the default rate period (so you can compare the cost and effort of features and tasks).
• When you change the period, Estii automatically converts the value to the new scale (e.g. 1K/day will update to $125/hour)
• If you change the default rate period, all values using the default period will automatically recalculate to the new rate period.

Single-phase proposals

We've made a number of improvements to the proposal templates designed to make single-phase deals look as awesome as multi-phase ones! Estii will automatically remove references to phases when there is only one

Budget slide now displays a breakdown by features/overheads when a deal only contains one phase.

Feature breakdowns now calculate effort based on the default rate card period (e.g. hours instead of days).

Scope of work slides now include formatted task descriptions

New member permissions

We've made a number of improvements to permissions and restrictions across your space.

• Added a manager level between admin and editor. Managers can approve and delete deals, as well as manage roles, streams and themes, however they cannot access space settings.
• When a user has read-only access to a page, they will now see a persistent read-only banner. They can still browse through content, but not make changes.
• When a user has limited editing access to a page, unavailable actions and buttons will appear disabled within the page

Other changes

This release includes over 100 other improvements and fixes, here is a shortlist!

Deals

• Account is now optional on the Create deal dialog. We also removed the confirmation step from the create deal dialog.
• You can now set the exchange rate when creating a deal (business plan only)
• Update deal now includes rate card changes, streams effected by role changes, and minor changes (like reordered roles) that don't actually effect the deal value
• Updated Feature import CSV format to support task descriptions and estimate periods

Roles and streams

• Separated card settings from global settings on the roles page to make it clear which ones effect all rate cards vs a single rate card
• Updated Role import CSV format to support new cost period and price periods
• Role and stream import now enforces item limits. Excess items will be ignored automatically during import
• Simplified the stream page so you can assign roles or streams from the one list. It's also updated with the new resource allocation UI used in roles and features

Guided tours

• A brand new Sample deal to show off all the new features and improvements
• Welcome tour now no longer triggers automatically when you create/join other spaces (just the first time)
• You can now run the Sample deal tour from inside any sample deal (via the … menu)
• You can now run the Roles tour from inside the roles page (via the … menu)

Misc

• Higher-resolution theme background (up to 1920x1080)
• You can now accept pending invites from your account settings
• For those using light mode, we've made some subtle improvements to styles and contrast
• Invite urls now support valid emails containing special characters (e.g. “+” symbol)