Configuring plan settings
Planning
Stages and Skills
How to configure stages
A stage is an activity that is done sequentially per work item. You can learn more about stages and skills here.
- Go to your plan via Portfolio (in header) > View Portfolio > click your plan.
- Click more (
) next to the plan name > Configure > Stages and skills. - Click Add stage.
- Enter a name for the new stage, and then click Add stage.
- You can configure the new stage name by clicking it.
- Change the color by clicking on the color ball and selecting a new color.
- Once you have the stage, you can proceed and add skills to each stage.
How to configure skills
Skills are abilities that team members must have in order to complete work items. Skills can be defined per stage and allow to categorize different types of work within a stage. You can learn more about stages and skills here.
- Go to your plan via Portfolio (in header) > View Portfolio > click your plan.
- Click more () next to the plan name > Configure > Stages and skills.
- Click Add skill.
- Enter a name for the new skill, and then click Create local skill.
Choose the estimate allocation percentage.
The estimate allocation will define the percentage of that skill that someone needs to complete that issue.For example: If the issue had an estimate of 10, and there was a design skill with 60% and a JavaScript skill with 40%, 6 points of the estimate would require someone with the design skill and 4 someone with the JavaScript skill.
Delete a skill by hovering over it, selecting
and clicking Delete.Once you've created a set of skills, you can add them to the stages.
Scenarios
This feature allows you to play with different scenarios. For example, you could have two scenarios. in scenario A you have to pull out 2 people from your team, while in scenario B, you have the same situation but you push the shipping date back by 2 weeks. Once you are happy with the scenario, you can commit the changes back to JIRA.
- Go to your plan via Portfolio (in header) > View Portfolio > click your plan.
- Click more () next to the plan name > Configure > Scenarios.
- Click Enable scenarios.
- As you can see, there is an available "initial scenario".
- If you want to create a new scenario, select + Create scenario.
- Add a scenario title, pick a color, and decide whether you want to create a scenario from an existing one or a blank scenario.
- Click Create scenario.
Now you can see your new scenario in the list. - Go back to your plan view.
As you can see now, there is a new drop-down from where you can select and change the scenario you're looking at.
When you work with scenarios and changes you can add as many scenarios as you want and you can make as many changes as you want per scenario. Uncommitted changes are specific to individual scenarios. - Once you're happy with the changes, select Uncommitted changes and commit the changes you want to keep, or select revert to go back to the original scenario status.
How to disable scenarios
If you disable the scenarios feature, you'll be given the opportunity to keep the changes of one scenario. The uncommitted changes in all the other scenarios will be lost.
To disable scenarios:
- Go to your plan via Portfolio (in header) > View Portfolio > click your plan.
- Click more () next to the plan name > Configure > Scenarios.
- Select Disable.
- Select the scenario you want to keep uncommitted changes from, and click Disable.
Scheduling
Follow the steps provided in these sections to configure the errors and warnings, planning mode, and scheduling options.
How to configure errors and warnings
You can configure a warning message to inform that a story spans multiple sprints.
- Go to your plan via Portfolio (in header) > View Portfolio > click your plan.
- Click more () next to the plan name > Configure > Scheduling.
- If this option is set to on, you will see a warning message saying the work items exceed the sprint duration.
This applies only to the story level.
How to configure the planning mode
In this section, you can configure the planning unit, sprint length, and default weekly capacity.
- Go to your plan via Portfolio (in header) > View Portfolio > click your plan.
- Click more () next to the plan name > Configure > Scheduling.
- Select the desired configuration.
| Planning mode options | Description |
|---|---|
| Planning unit | Planning unit used to estimate work items |
| Sprint length | Defines the default length for all teams |
| Default velocity | Applies only if teams don't have team members defined, as summary of the team's overall capacity. |
| Unestimated item scheduling | Defines how unestimated items are handled. Base on default estimates - When you select this option, the default estimates defined in the fields are applied to all unestimated childless items of all hierarchy levels. Base on releases and sprints - If you select this option, unestimated items will be scheduled to last the duration of their assigned release or sprint. Learn more about this option here. Off - unestimated items are ignored and don't impact the schedule. |
How to configure scheduling options
In this section you can configure the work package sizes and concurrent work.
- Go to your plan via Portfolio (in header) > View Portfolio > click your plan.
- Select Plan > Configure > Scheduling
- Change the desired configuration.
| Scheduling options | Description |
|---|---|
| Issue assignee import level | Defines up to which hierarchy level Portfolio for JIRA tries to match the assignee of an issue to the corresponding person in the team member column. This option allows you to set the level at which issue assignees in your JIRA application are the people that will actually work on the issues. Example: You might have the Product Manager assigned to an Epic and the individual developers assigned to Stories within the Epic. The Product Manger is not the person who is going to work on the implementation so we can set the assignee import level to Story. Portfolio for JIRA will take the story assignees into account but not the epic assignees. |
| Maximum assignees per story | Defines the maximum number of people who can work on an individual story.
|
| Dependency scheduling | Defines how dependencies are ranked during scheduling. |
| Dependent story constraint | If set to 'On', work items with dependencies cannot be worked on concurrently. For Scrum teams, they will be scheduled in separate sprints. For Kanban teams, they'll be scheduled on separate days. If this option is disabled, work items with dependencies can be worked on at the same time. In both cases the dependent work items can never start before their predecessors |
| Enforce concurrent work | When you set this option to On. If multiple team members are assigned to a single item, the scheduling algorithm ensures that all the work for that item is scheduled into a single sprint. |
| Stage sprint constraint | If set to 'On', the separate stages of a work item are scheduled sequentially into separate sprints. If set to 'Off', work on multiple stages can happen in parallel in the same sprint. |
| Minimum work package size | Defines the minimum work package size for all the items above the story level. This setting prevents free capacities from being up with unrealistically small work packages, which would not exist once a high level work item is broken down into stories. Example: Set it to 0 to maximize capacity filling. |
Working hours and days
In the following section, you'll be able to set the length of a working day in your plan.
How to configure working hours and days
- Go to your plan via Portfolio (in header) > View Portfolio > click your plan.
- Click more () next to the plan name > Configure > Working hours and days.
- Change the work day hours to set the length of a working day in this plan.
- Choose the days that a work week will have in this plan.
How to configure non-working days
- Go to your plan via Portfolio (in header) > View Portfolio > click your plan.
- Click more () next to the plan name > Configure > Working hours and days.
- Click + Add non-working days.
- Select the start date, the end date, and click Add.
Source data
Issues sources
Once your plan is created, you can change the issue sources anytime by following these steps.
How to configure issue sources
- Go to your plan via Portfolio (in header) > View Portfolio > click your plan.
- Click more () next to the plan name > Configure > Issue sources.
Click Edit Source to go to the wizard.
Connect to existing boards, filters, or projects, then select the relevant releases, and then confirm what's in scope.
Note
Changing issue sources will affect your plan's scope, releases, and teams.
How to configure the advanced settings
Sometimes, you happen to have different issue sources with different estimation methods but you want to import them into Portfolio for JIRA. In this section you will be able to select a conversion ratio that will convert time to story points once your plan has been created.
- Go to your plan via Portfolio (in header) > View Portfolio > click your plan.
- Click more () next to the plan name > Configure > Issue sources.
You can define the conversion rate per board. Select an issue source.
Click Advance settings.
Define the conversion rate.
Select Save, and then click Calculate to refresh the schedule. In the scope, you will be able to see the estimates already converted.
Custom fields
How to add a custom field
You can add custom fields from JIRA into your plan so you can view and edit them in your scope table.
Currently this feature only allows you to use numbers, single text.
- Go to your plan via Portfolio (in header) > View Portfolio > click your plan.
- Click more () next to the plan name > Configure > Custom fields.
Select Add a custom field, and select the field you want to add from the list, and then click Add field.
There are the issue field types that Portfolio for JIRA supports at the moment:
Standard Number Field is editable from within Portfolio for JIRA Text-field (single-line) is editable from within Portfolio for JIRA All other standard custom field types are read-only
Text-field (multi-line) is not supported Advanced All Advanced custom field types are not supported - If you want to delete a field, hover over the left side of the field row, click more () and Remove from plan.
- If you want to add more fields, click + Add custom field, which is located in the same screen.
- Access the Custom field configuration screen of your JIRA application by clicking Manage custom fields.
Commit of changes
This option allows you to manually set an issue assignee in Portfolio for JIRA and update the JIRA issue once you commit the change.
- Go to your plan via Portfolio (in header) > View Portfolio > click your plan.
- Click more () next to the plan name > Configure > Commit of changes.
- If you want to be able to commit your Portfolio for JIRA issues assignees into JIRA, select On.
If you select Off, whenever you change an issue assignee in Portfolio for JIRA, it won't affect the JIRA assignee even if you commit.
Troubleshooting
You can do this as long as you have boards as an issue source.
To pull in the assignee from JIRA
- Go to > Scheduling > Issue assignee import level configuration and set the Issue assignee import level to the hierarchy that you want to get the assignee from. If the assignee is a team member that is associated to that board then that team member will automatically be assigned.
To push the team member to the JIRA issue assignee:
- Go to Uncommitted changes configuration and turn on Commit issue assignee. If a single team member is assigned to an issue in Portfolio for JIRA then then they will be set at the issue's assignee in JIRA.