Changes in the improved interface
This page has been written with the assumption that you've already migrated from live plans (any version from 2.0 to 2.27) to plans with the improved interface (version 3.0 and later).
The following table lists the important changes to note when planning in the improved interface.
| Task | Changes |
| Configuring plans | You can configure your plan settings to suit how your team works. See Configuring plans for more details. The following settings from Portfolio for Jira live plans are also used as default:
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| Viewing issues in a plan | Previously, issues were displayed in a timeline at the top of the plan, with the work items of your teams displayed in a scope table at the bottom, as shown in the sample plan below.
In the improved interface, you still have the scope table in fairly the same position in the plan, but we now call this the scope section. However, the timeline has been moved to the right of the scope section, and each issue has its corresponding schedule bar. The schedule bars are displayed in the timeline, according to how these are scheduled, as displayed in the following sample plan.
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| Visualizing work using group and color settings | Previously, using the themes report, you could apply a monochromatic, single-level view of your plan, to distinguish different work streams (projects, teams, and more) into separate swimlanes. In the improved interface, you can now mix and match grouping and coloring options, which let you visually display more details to your audience. This also makes it easier for your audience to consume your plan in greater detail.
Sample plan, with issues grouped by project, and issues colored by status See Customizing view settings for more details. |
| Viewing dependencies in the timeline | Previously, you would know if an issue has a dependency if the issue has a light blue bar in either end in the timeline. These visual indicators are not obvious, and are not intuitive to use.
Sample plan with issue that have dependencies In the improved interface, we're making it easier for you to keep track of any dependencies in your plan. You can view the dependencies of an issue from the dependency columns in the fields section. You can also click the number of dependencies at either end of a schedule bar accordingly. See Managing dependencies for more information.
Sample plan, with issues having dependencies |
| Creating issues | Previously, there were several ways to create issues, and some of these ways were not directly obvious to users. In the improved interface, we've making this more obvious and intuitive:
See Creating issues for more details. |
| Assigning issues | In Portfolio for Jira, plans use the concept of team members, which are independent from assignees in Jira. You'd first assign an issue to a team member in Portfolio for Jira, and when you save this change to Jira, the issue is then assigned to the corresponding assignee in Jira. In the improved interface, we're simplifying this task by letting you set the assignee directly in your plan. This effectively removes that extra step of assigning the issue to a team member first, then saving the change in Jira as an assignee change. One thing to note though — you can now assign an issue to only one assignee in the improved interface. |
| Scheduling issues | Previously, you'd need to use the calculate functionality, to interact with the timeline itself. When you calculate your plan, Portfolio would calculate the realistic scheduled start and end dates of the issues, and then create a realistic schedule of the issues. In the improved interface, we're simplifying the experience by using only one type of date — target dates. You can still use other custom date fields that you may have already configured before enabling the interface, but you'll first need to add these custom fields to your plan. You can also directly interact with the timeline itself to schedule issues. You can manually drag and drop issues in the timeline, according to how you want to schedule these issues. You can also choose to make Portfolio auto-schedule your plan for you. Portfolio will let you preview the suggested schedule, but it's up to you to decide whether or not you'll accept the auto-scheduled changes. See Scheduling work for more details. In live plans (versions 2.0 to 2.27), you can use the scheduling factors section, to understand how issues are scheduled off your backlog, as well as why some issues aren't scheduled as expected. In the improved interface, this section isn't available anymore. If an issue is not scheduled as expected, you can manually reschedule the issue in the timeline. |
| Ranking issues | Previously, when you'd rank an epic with child issues higher, the ranking of its child issues would also be higher. When these changes were committed to Jira, the child issues would also be ranked higher in Jira. This can be confusing, especially if your teams have already ranked issues in their backlogs or active sprints, and the child issues are suddenly ranked higher. In the improved interface, the ranking of child issues is now independent of the ranking of their parent issues. If you rank a parent epic higher, the ranking of its child issues in Jira will stay as is. |
| Calculating progress | Previously, progress would be calculated by the percentage of the estimates completed against the total estimates. In the improved interface, you now have a visual progress bar, which displays issues grouped by status category:
In your plan, you can also choose to display progress using estimates or issue count, or even both. See Monitoring progress of work for more details.
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Saving changes in Jira |
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| Zooming in and out of the work in your timeline | You can quickly see issues for a set duration, like 3 months, 1 year, or a custom date range. This lets you focus on only the issues scheduled within the selected timeframe. You could also do this in live plans; however, you'd need to use the scheduled range filter — and this method wasn't too obvious to use. |
| Managing teams | Previously, you'd manage your teams by clicking the Teams tab, at the top-right area of your plan. In the improved interface, team management is accessed via the teams view above the scope table. You can also filter issues by a specific team, to quickly view all the issues assigned to the team. |
| Managing capacity | Previously, you'd be able to plan the individual capacity of your team members. In the improved interface, we're still considering how capacity is best managed. We're starting with the following details:
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| Managing releases | Previously, you'd manage releases by clicking the Releases tab, at the top-right section of your plan. In the improved interface, release management is accessed via the releases view above the scope table. You can also filter issues by a specific release, to quickly view all the issues in that release. |
| Reporting work | Previously, you could share details about your plan using different report types, like the capacity report and dependencies report, via the Reports view. In the improved interface, we've removed the Reports view because we're currently building more working views that can be shared as reports to relevant audiences. Although the reporting functionality is currently limited, you can still share a read-only version of your roadmap. |
