If you have more than 30 open tickets, you will need a good way to filter them by feature, team, or client. You should use the new Tag feature.
Adding Tags
Now, you can enter tags on a Ticket. As you add tags, you will build a tag cloud in your popup tag selector.
Using Tags
You can use these tags to see the tickets that you want to work with.
In the LIST view, you can quickly open the sidebar and select a tag.
On the CARDWALL, the tag selector makes it easy to see the current tasks for a team, feature, or client.
On the PLANNER, you can quickly select a tag (on top of the new column). You will see backlog and current tickets that match that tag. The shorter list will be much easier to sort, and your new tickets will automatically match your tag. What happens if you sort the tickets in this filtered view? We put a lot of work into an algorithm that we call “ladder sort” which keeps the same slots in the big list by swapping tickets in the filtered list.
Why use Tags?
You can tag and filter your tickets with a custom list field, or “component”. Why use tags?
* You can add multiple tags tags to one ticket. So, you can easily tag a ticket as being from Client A, for Feature team 1. In the old system, you would need to create two custom fields to do that, and you would need to plan those categories in advance.
* Users can add new tags when they need them. You want a limited number of tags so that the tag cloud will be readable, and so that you do not have to hunt through too many tags. So, we give you the option of marking tags as “hidden” from the tag selector. They are still available for the team members that need them.
* We are using tags as quick filter on top of cardwall and planner.
Getting Started and Administration
You can add tags to tickets as you need them. Then, you can start using the tags in the list filters, Planner, and Cardwall views. After you have a coherent set of tickets for a client, project, or a team, you can make child project views in Space Manager.
Or, you can manage your tags to add better structure. As a space owner, you can add and manage tags in the ticket settngs view. You can “hide” tags that are not used very often, and keep your tag selector clean. You can use batch update to apply tags to your existing tickets
Working with multiple teams on one big project
If you have a big project, you might have multiple teams, and when each team comes to the cardwall, they will want to select their view. They will want their own default view. They will also want to have discussions and share code reviews without seeing a lot of noise from other teams. It’s not easy to manage a big project inside one Assembla space. So, we just added a major new feature called “Space Manager”. This feature allows you to create a child space, (like a subproject) where a team will see only a relevant set of tagged tickets.When you create a child space in the Space Manager, you select the tag a tag for that child space. It will show tickets with the related tag. You can also create new tools, or share tools with the parent space.
Each team lead, works prioritizing their work in the child space view, while our VP and CTO work on the master space that holds all child space tickets. This gives you a way to break out of one space and make your project much more expandable.
One team working with many clients or systems
Do you have one team or designer that is working on requests from multiple clients or projects? In most agile planning systems, it is difficult to prioritize these requests. You need separate collaboration spaces and separate planning sessions for each project. What you want is a system that collects all of the requests in one place, so you can prioritize them into one backlog.
With Space Manager, you can create a child space for each client or project. Then, invite the stakeholders to the child spaces. They can add tickets and sort tickets and discuss tickets. Those tickets will automatically be tagged with the selected client tag for that child space. The client stakeholders will not see activity from all of the other clients or projects. However, in the parent view, you
For maximum scalability, you can use both forms of organization at the same time. You can take tickets from client spaces, and distribute them to team spaces. If you have a Portfolio plan, you can create a child space for each of your clients. From the parent space, you can add a tag for the feature team that will work on that client request.
In this way, you and your client will be updated in one space, and the dev team can start to work on it right away in a different space.
Getting Space Manager
Want to try the new Space Manager for handling big backlogs from multiple teams or clients? It is in the new Portfolio feature pack. You can now add a Portfolio Feature Pack to your subscription for a reasonable, fixed price. The user who is set as the Payer for your Assembla account can easily add the Portfolio Pack now in their Account page.
