"This feature is a Beta release that is given out to a larger group of users to try under real conditions. This feature version has gone through alpha testing in-house and is fairly close in look, feel and functions to the final product; however, it is subject to updates based on the users’ feedback. Please contact our support team for any issues, improvement suggestions, or technical support."
Functional Brief
The Template Management provides an interface to create templates. It enables the user to load a set of team members with predefined settings to use across the boards and iterations. The templates aim to utilize specific team configurations and setup sprints faster for the purpose of capacity planning. This is very useful if you have multiple teams and sprints running across multiple projects.
A template can include a list of members with the following settings:
Role
Working days
Daily capacity
Business Value
Promotes re-usability
Flexibility in managing capacity
Save time and effort
Make configurations centralized and global
How Templates Work
It is simple to create and use templates.
The journey starts by the user accessing the template management functionality from “Capacity Tracker – Templates Management” that is accessible via Jira “Apps” menu.
This interface will allow users to create a New Template and add a list of users with their roles, working days and daily capacity. Save and it's ready to be used!
The template management functionality provides the ability to add multiple templates and edit existing templates.
The capacity tracker configuration screen will enable users to select a template which will apply it to the iteration.
Once the template is applied, the iteration will carry over the members’ configurations with predefined roles, working days and daily capacity as per the template.
In an effort to be flexible , users will be able to override the predefined configurations, along with adding and configuring members that are not part of the template.
Step by Step Guide
Create New Template
1. Navigate to the “Apps” menu and select the “Capacity Tracker – Template Management” option.
2. Click on the “New Template” button.
3. Enter a Template Name. Click on the “Add user” drop box to select or search the members you would like to add to the template.
4. Set the member configurations – Role, Working Days, Daily Capacity.
a. Role – You can choose any per-existing role or create a custom role.
b. Working days inheritance – If selected as “Board” then the working days will be inherited from the project board settings when the template is applied to the project board iteration. If selected as “Template” then the working days will be applied as per the template settings.
c. Daily Capacity – This unit depends on the iteration settings i.e. It can either be “Hours/Day” or “Story Points/Day”. This unit selection is carried over from the board configuration of the iteration.
Save, Edit, Delete - Templates
5. Clicking on “Save” will create the template and redirect you to the template management list screen.
6. The “Edit” button will open the template for editing purposes, and the “Delete ” button will warn you that deleting a template may affect the boards configured to use it. Caution: If you delete the template, it will affect all the boards configured to use this template.
Configure Template for Board and Iteration
7. Go to Capacity Tracker and select the iteration (Sprint/Fix version). Click on configuration “Edit”.
8. From the Template Configuration section, select a template from the drop down menu.
9. Once the template is configured, the Capacity Tracker will detect the members that are present in the template and highlight them separately. If the board was never configured with members, it would pull the member settings from the template. In the event that a member was already configured in the board the local configuration will be retained and the member will be highlighted as “overwritten”.
10. If you’d like to instead use the template values for an overwritten member, use the “Revert” button to remove the local configuration and go back to the template values.
11. Lastly, use the “Reset” button to remove the template configuration and go back to local values.
12. Iteration configuration with template complete!
FAQs
Q. Can I use a template across multiple projects?
A. Yes, the templates are board or project agnostics, and they can be used across multiple projects, boards or iterations.
Q. What happens if I delete the template that is being used by a board or sprint?
A. We recommend not to delete the template unless you are 100% sure that it is not in use. Doing so will affect all boards configured to use this template. If you don’t want to use a template in a board or sprint, Reset the template in the capacity tracker config screen or use the override option to update the members’ settings to your custom values..
Q. Can I remove the template from the Capacity configuration for a given iteration?
A. Yes, you can use the “reset” functionality within the template selection menu bar to remove the template from the configuration.
Q. Can I select different templates for different iterations in the same board/project?
A. Yes, you can. It is not necessary to use the same template across all the iterations of a given board.
Q. What happens when I click on the “Override” button?
A. The override button will allow you to customize the configuration of a templatized member. Once you click on the override button, the role, working days and daily capacity will be available for customization. These custom-made changes are limited in scope as they are only applicable to the length of the iteration they are performed on and will not reflect on the other iterations of the board.
Q. What happens when I click on the “Revert” button?
A. It is an opposite functionality to “Override”. The revert button will delete the custom-made changes and revert the configuration to match with the original templatized member’s configuration. Please note, the reverted values will be visible and restored once you click on Save or Save & Close, so make sure to Save after you are done with your changes.
Q. Can I remove the users that are part of the template?
A. Yes, you can remove the members that are part of the template, but not from the Capacity configuration screen. You will need to edit the template itself by accessing the template management screen and remove the user. Be aware that this change will affect all the iterations using this template.
Q. Can I update the template values from the Capacity Tracker’s iteration edit and configuration screen?
A. No, use the template management from the “Apps” menu to add, edit or delete templates for the config and values present in the template. Any changes made to the configuration from the Capacity Tracker’s iteration edit and config screen are custom changes and will not update the original template values.
Q. Why do only a few members have the “remove” option in the Capacity Tracker’s iteration edit and screen when template is applied?
A. You can add and remove users freely that do not belong to the template. However, if you want to add or remove members that are part of the template, you will have to use template management from the “Apps” menu.
Q. How can I know who created or updated the template?
A. This is available in the template management functionality accessible through the “Apps” menu. In the template landing page , we display the following attributes of the template – name, created by, created date, updated by, updated date.