Aha! Roadmaps | Account customization settings

Account-level settings affect your entire Aha! account, including all workspaces in your workspace hierarchy and all users.

This article will explain each account setting in the Customization section. You need to be an administrator with customizations user permissions to access this section of the account settings.

Open your account settings by clicking on Settings ⚙️ Account. Click any of the links below to skip ahead:

• Workspaces

• Workspace templates (Enterprise+)

• Statuses and workflows

• Workflow approval groups

• Broadcasts

• Scorecards

• Time frames

• Tags

• Custom fields

• Custom layouts

• Custom tables (Enterprise+)

• Ideas

• Knowledge bases

• Capacity planning (Enterprise+)

• Recycle bin

Workspaces

From this setting, you can adjust your account's workspace hierarchy. Use buttons in the top right to Add a workspace or workspace line.

Workspaces cannot be converted to workspace lines and vice versa.

The workspace table provides details about the workspaces you have set up in your account:

• Name: The name of the workspace, which displays throughout Aha! reports, roadmaps, and records.

• Type: The type of workspace selected at setup.

• Records: The number or records that currently exist in the workspace.

• Users: The number of users directly assigned to the workspace. Note: This number does not reflect users who have been assigned to the workspace line and have inherited permissions for the individual workspaces under that line.

Use the table to view, edit, rearrange, or delete any aspect of your hierarchy. You can also use this setting to clear demo account data from your account.

Note: If you do not have owner permissions for a section of your hierarchy, you will not be able to edit or delete any workspaces in that section.

To edit a workspace line, click the Edit button to open the Edit workspace line modal.

• The Workspace line field shows where your workspace line fits into the hierarchy — specifically who a workspace line's parents are in the hierarchy. This field is optional since a workspace line might have no parents of its own.

• The Name field is the name you would like to display throughout Aha! reports, roadmaps, and records.

• Aha! records use the Prefix field to build unique identifiers for records in that workspace line. The abbreviation you pick here should be a good shorthand for the workspace line. You can edit it, but editing the prefix will not change any records created with the original prefix.

• The Workspace line type field is useful in a couple ways. Workspace lines with equivalent types will be grouped on equivalent levels of the hierarchy report and the workspace settings report. A workspace line also inherits its terminology in the top-level navigation menu from its type.

  • It may be helpful to select consistent type nomenclature across your Aha! account before you start creating workspace lines (for example, "Company Division Subdivision Product," or "Organization Team Group Workspace"). You can also edit this field at any time if your account's nomenclature needs to change.

  • There are situations where you might want to have inconsistent nomenclature in your account — if you want to ensure that no one will be able to accidentally report on one product workspace's initiatives under a different product line's goals, for example.

• Workspaces in workspace line focuses on the children under a given workspace line. This field is optional since a workspace line might have no child workspaces.

Click Save workspace line to save your changes when you are done.

To edit a workspace, click the Edit button to open the Edit workspace modal.

• The Workspace line field shows where your workspace line fits into the hierarchy — specifically who a workspace line's parents are in the hierarchy. This field is optional since a workspace line might have no parents.

• The Name field is the name you would like to display throughout Aha! reports, roadmaps, and records.

• Aha! records use the Prefix field to build unique identifiers for records in that workspace line. The abbreviation you pick here should be a good shorthand for the workspace line. You can edit it, but editing the prefix will not change any records created with the original prefix.

• If you are an Enterprise+ customer, you will see an option to apply a Workspace template as well. You can use workspace templates to apply consistent workspace settings in workspaces across your account.

Click Save workspace to save your changes when you are done.

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Workspace templates (Enterprise+)

Workspace templates, available to Enterprise+ customers, help you manage the workspaces in your account by applying the same settings to each workspace that uses the template. From terminology to workflows, release templates to automation rules, workspace settings significantly affect how teams approach their work. Workspace templates standardize that approach across your account.

Click Add workspace template to create a new workspace template.

• You do not have to create a workspace template from scratch. If you have a workspace in your Aha! account configured for your needs already, use it as the basis for your workspace template by selecting it in the Copy from dropdown.

• Name your workspace template. If you intend to create multiple workspace templates, make sure to give each one a unique name.

• Give your workspace template an optional Description.

Click Create workspace template when you are finished. Once you have created your template, click on its name or the Edit button to configure it, or click the More options button to Copy or Delete it.

Click on any workspace template to configure it. When you do, you will open the Workspace template editor. This editor walks you through all the workspace-level settings you can templatize, organized by settings category.

When you have configured the template to your liking, click Review changes. The Review changes step shows you a list of Current template settings and the New template settings that will be applied when you complete the workspace template editor.

When you are ready to apply your template, click Apply changes in the upper right. Applying a template automatically updates the settings in all workspaces linked to that template. If you want to apply your template to a new workspace, navigate to Settings ⚙️ Account Workspaces and Edit the workspace you wish to apply your template to.

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Statuses and workflows

An Aha! Roadmaps workflow is the set of statuses and transitions that your records may move through during their lifecycles. Because different teams' records need to pass through different lifecycles, this setting allows you to customize workflows for each part of your hierarchy and each record type. Enterprise+ users can set a different record layout for each fixed workflow status so that the layout your team sees will always match their needs for that status.

Use the Set defaults button to select the default workflow for each record type in your account's workspaces. Click Set default workflows to save your changes.

Use the filters or search bar to find an existing workflow to Clone, Edit, or Delete, or use the Add workflow dropdown to create a new workflow. You can create or adjust workflows for the following record types:

• Goals

• Initiatives

• Releases

• Epics (select "Features")

• Features

• Requirements (select "Features")

• Ideas

Note:

• After you have created a custom workflow, you still need to apply it to a workspace. You need to do this on a per-workspace level, so navigate to or Settings ⚙️ → Workspace → Configure, scroll down to Workflow and click the appropriate Change workflow button. Then select your custom workflow. Click Update <record type> statuses to save your changes.

• To apply a custom idea workflow, navigate to Settings ⚙️→ Workspace → Ideas → Configure and select the appropriate Workflow for ideas.

When you first Add a workflow, select whether it should be flexible or fixed.

• Flexible workflows allow users to skip steps in the workflow and do not support approval gates. They are best suited for workflows that do not follow the same steps in the same order every time — drafting a go-to-market blog post for a content marketing team, for example, with a variable number of reviews depending on the post's content.

• Fixed workflows do not allow users to skip workflow steps and support approval gates. They are best suited for workflows that need to be consistent, like a product development initiative that needs regulatory and financial approval before implementation can begin.

To update an idea workflow, navigate to Settings ⚙️ Workspace Ideas Configure and follow the same process.

To edit, add, or delete custom statuses, click into a workflow using the Edit button.

You can use Custom statuses to delineate each step of a record's lifecycle and customize their names to fit your team's vocabulary. The statuses you select here will appear in the Status dropdown on a record.

Enterprise+ users can set a different record layout for each fixed workflow status so that the layout your team sees will always match their needs for that status.

You may want the names of your custom statuses to map to the statuses used in other third-party tools (like your bug tracking system). This is particularly valuable if you have integrated Aha! Roadmaps with a third-party tool.

The Status category will not appear on that Status dropdown. Instead, status categories allow you to group statuses together — for example, a feature may have three custom statuses ("Research," "Design," and "Review") that are all part of that feature's "In progress" lifecycle stage.

If your custom status does not match up to a status category, leave it blank.

There are some considerations when choosing status categories for ideas:

• When a user adds a new idea, it defaults to the first status (in order from top to bottom — you can drag statuses to reorder) that has not been assigned to a status category.

• Promoting an idea to a feature will automatically change the idea status to the first custom status in the status category In progress.

• Only statuses that are in a status category will be published to or trigger email notifications from public and private ideas portals.

• Shipping a feature triggers the idea status to change to the first status in the status category Done.

Status categories also affect features and releases:

• When a release is shipped, all features with statuses not in the categories Done, Shipped, or Will not do will be moved to another release.

• Any features with statuses in the category Done will be changed to Shipped.

Status colors are not just for show. If you establish consistent status colors across a team or group of teams, you will be able to skim through sets of records (such as Features Board) to find the records that you need to address first.

Transition buttons help Aha! Roadmaps users follow a predefined workflow. To add transitions between two statuses, click the + icon in the Transition buttons column beneath the first status. Then you can choose how the statuses should flow and add a name for the transition button.

The name of the transition appears on the button for moving between states, so choose an action phrase, such as "Start designing." It is also helpful to acknowledge the completion of a step in your flow, such as "Requirements completed."

Some record types have additional ways to customize their workflows:

• Initiatives, epics, features, and requirements can each have custom description templates, so that anyone creating an initiative or an epic through the create modal (in other words, not through an import or the starter roadmap) will see the same record description text and start structuring their work the same way.

• Features can also have custom types, corresponding to different types of work your teams complete. The type you move to the top of the list will be the default type that your users will see when they create features using that workflow. We recommend reordering types to represent the most commonly selected types first.

Read our articles on custom statuses and workflows, workflow approvals, and advanced custom layouts (Enterprise+) for more information.

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Workflow approval groups

Workflow approval groups are groups of Aha! users that approve or reject approval to-dos in a fixed custom workflow. You will use them in four different areas in your Aha! account:

• Create the workflow approval group at the account level. Choose a name that defines the group, such as Legal, or Finance.

• Populate the workflow approval group at the workspace line level. If you add users to a group at this level, child workspaces can inherit the group's users.

• Customize the workflow approval group users at the workspace level. If you add group users at this level, they will replace any inherited users.

Read this article for more information on workflow approvals.

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Broadcasts

System broadcasts allow you to send a message to all Aha! users on your account. They will be displayed at the top of every page in Aha! except:

• Knowledge Documents

• Features Board

• Features Workflow

• Releases Gantt

• Roadmaps Strategy

• Roadmaps Features

Click Add broadcast to add a broadcast. Configure your message and add an image (including an image hyperlink if you like). The Enabled checkbox will send your broadcast; leave it unchecked if you would like to see a preview of your broadcast before you send it, or disable an existing broadcast. The Sticky checkbox will prevent users from closing your system broadcast.

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Scorecards

Aha! scorecards allow you to prioritize multiple record types using a single numerical score. You can use the default product value scorecard or create your own simple or advanced equation. The following record types can be prioritized with scorecards, though by using custom fields and custom layouts, you can add a scorecard field to almost any record type:

• Competitors

• Features

• Ideas

Each workspace can have different scorecards for each of those record types. Much as you did with custom workflows, you will need to navigate to Settings ⚙️ Workspace Configure to select a scorecard for competitors and features, and navigate to Settings ⚙️ Workspace Ideas Configure to select a scorecard for ideas.

Use the Add scorecard button to create a scorecard, customize the name, equation, or metrics, and adjust it based on the built-in preview. All your changes are saved automatically.

Back in the Configure scorecards view, hover over any extant scorecard to Clone, Edit, or Delete it.

Scorecards are a complex — and powerful — part of your Aha! account. Beyond prioritizing various record types, a record's score can be used in custom worksheet and calculation columns. This article is a great start for more information on scorecards.

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Time frames

By clearly defining your strategy through high-level goals and initiatives, you can ensure that your team stays focused on what matters. Time frames allow teams focusing on strategic planning to group their goals and initiatives based on the time frame associated with their strategic execution.

This is especially important for teams that kick off the year with strategic plans divided into quarterly or half-year objectives. It allows the team to plan out their year-long strategy upfront. Then, they can group related goals and initiatives together in the time frames they will be delivered in for easy reporting and filtering across the application.

Click the Add new time frame button to create a new time frame. Click the Name field to edit it. Your time frame can now be added from both the Strategy Goals page and the Strategy Initiatives page. From either page, simply click the Time frame filter dropdown and select your new time frame.

You can create as many time frames as you would like and choose to Archive those you no longer wish to display. Archived time frames will hide the time frame and associated goals and initiatives so your team can focus on future strategy.

When you archive a time frame, it will still exist in reports, but it will be hidden from the goal and initiative pages. To display the information in reports, include the Goal archived and Initiative archived fields.

Use the Merge button to merge your selected time frame into the time frame you select. Use the Delete button to delete a time frame.

With your time frames created, you can start associating your goals and initiatives with them through the Time frame field on the goal and initiative cards.

You can also generate reports on time frame related data, such as reports on features completed against your goals and initiatives in each time frame.

In the reports tools, you can add time frame data by adding columns for Goal Goal time frame and Initiative Initiative time frame.

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Tags

Tags are a highly flexible tool that you can use in the following record types:

• Epics

• Features

• Ideas

• Notes

• Whiteboards

In the Tags field on these record types, users can create their own tags as they work (to prevent this, you can create your tags field as a Pre-defined tags field). You can also navigate to this setting and use the Add tag button to create a tag and assign it a color. Your tag can include letters, numbers, or emoji. Click the Create tag or Create tag + add another buttons to create your tag.

Back in the Configure tags page, click any of the hyperlinks under the Used in column to create a list report showing you a list of your selected record type that is using the given tag. Click the Edit button to change the name or color of a tag. Click the Replace button to replace a given tag with another existing one. And click the Delete button to delete a tag.

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Custom fields

Custom fields in Aha! are incredibly powerful. In conjunction with custom layouts, custom worksheets, and calculation columns, custom fields allow you to collect, organize, and analyze the exact information you need to make masterful strategic decisions.

Use the top-level tabs to select a record type, then click Add custom field to create a custom field. Select from a variety of custom field types, and follow the prompts specific to your selected field type. Click the Create button to create your custom field.

Back on the Custom fields page, use the search bar to search for a field in your selected record type.

• Click a Custom field hyperlink to edit it, then click Save to save your changes.

• Click a Used in layouts hyperlink to open and adjust the associated layout, then click Save to save your changes.

• Hover over a custom field and click the More options button to Edit, Merge, Convert, or Delete it. Merging combines two custom fields of the same type. Converting changes a custom field from one type to another. Both options help you manage your list of custom fields.

Finally, click the More options button at the top of the page to Export custom fields.

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Custom layouts

Each record type in Aha! has a layout— a group of fields and how they are arranged. For each record type, you can customize a layout for the record's creation, called a Create record layout, and for the record after it has been created, called a Record view layout. You can add, remove and rearrange fields (custom or standard) to fit your team's ideal workflow, and rearrange tabs to organize those fields. Enterprise+ users can add custom tabs and set a different Record view layout for each fixed workflow status so that the layout your team sees will always match their needs for that status.

Use the top-level tabs to select a record type, then click Add custom layout to open the Custom layout builder and create a new custom layout. In the layout builder you can:

• Drag fields to add, rearrange, or remove them for each layout type — you can even create custom fields in the Record view layout! Note: Is your list of existing custom fields full of discarded and duplicate fields? In Settings ⚙️ -> Account -> Custom fields you can merge duplicate fields together or convert a custom field from one type to another.

• Click and drag tabs to the order that best fits your needs.

• In the Record create layout, you can mark individual fields as Required. Users will not be able to create the record using your layout until they enter information into all the Required fields.

• In the Record view layout, you can mark individual fields as Read-only. You can also toggle between Detail and Drawer views. Read-only fields prevent a user from editing them from the detail or drawer views of a record. Note: Read-only views can still be edited through integrations, reports, roadmaps, or the Aha! API.

• If you are editing an existing layout, click the Impacts link to see (and click into) any workspaces using your layout.

• In the Ideas portal — Ideas layout, Ideas Advanced users will see an Add step button to create dynamic ideas submission forms. Add multiple steps to your form, and add custom fields to each step. Then, apply conditional rules to the fields on each step to determine who needs to answer what questions.

• Click Save layout to save your changes.

Back in the Configure layouts screen, use the search bar to search for a layout in your selected record type. Click a Custom layout hyperlink to edit it, or click the Edit button, then click Save to save your changes. Click a Used in hyperlink to be taken to that workspace's Configure settings.

Finally, hover over a layout to use the Actions buttons to Copy, Edit, or Delete a layout.

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Custom tables (Enterprise+)

If you are an Enterprise+ customer, you can create and configure custom tables. Custom tables allow you to organize, analyze, and report on data relevant to your team. Like custom fields, they allow you to go well beyond the basic functionality of Aha! fields and reports. Once created, custom tables will appear in your workspace settings at Settings ⚙️ Workspace Custom tables.

Use the Create custom table button to create a custom table — follow the prompts and click Create to save your changes. Click any hyperlink under Name to navigate to the custom table in question, or click any hyperlink under Relationships with to see the custom field that links a given table to a record type on a custom layout. Finally, hover over a custom table to see the Edit and Delete buttons in the Actions column.

For more information on creating, editing and using custom tables, see this article.

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Ideas

Ideas portals

Ideas portals collect feedback from your customers. From these settings, you can create new ideas portals, open the settings for existing portals, and, for Aha! Ideas Advanced users, enable automatic organization creation in your account here.

• Click a portal's Name to open that portal's settings.

• Click a hyperlink under the Used in column to edit a specific workspace's idea settings. Your changes will apply only to that workspace.

• Click a portal's More options button to Edit, Open, Copy, or Delete a portal.

Organizations

If you are an Aha! Ideas Advanced customer, you can choose how organizations are created in your account:

• Automatic creation: Check Enable to create organizations automatically based on the email domains of your portal users. As portal users continue to join your ideas portals, new organizations will be created whenever there is a user with a new email domain.

• Creation by proxy voter: Check Enable to all users to create new organizations when they capture a proxy vote. When disabled, users can only capture proxy votes for existing organizations.

You may find the organizations custom relationship field useful. Add this custom field to custom record layouts, then link organizations to work items like epics and features or market strategy records like personas and competitors. Then, use those links to create insightful reports and roadmaps.

Single sign-on

If you are an Aha! Ideas Advanced subscriber, you can configure SSO for your ideas portal.

• Click Add identity provider to add an identity provider to your account. Once you have configured an identity provider, you can share the configuration between multiple ideas portals.

• You can see at a glance whether the identity provider is currently Enabled and whether it has Support for multiple portals (in other words, whether you can share it between your ideas portals), and what Type it is. Click on any identity provider's Name to open its configuration.

• Each identity provider includes a section showing you a list of the ideas portal(s), if any, that are currently using the configuration. You can see the number of portals using an identity provider's configuration in the Ideas portals column, and click on the number of portals to skip directly to the list of ideas portals in the identity portal configuration page.

• Hover over an identity provider to Edit or Delete it.

  You can only delete identity providers if no ideas portals are using them. To do this, open an ideas portal's settings (there is a quick link there in the Ideas portals section of the identity provider's configuration page), navigate to Users SSO, and select a different identity provider.

Enter terms in the Search bar to search for identity providers.

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Knowledge bases

If you are subscribed to the Aha! Knowledge Advanced plan, your account will include account customization settings for knowledge bases. From these settings, you can create new knowledge bases, open the settings for existing knowledge bases, and navigate to published knowledge bases.

• Click a knowledge base's Name to open that knowledge base's settings.

• Click a hyperlink under the Document/workspace column to navigate to the workspace documents that comprise the knowledge base.

• Click Open knowledge base to navigate to the published knowledge base. (You will need to hover your mouse over the listed knowledge base to reveal this option.)

• Access the More options menu and select Delete to delete the published knowledge base.

• Access the More options menu and select View all publish events to generate a list report of publishing events for your knowledge base.

Single sign-on

Knowledge bases can share an SSO configuration with ideas portals.

• Click Add identity provider to add an identity provider to your account. Once you have configured an identity provider, you can share the configuration between multiple knowledge bases and ideas portals.

• You can see at a glance whether the identity provider is currently Enabled and whether it has Support for multiple portals or knowledge bases (in other words, whether you can share it between your ideas portals or knowledge bases), and what Type it is. Click on any identity provider's Name to open its configuration.

• Each identity provider includes a section showing you a list of the ideas portal(s) or knowledge base(s), if any, that are currently using the configuration. You can see the number of portals or knowledge bases using an identity provider's configuration in the Used column, and click the number to skip directly to the list of ideas portals or knowledge bases in the identity configuration page.

• Hover over an identity provider to Edit or Delete it.

  You can only delete identity providers if no knowledge bases or ideas portals are using them.

Enter terms in the Search bar to search for identity providers.

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Capacity planning (Enterprise+)

If you plan ambitious projects, you need to be able to plan for how your teams' capacity will affect your ability to achieve your strategic goals. Team capacity planning, available for Enterprise+ customers, helps you visualize your teams' workload and resolve any capacity conflicts before they happen.

From this page, administrators can enable team capacity planning across their account (it is disabled by default) and configure account-level settings, including planning scenarios, teams, and work schedules.

Workspace owners can then enable team capacity planning in their workspace, and configure it further. Owners and contributors can set estimates for initiatives, epics, and features, and all user permission levels can visualize teams' and team members' capacity in the capacity report. You can estimate capacity in cost, hours, people, or story points, apply an Initial estimate then a later Detailed estimate, and log Actual effort against the estimate when work starts.

You may wish to create a custom role for capacity planning for teams so that only users included in the custom role will have the ability to view or adjust advanced estimates.

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Recycle bin

It is all too easy to accidentally delete something. The recycle bin shows you:

• Recently deleted workspaces

• Records that have been recently deleted

Along with information about when and how the deletion occurred, and which Aha! user deleted the information, the recycle bin has a Restore button, so that you can restore anything deleted by mistake.

The recycle bin will show you records or workspaces that have been deleted within the last seven days.

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