This article refers to releases and features. Depending on your workspace type, you may see "schedules" and “activities" in your workspace.
This article is part of a series of settings overview articles:
Account | Workspace | Integrations | Personal |
Aha! Roadmaps | Workspace settings
Workspace-level settings affect a particular workspace or workspace line in your Aha! account. This article will explain each workspace setting in the Workspace: <your workspace> section.
Open your workspace settings by navigating to Settings ⚙️ Workspace.
Click any of the links below to skip ahead:
Workspace settings report
Workspace settings
Aha! Develop
Report on your workspace settings
For a comprehensive view of the workspace settings across your Aha! account, click the View report link at the top of your workspace settings.
This report will show you the settings for every workspace and workspace line in your account that you have access to.
Use the report to view your workspace settings all on one page so you can compare them at a glance and adjust them easily.
For the rest of this article, we will look through the individual settings one at a time.
Configure
First, let's work through the Configure settings. If you navigate to Settings ⚙️ Workspace while in a workspace line, the Configure settings will be the only section available.
The workspace profile settings affect a workspace's workflows, layouts, and scorecards.
The Color setting configures the color for your workspace, which you can see in Roadmaps Portfolio. Use a hex color code to enter a custom color.
The Default assignee setting determines who Aha! features and requirements will be initially assigned to. This can be any user in your account or you can have these records remain unassigned by default.
The Default release setting determines which release new epics or features added to your workspace will be added to automatically:
First parking lot will add new epics and features to the first release in your parking lot.
First release will add new epics and features to the first release on your Features board.
Specific parking lot offers the option to select a specific release you have already added to your workspace's parking lot.
The Scorecard for features setting determines the scorecard available for your features. Aha! includes a default scorecard but you can substitute it for a custom scorecard if you choose. Anytime you change the default scorecard here, you will erase all previously entered scores for all features in your workspace.
Like the Scorecard for features, the Scorecard for competitors determines the scorecard available for your competitor profiles. You can score your competitors in Strategy Competitors Chart view by dragging them around the 2x2 competitor matrix. You can also score by clicking on a competitor then clicking on the Threat scorecard field.
Workflow
The next settings section affects the workflows for various record types in your workspace. You can choose to inherit workflows from higher levels of the workspace hierarchy for consistency or you can create new workflows for your workspace's unique needs.
In this section, you can change the workflow for the six basic record types:
Goals
Initiatives
Releases / Schedules
Epics
Features / Activities
Requirements
For each record type, the process to adjust a workflow is the same. Click Edit <record type> workflow to open the Change workflow modal. From here, you can change the workflow using the New workflow dropdown or map the statuses in your current workflow to new statuses using the New statuses dropdown. If you are adjusting the workflow for an epic, feature, or requirement, you can also map the record types from your current workflow to new types using the New types dropdown.
Click Update <record type> statuses to save your changes. Any changes you save take effect immediately across every relevant record in your workspace.
Click the Custom statuses and workflows hyperlink next to each record type to navigate to Settings ⚙️ Account Configure statuses and workflows. From here, you can create, edit, or delete the workflows that you want to apply to your workspace. You will need to be an administrator with customization permissions to access this part of Settings ⚙️ Account.
Workflow syncing
Ambitious work gets completed one step at a time — feature by feature, requirement by requirement. You can already calculate an epic's or a feature's progress from its child records, but you might also want epic and feature statuses to update as contributing records progress through their workflow.
With these settings enabled, parent records' statuses will stay in sync with their child records' status categories — so for example, once a feature moves to a status in the In progress category, the epic's status will change to the first status in its In progress category.
A few things to note about workflow syncing:
You can always manually change the status of any record.
The parent record's status will change once the first child record's status advances to a new status in the workflow.
The workflow sync follows your records through the workflow from Not started to Shipped or Will not do. It will not stay in sync if you move backwards in the workflow.
Workflow sync works with automation. However, if you use automation on the child record and the parent record has a fixed workflow, the statuses will not remain synced if syncing would cause the parent record to skip a step in its workflow.
If you have synced requirements and features, and features and epics, it is possible for a requirement's status change to update a feature's status, which then updates an epic.
To adjust these settings, use the appropriate dropdowns:
Epics: Choose whether an epic's status should automatically update when its features update.
Features: Choose whether a feature's status should automatically update when its requirements update.
Epic workflow syncing is disabled by default for Aha! Roadmaps workspaces created before March 24, 2021, and enabled by default for workspaces created after that date. If you want to see your workflow syncing settings for each workspace across your account, use the workspace settings report.
Custom layouts
The Custom layouts section helps you adjust the way that fields are laid out on records in your workspace.
To create, edit, or delete a custom layout, you will need to be an administrator with customization permissions (navigate to Settings ⚙️ Account Custom layouts to do this), but workspace owners can select which layouts get applied to the record types in their workspace.
You can choose to Inherit record layouts from the next level up in your workspace hierarchy. You can also work through each of the available record types and decide one-by-one whether you would like to inherit or select your own custom layouts.
Goals
Initiatives
Releases / Schedules
Epics
Features / Activities
Requirements
Workspaces
Ideas
Personas
Competitors
Creative briefs
Organizations
Proxy votes
Ideas portal — Ideas
Ideas — Proxy votes
For each record type, use the custom layout dropdown to select the layout you want the record to display in your current workspace. If you want to edit the custom layout you have selected (and you have the proper user permissions), hover over a record type and click Edit layout.
Epics
Not every team chooses to use epics, so the Epics workspace setting allows you to choose whether you would like to Enable, Disable, or Inherit your epic settings from the next level up in the workspace hierarchy.
Objectives and key results
If your team uses the objectives and key results (OKRs) framework, you can enable that here. The three options are:
Inherit from workspace line: Useful if you want to align an entire product line around OKRs.
Disabled for your workspace or workspace line.
Enabled for your workspace or workspace line.
When enabled, your workspace will change:
Goals will be renamed as "Objectives."
Each objective will have a new Key results tab, where you can add as many key results as you need.
Click Update workspace configuration to save your changes.
Card customizations
Some pages in Aha! Roadmaps display records as cards — the features board and feature workflow pages, for example. You can customize the fields those cards display to highlight the information most important to your workspace.
The changes you make to these workspace-level settings will set a default card layout. Individual users in your workspace can also customize card layouts on individual pages, which will change the card layout for just those users.
To drive consistency across workspaces, you can choose to Use card layouts inherited from your workspace's parent workspace line.
If you would rather customize the card layouts for your workspace, select Customize card layouts and click Customize cards. The Customize record cards modal will appear with tabs for each record type that can appear as a card in your team.
The record tabs available are:
Initiatives
Releases / Schedules
Release phases / Schedule phases
Epics
Features / Activities
Requirements
To-dos
Click on a tab to open that record type's card layout.
Click the View buttons on the right to see how the card will display in an Expanded view, Collapsed view, or Whiteboard view.
Click the gear dropdown ⚙️ for further customizations:
For features and requirements, click the toggle to show or hide the record's Parent record on the card.
Choose whether you want the card to Show card images. The card's image will be an image of the first attachment on the card.
Choose whether the Card highlight should highlight the record's status in the Background or just the Sidebar (leaving the background white).
Then customize the card layout:
Select the fields you want to add to the card layout. If you have a lot of available fields, use the Search at the top of the tab to find the one you need. You can also collapse Standard fields or Custom fields to show only one type of field.
Drag and drop fields onto a card to add them. Click the X beside a field to remove it.
You can drop fields next to others on the same row or beneath the bottom row of fields to create a new row on the layout.
Add a Divider line anywhere on the card layout to better organize key data.
Click Reset to default to revert your changes to the default layout, Cancel to exit the modal or Save to save your work.
Work requests (Enterprise+)
If you are an Enterprise+ customer, you also have access to work requests. Work requests are enabled at the account level, but you can further configure them here in your workspace settings.
By default, anyone with owner or contributor user permissions to your workspace can respond to work requests. If you want to limit that list of people, you have two options:
Create a custom user permissions role and select that option in the Enhanced security setting.
Add particular users to this workspace-level setting. The users you add to this list will be the only ones able to respond to work requests for this workspace.
Progress calculation
You can track a record's progress by several different methods. To drive consistency across your team, you can set the default progress calculation, per record type, here at the workspace or workspace line level.
You can set the default progress calculation for the following record types:
Goals
Initiatives
Releases / Schedules
Release phases / Schedule phases
Epics
Features / Activities
By default, the progress calculation for each record will be inherited from the workspace line level, so that every workspace in the workspace line calculates progress in the same way.
There are two items to note about inheriting progress calculations from a workspace line:
Some progress calculation methods depend on settings that need to be enabled first. Initiatives, for example, can calculate their progress from linked epics — but epics first need to be enabled at either a workspace or a workspace line and inherited to a workspace. Likewise, features can calculate their progress from a remaining estimate, but that requires capacity planning for individuals in a workspace. If you choose to calculate progress from epics or estimates at the workspace line level, and a child workspace does not have those settings enabled, progress calculation methods for those settings will default to Enter manually.
At the workspace line level, goals and initiatives can calculate their progress from child goals and from child initiatives. If you select this progress calculation at the workspace line level, workspaces will default to Enter manually — since a workspace cannot have child workspaces.
These settings control records' default progress calculation. Users in your account can always change individual records' progress calculations to other methods.
Record dates
In the Record dates settings, you can choose how parent record types should calculate their Start and End dates. Either enter those dates manually, or calculate them from child records. If calculated, then any time a child record's dates change in a way that would affect the parent's dates, the parent's dates update.
Users in your account can always change the way that parent dates are calculated, but these defaults help drive consistency.
Note:
Defaults affect newly created records. They do not update the dates for existing records.
If an integration updates a record's Start date or End date, the calculation type will change back to Enter manually, and updates to child records that you make in Aha! will not update the parent record.
Document access
All users with reviewer permissions for a workspace can access that workspace's notes and whiteboards. Here, you can configure whether reviewers can also edit workspace notes and whiteboards. Select View if you only want reviewers to be able to view documents, or select Edit to allow reviewers to edit workspace documents as well. Click Update workspace configuration to save your changes.
Once your changes are saved, document access settings will be applied to all documents in your workspace. You can change access settings for reviewers on individual documents without changing them for all users. To change reviewer access on a single document, access its Share menu and use the dropdown next to Reviewers to select Edit or View.
Terminology
Your team will work best in Aha! Roadmaps if they can work with language that they are used to. Instead of releases, for example, your team might have multiple ongoing projects, or perhaps your features are called stories.
The Terminology setting section allows you to customize the names of Aha! record types in your workspace — or inherit a standard terminology from higher levels of your workspace hierarchy.
Select the radio button next to Use default terminology if you would like to retain the default terminology for your workspace type.
Select the radio button next to Customize terminology if you would like to customize terminology used in your workspace's navigation or if you would like to customize the terminology used for records.
To customize your terminology:
In the Navigation terminology section, enter your preferred terminology for the navigation items you want to change in your workspace. Any fields left empty will use default terminology.
In the Record terminology section, enter your preferred terminology for each record type you want to change in your workspace. Terminology you enter for records will be displayed everywhere in the workspace except the Settings pages.
Click Update terminology to save your changes.
If you choose to customize the terminology for a workspace, Aha! will display your customized term in any place that it refers specifically to that workspace. Aha! will still use the term “workspace” when referring to the general concept of a workspace or to a group of workspaces. If you are customizing the terminology for a workspace line, each workspace in that workspace line will inherit that same terminology. You can always customize each workspace individually if you need to.
Navigation
In addition to customizing your terminology, you can also customize the navigation buttons at the top of your Aha! page for each workspace.
You can navigate to these settings through Settings ⚙️ Workspace Navigation, or by hovering over your navigation bar and clicking the pencil icon that appears.
Select Use navigation inherited from <workspace> to inherit your workspace navigation from a higher level of the workspace hierarchy.
Select Customize navigation to choose what pages are shown or hidden in your workspace. Click Update to save your changes. The navigation that you choose will be presented to all users in your workspace.
By default, the Ideas section is disabled. The Ideas section is automatically enabled when you create an ideas portal in your workspace.
Document templates
Document templates provide a ready-to-use format for the types of documents you create most. Aha! Roadmaps offers a library of templates to choose from when you create a new document. If you have specific details pertinent to your team that you want to include in a template, create a custom note or whiteboard template in workspace settings. Shared document templates can be inherited from a workspace line, so you can drive consistency across teams and establish a standard approach for capturing information.
If you want to share a template across multiple teams, we recommend creating it at the highest level in your hierarchy so that it can be inherited by any workspace lines and workspaces within it. You must be a workspace owner to add a document template.
From the Document templates section, click Add document templates. Then select Note, Whiteboard, or Meeting. Customize the template to your needs — add custom fields, add tables, images, Aha! views, and more. You can also assign watchers, add to-dos, and change the title icon to an emoji to help your template stand out.
