This short guide contains important information about Productboard's key data structures and UI elements. Your implementation will be more resilient if you read it.
You don't need to know anything to use this guide, though if you aren't familiar with the idea of Productboard, you might want to read this first.
In this article:
Orientation
The most important navigational elements of Productboard are:
- Main menu: This vertical bar along the leftmost edge houses all the buttons you need to access different parts of your workspace.
- Global header: Click the search bar to find any board or entity in your workspace, or click the blue Create button to make a new one.
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Spark chat and skills: Spark is Productboard's AI agent. There are many ways to interact with it, but you can always return to Home > Overview to start a new chat or launch a skill.
Tip: Enter "/productboard-onboarding" into any Spark chat to have Spark teach you how things work.
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Spaces: Located in the Home submenu, spaces are for organizing your folders and boards. Mature workspaces use them to separate work into groups like Product, GTM, and Leadership. The default teamspace is called Organization; it lives on its own and every new user joins it by default.
See Getting started with Productboard teamspaces for details. - Settings: Configure your workspace. This is where admins can invite new users, set up integrations, and connect new sources for Spark.
See Main navigation elements for more details about items on the Main menu and Global header.
If you want to learn more about Spark, see Productboard Spark.
Boards
A board is a set of tools and filters that help you answer a question like "how is our product structured?" or "what are people saying about feature X?" Creating, duplicating, or deleting a board has no effect on the data it displays, and you shouldn't restrict yourself to using just one board of each type.
Each board type is better for certain tasks.
- Insights boards are best for collecting and reviewing feedback.
- Grids are best for strategic planning and prioritization.
- Timelines and columns boards are best for communicating plans internally.
Every board type looks a bit different, but generally you'll have access to board-specific tools, settings, and filters along the top of the screen to help you visualize your data.
Creating boards
There are two main ways to create boards. The one you use depends on how visible you want your new board to be.
- From the Global header, click Create.
- Select the board type you want to create and click Create.
- The board will appear in the Home submenu under Personal. Nobody else can see it unless you share it or move it into a teamspace. (Or if an admin global-searches for it by name.)
- From the Home submenu, under Spaces, hover over any teamspace (try Personal).
- Click Create a new board or folder and select a board type from the list.
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The board will appear in that teamspace. See Sharing boards below for information about who can see which boards.
Note: Your board creation options are dependent on your member role.
Saving boards
Whenever you make certain changes to a board, you'll see a blue Save button in the top right corner. Other users won't see unsaved changes you make to:
- Sorting and filtering options.
- Grouping options like swimlanes and item types.
- Data display elements like columns and roadmap card attributes.
Changes to hierarchy data (like feature status, release, or formula score) are automatically reflected on all boards where that feature appears, and so don't require you to save.
You can iterate a board by choosing Save as new from the save button's dropdown. The new board will appear in your Personal section. Nobody else can access this board until you change its sharing options.
See Save and manage your boards for details.
Sharing boards
Access to these boards will depend on the type of teamspace it belongs to and your membership in that teamspace. Most teamspaces are open teamspaces; you can see them and all their boards, and you can join them from the All teamspaces section in the main menu to make them easier to access.
If you're a maker, you must join a teamspace before you can edit its boards.
See Teamspace types and member access levels for details.
Product Hierarchy
Your product hierarchy is a nested list of entities that visually organizes your work. It's the backbone of your workspace, and you can't use Productboard without it, so you need to understand it. You should use a feature board or grid to build and manage your hierarchy, as they have the most appropriate toolset.
Building your hierarchy should be the first thing you do. This section only covers the basics; for more help designing and building your hierarchy, see Build your product hierarchy.
Entity Types
There are four types of product hierarchy entities (also called items). In descending hierarchical order:
Products represent separate product lines or distinct aspects of one product line.
Components help you subdivide your products.
🟨 Features represent a piece of plannable, completable work on the order of an epic.
🟣 Subfeatures represent a smaller piece of work, usually something like a user story.
You can click on an entity to open its details sidebar, from which you can edit its name, description, and other data.
The colored shape beside a feature or subfeature is its status. You can click on it to change the entity's status. Products and components are structural entities, so they don't have statuses.
On some Productboard plans, admins can customize the list of statuses from Main menu > Workspace dropdown > Settings.
Adding entities to the hierarchy
The easiest place to add items to your product hierarchy is from Library > Products > Products. Click Create product at the bottom of the list to add a new product, or click Add under beside a listed item to add subordinates. If you have features to import, you can use the Import features button in the top right corner, but you'll still need a product to house them under.
Tips
You only have one product hierarchy. No matter how many products and features you have across however many boards, you're always looking at the same hierarchy. Deleting a part of your hierarchy on one board affects your entire workspace, but deleting the board itself has no effect on your hierarchy at all (because boards are just sets of tools and filters).
Features aren't feedback. Features and subfeatures are meant to represent functional ideas that can be worked on and completed. They are not for tracking feedback from stakeholders. That entity type is called a note and it lives outside the hierarchy. See Create your first insight for details.
Subfeatures aren't bugs. Productboard isn't designed for tracking bugs. You're better off doing that in a project management tool like Jira instead.
Data
Data is anything used to describe an aspect of an entity (like a feature's owner or a note's tags). Like entities, data is universal; if it's deleted in one place, it disappears from Productboard entirely.
You can access your workspace's data from the Data section in the main menu, from an entity's details sidebar, and from board-specific tools like grid columns.
Deleting boards vs deleting entities and data
Most things can be deleted from their ••• More actions menu, usually found to the right or top-right.
Accidentally deleting a board isn't so bad. You can create a new board of the same type, adjust its filters and options to match the old ones, and reset its sharing options. It's annoying, but most boards can be rebuilt relatively easily.
Accidentally deleting entities or data is much worse. A single product might have dozens of children and hundreds of grandchildren, all of which are deleted along with the parent. Deleting a data field wipes the content of that field from every single feature in your workspace. This can seriously disrupt everyone's work.
Warning: Productboard has no undo button. Always double check before deleting something. If you aren't sure, archive it from the same ••• More actions menu or just leave it be.