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:
Main navigation
Everything you need to navigate Productboard is on the left, in the Main navigation area. The most important elements of this area are:
- Main menu: This vertical bar along the leftmost edge houses all the buttons you need to access different parts of your workspace.
-
Workspace menu: Click here to reveal a dropdown containing, among other things:
- My account for adjusting notification options, checking your role, and viewing team assignments.
- Settings for admins to configure the workspace.
-
Teamspaces: Located in the Home submenu, teamspaces 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 General and every new user joins it by default.
See Getting started with Productboard teamspaces for details. -
Board creation: Hovering over a teamspace lets you create boards and folders. Folders help keep your boards organized.
- More: Contains otherwise-hidden Main menu items, including Data, where you can manage your workspace's data fields.
See Main navigation elements for details.
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.
- Features boards or grids are best for strategic planning and prioritization.
- Legacy roadmaps, timelines, or 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.
- Near the top of the Main menu, click Create.
- Select the board type you want to create and click Create board.
- The board will appear in the Home submenu under Personal. Nobody else can see it until you move it into a teamspace.
- From the Home submenu, under Teamspaces, hover over any teamspace (try General).
- Click Create a new board or folder and select a board type from the list.
- The board will appear in that teamspace, where others can (probably) see it. See Sharing boards below for details.
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
This works differently on Legacy and New experiences. Click the sections below to view experience-specific instructions, or click here to learn more about what's going on.
After you save a board, the Save button will become a Share button. Sharing options differ slightly between board types, but generally you'll choose between sharing with Individuals and Teams or Roles.
Only people specified by a board's sharing options can see it; Legacy board visibility is not related to teamspaces, so placing a board into Teamspace A does not mean that everyone in Teamspace A can see it.
See Legacy board sharing: Individual board options for details.
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 New board sharing: Inherited from teamspaces 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 Create products and build your hierarchy.
Entity Types
There are four types of 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 Main menu > Products > Product hierarchy. 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 button in the top right, 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 features board 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 sameMore actions menu or just leave it be.