Adding features to Productboard

Your Features board is the home of all your feature ideas, big and small. You might be storing feature ideas in a variety of places, so this article will show you how to import all of them into your Productboard account, where they will live in your hierarchy.

In this article:

• Create a feature and define important fields
• Import feature ideas from a spreadsheet
• Import feature ideas from Jira
• Clean up your newly imported features

Create a feature and define important fields

Features represent user needs or broad capabilities you’re looking to unlock:

To create a feature, click the + button next to the section of your hierarchy where it should live:

Clicking on a feature from your list opens up a window containing details about that feature.

• Under the Detail tab, you’ll see descriptions of your idea, any related subfeatures, and relevant files or attachments.
• By clicking on the Insights tab, you’ll see any relevant user feedback related to this feature idea.

We’ll show you how to generate Insights and link them to features in Part 4 of this series.

If you scroll down on the Feature detail view, you can find Fields, Comments, and History.

• In the Fields section, you fill in all fields you have in your workspace or push features to integrations you use in your account.
• In the Comments section, you can comment on features and add reactions to them for quick feedback to your colleagues.
• Under History, you can find an activity log of all the activities that took place in that feature, so you can narrow down those who made a specific change.

Import feature ideas from a spreadsheet

We recommend importing features from other tools in batches. Each batch should correspond to a component or a subcomponent of your hierarchy.

If you’re using a spreadsheet, group together features which will be added to the same component.

For example, if your features are organized like this:

Take a few moments to group together similar items which will be added into the same part of your hierarchy, whether that hierarchy is based around user needs or product area:

All of the features highlighted above are related to the same feature: Video calls.

Navigate to your Features board. It usually makes sense to migrate features in batches, depending on how they’re organized in your spreadsheet. For example, you might want to migrate all the features set for release in Q2, or all the features which you’ve already launched, or all the features related to a particular area of the product or user need.

Make sure you’re looking at a view of your features by Hierarchy, Release, or Status:

Click the blue + symbol in the bottom left corner. Select “Import Features”:

Download the CSV template and add your Features. Use the template to add feature names, status, descriptions, owner, effort, and timeframe. Only the name is required, all other data is optional.

Note: You can add feature metadata at any time after importing if you’d prefer to just import the name.

After importing your file and Productboard has correctly identified the feature name and description fields, decide where in your hierarchy the new features should be added.

After the import is complete, refresh your features board, and you’ll see your new features in your hierarchy.

Import feature ideas from Jira

Only Makers with admin access can enable integrations in your Productboard account.

If you were using Jira to manage your feature ideas, it’s easy to set up our Jira integration and do a one-time import of your backlog!

Configure the integration

First, find someone on your team with Jira global permissions.

Next, follow our step-by-step instructions to configure your integration:

• Integrate with Jira
• Integrate with Jira (self-managed or on-prem)
• Integrate with Jira (next-gen)

Understand how Jira maps to Productboard

A number of Jira fields will automatically map to Productboard:

Productboard | Jira

• Feature name | Issue name
• Feature name | Issue summary
• Feature description | Issue description
• Jira "Task" status | Issue status
• Release | Fix version
• Feature owner | Reporter

Note that this means the Summary field in Jira:

...will map to the Feature name in Productboard:

You may have additional custom fields in Jira that you wish to push to Productboard. For example, are you estimating effort using story points?

If so, take a few minutes to create these custom fields. This way, when you move your data into Productboard, everything will have a place to live!

Then, return to your settings in Productboard. Locate your Jira integration and map these custom fields to Productboard:

Add a Productboard URL

Finally, hop back into Jira for a moment to add a Productboard URL field to your features. Trust us - it’s a huge timesaver to do this before you import features into Productboard:

1. In Jira, log in as an admin. Go to Settings (gear icon) > Issues.
2. Under Fields, select Custom fields.
3. Locate the Productboard URL field and use the menu beside its name to select Screens.
4. On the screens page, use the checkboxes to associate the Productboard URL field with the screens used for your Edit Issue and Create Issue Jira operations. (Typically named Default screen, but may also be named Scrum Default Issue Screen or Kanban Default Issue screen. For more info, see below.)
5. Click Update.

You'll now see a Productboard URL field displayed on issue screens.

Verify which screens are used for Edit Issue & Create Issue operations

1. In a new browser tab, select the Jira settings menu (gear icon) > Projects and search for your project.
2. From the menu beside your project's name, select Project settings.
3. In Project settings, select Screens.
4. Uncollapse the screen schemes and see which screens are associated with the Edit Issue and Create Issue operations.
5. Ensure the Productboard URL field is associated with these screens.

Import your features from Jira

It’s now time to import your features into Productboard! Returning to the integration configuration screen, select the feature ideas you wish to push into Productboard:

Clean up your newly imported features

Once you’ve finished migrating all your feature ideas into Productboard, you might want to do a bit more tidying up.

You can drag and drop features, or drag a feature underneath another feature to turn it into a subfeature:

To update a field for multiple features at once, check the boxes next to multiple features. A flyover window will appear, allowing you to edit all the features at once.

For example, let’s say you want to backfill your Productboard account by adding a big batch of all your recently launched features. After importing my features, I could update their status like this: