What’s a release? For us at Tracker it’s a marker in your backlog that represents the most important milestones. As you can see in the screencast, creating a release marker is just like making a story.

It’s that mysterious one on the end.

In a conversation with Joanne, she mentioned (in a delightful British accent), “The most key point of all is that the release marker should follow the stories planned for that milestone.” Here at Tracker we also use release markers, like bookmarks, to help organize the Icebox–for example: blocked or upcoming features.

Note: The Releases panel only shows scheduled releases – so no releases in the Icebox. To see all releases use this in the Search box type:Release.

Marlena thoroughly covered releases in the Agile Continuum, it would be hard to top her blogging prowess so here’s an excerpt:

While XP and Agile brought us out of the dark ages of big-bang releases in favor of smaller, more frequent releases, there are now varying flavors of frequent releases. In XP and Scrum, releases are typically associated with the end of an iteration, but they don’t necessarily have to be. On the Tracker team, we focus on flexibility within an iteration. This is part of the logic behind Tracker’s release markers. The release markers have a date, but that date does not have to coincide with the end of an iteration, neither is the marker tied to a certain set of stories. We have Epics for that. You can read more about both Epics and Releases here.

Learn more about releases here.

The post Tracker Screencast: Release Markers appeared first on Pivotal Labs.

This screencast covers a lot of bases. Check it out to see file attachments and full page story view in action! There are a couple ways to attach files. Drag them into an open story or press the paper clip button, and don’t forget, you can drag in multiple files at once! Click the cogwheel to download or delete the image. The same rules apply in full page story view.

VIDEO

There are also a few ways to view attachments, pop out to full story view, clicking on the attachment for a full page view of the single attachment. You can also view all images by flying over the speech bubble, click the “view all images” in flyover to see just the images on a separate page. This is my favorite way to view attachments because they’re large and in once continuous column which is great for walking through new UI changes.

The post Tracker Screencast: How many ways can you view a file attachment? appeared first on Pivotal Labs.

I seem to discover new things in Tracker all the time. After looking over the shoulder of someone on the dev team and seeing all their projects in “tabs” on top of their current project, I scratched my head thinking, “When do I get that!?” Is this a new feature or secret “developer only” mode? Upon closer inspection, it’s just another one of those hidden gems in Tracker preferences. Check out this short screencast to see how to enable project tabs or follow the instructions below.

• Go to your profile
• Scroll down to Project Page Preferences
• Select Show project tabs
• Press save

Thats it!

The post Tracker Screencast: Project Tabs appeared first on Pivotal Labs.

It can be stifling to jump into a big project as a new user or team member, you don’t want to accidentally delete stuff, reprioritize iterations etc. We’ve got you covered; try out a sample project. We designed this on purpose as a sandbox for people to poke around and build. Check out this short screencast for a quick demo of how to start a sample project and a few things you can do within it. Create, explore, and don’t be afraid to get lost.

Here’s the breakdown if you don’t want to watch the video.

• Go to your dashboard
• Press the Create Project + button
• Press the Create a sample project button(to the right of Project name field

The post In the beginning there was; The Sample Project appeared first on Pivotal Labs.

Shortcuts rock, make things easier, and let you move more quickly in Tracker. This screencast says it all but here’s the cheat sheet which you can get to with the ? button.

The seatbelt light’s off, you’re free to move about Tracker with your keyboard!
Wait till the end to hear about what’s coming up in shortcut development.

The post Tracker Screencast: Shortcuts! appeared first on Pivotal Labs.

When you’re running East and the project goes West, it’s time to reorganize the backlog. This can be painful but Tracker comes to the rescue with multiple story selection and cloning panels. Here’s a little cheat sheet!

Dan Podsedly covered this in a blog post last year, here’s an excerpt:

To select multiple stories, use the small checkboxes to the right of story titles. If you’d like to select a range of stories, select the first story in the list, then shift-click on the last story. This will select all in the range, and allow you to drag them together, or use some of the other actions in the Stories drop-down, such as export to CSV or move to another project. Note: range select with shift-click only works in a single panel at a time, but you can select multiple ranges of stories across the whole project.

You can deselect a large number of stories in the Stories drop down menu.

Check out this short Screencast to see a demo of working with multiple stories in Tracker!

The post Tracker Screencast: Reorganize panels with multiple story selection, cloning panels, and more! appeared first on Pivotal Labs.

Today’s screencast is about understanding workflow in Tracker, with a twist of organization.

The Current panel shows you all of the stories your team is working on this week or “iteration”, including those that are in progress, as well as stories that Tracker thinks you’re going to get done based on velocity. As you’ve probably noticed, stories will jump from Current to the Backlog automatically as you move stories around, estimate them, etc.

If you prefer to see and think of the current iteration and the rest of the backlog as one continuous thing, you can combine them! Check out the screencast below, or just do the following:

• Sign into Tracker
• Open up your Profile
• Scroll down to Project Page Preferences and check the ‘Include Current in Backlog’ checkbox
• Head into your Project

The post Screencast: The current, the backlog, together again! appeared first on Pivotal Labs.

The Tracker Team gets some variation of this question a lot:
“I work on one project one week and a different one another week and it’s really throwing off our project’s velocity. Is there something we can do to account for the changes in team strength?”

Check out this short screencast on how to account for those missing team members and adjust velocity on the fly.

I received this question from one of our recent surveys; if you respond to a survey in the future, leave your contact info so we can get back with you!

-Charlie out.

The post Working on multiple projects? Velocity got you down? appeared first on Pivotal Labs.