Try the new roll-up dates early access feature in Portfolio for Jira

[#1]

Hi everybody 👋 

My name is Roi, Portfolio for Jira product manager. Today I'd like to share with you the release of an early access feature to help you visually represent team commitments at higher levels of the hierarchy.

Managing the timelines of delivery for large projects is like building a house of cards. If one card shifts out of place, it all can come crashing down. Misrepresenting the timelines of work can have serious ramifications. That’s why we’ve launched a new early access feature in Portfolio for Jira Server and Data Center 3.19.1 to help you roll-up the dates of child issues and display them on their parent issues – supporting you in keeping everyone on the same page, even as plans evolve.

By rolling up dates, you can see at a glance when an epic or initiative (or whatever else you’re calling big buckets of work these days) is due to start and finish, based on the dates of its children.

Let’s take a quick look at a before-and-after shot of a Portfolio plan to see what roll-up dates have to offer.

The first plan you see is stark and devoid of detail – the dates of epic issues and above are just… blank.

The plan with roll-up dates paints a much clearer picture of what’s actually going on.

…ahhh, now you’re starting to see the value. But, to realize its full potential, we need your help.

Help us make roll-up dates even better

When combining roll-up dates with the existing roll-up capabilities, this will change some of the behaviors in Portfolio for Jira. That’s why we’re doing our due diligence, and releasing roll-up dates as an early access feature first.

As you’re testing it out, send us any feedback that you or your team may have using the Give feedback button in your Portfolio plan. Our team will review each submission and reach out with any questions as needed.

"Give feedback" button in the upper-right section of a Portfolio plan

How to enable the feature

Once you’ve initiated a trial or upgraded to Portfolio for Jira Server and Data Center 3.19.1, you’ll need to:

1. Log in as a user with the 'Jira administrators' permission.

2. Go to Portfolio > Administration > Portfolio early access features.

3. Select the Roll-up dates checkbox.

From there, head to our documentation to start using roll-up dates.

Wait… what about Portfolio for Jira’s other roll-up capabilities?

Currently, Portfolio for Jira Server and Data Center lets you roll up the following values: estimates, teams, sprints, and releases. We delivered this to our users with the launch of Portfolio for Jira’s 3.0 improved interface along with lots of other goodies to make planning work across teams easier.

Based on your feedback, we identified the need for epic-level issues (and above) to also show the dates of underlying issues, to enable quick and confident planning and communication.

But here’s the icing on the cake

That’s right, if you’ve been paying close attention, you’ll see that we also have other early access feature that we’d love for you to try, such as our newly released enhanced capacity distribution and plan default to system timezone. Try them out and let us know what you think!

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Questions or comments? Leave them here and let us know what you think.

[Tere Pile]

Any chance this will be available in cloud instance?

[Roi Fine]

Hi @Tere Pile ,

The roll-up dates feature is available for Server/Data Center customers of Portfolio for Jira. This feature is not currently available in Cloud.

We currently have a beta for a similar experience for cloud customers.

You are welcome to apply to portfolio-cloud-beta@atlassian.com. Please include your site name (xxxx.atlassian.net) in the email.

I hope that helps. 

Cheers,

Roi

[Ashkan Malekly]

It sound great. Thank you so much. I have another problem with portfolio for Jira and easy BI. That is 2 fields , target end and target start are not shown in tables in easybi by define your query or importing your project in your account. Every time I should export the file as CSU and then import in easy bi and make 2 fields as dimension. Could you consider this problem thanks a lot

[Roi Fine]

Hi @Ashkan Malekly , 

I'm glad you're finding the new rollup feature useful. By the way, it's now available to everyone and not only for early access.

Regarding the problem you are describing, I would advise you to contact EasyBI support. A potential reason you can't export the target dates easily could be that target dates are issue properties that are stored as entity properties on the issue. And not as custom field values.

I hope this makes sense,

Roi,

[Ashkan Malekly]

Hi @Roi Fine 

Thank a lot. Yes you are right. I really expect for your new features of portfolio for jira cause i am one of fans.

[Matt Doar]

Hey Roi, this feature is driving our next update of Portfolio, so thanks!

[Roi Fine]

Thanks @Matt Doar , glad to hear your teams find this feature useful. It is available for all users since version 3.23. Fire any feedback you might have. 

Cheers!

[Arash Ghazvini]

Hi @Roi Fine we are a Cloud customer and I just applied for access via the email you posted in your early comments. Do you have any news on when it would be available for all Cloud customers?

Thanks!

[Roi Fine]

@Arash Ghazvini , we will be looking to bring this feature to cloud customers (Jira Software Premium) as well. I can't say exactly when, but soon 😊

[Arash Ghazvini]

Thanks @Roi Fine - looking forward to it. In the meantime we sent a request for Beta access. Do you know the ETA and chances of Beta access? I'm asking because we are evaluating 3rd-party Add-Ons and want to see if we can just wait for the Beta access, which is what we'd prefer to use. Thank you!

[Pete Morris]

Hi @Arash Ghazvini - I've replied to your email re: the beta. Hope that helps.

Just to clarify - the current Cloud beta is only for the new interface; it does not yet include the roll-up dates feature that Roi has described in this post. This feature will be coming to Cloud a little later.

[Filipe Fernandes]

Is it possible to add a bit more detail to a little later? The functionality to roll-up dates is a big plus and we are not able to justify the added cost without it. 
If there is a beta program where I can try the feature, please let me know.

Thanks.

[Pete Morris]

@Filipe Fernandes - if all goes well then it will be within the next few months.

[Scott_Goldman]

Is it possible to roll Fix Version start/end dates up to Portfolio and show those dates in the schedule or have those dates populate the target/start end?

By using the dates from the releases, users could simply select a release and have those dates auto-populated, rather than have to go in and select specific start/end dates.  This helps when releases move around often.  Simply changing release dates will propagate to all tickets in the release and therefore roll up to the portfolio plan.

[Roi Fine]

Hi @Scott_Goldman ,

That is an interesting suggestion we might consider to implement in the future. You can raise a ticket to gather other users' interests here.

Cheers,