Spotlight on Spira 7.5 - New Task Boards Beta

February 20th, 2023 by inflectra

We are excited to announce that, following the redesign of the main planning board in Spira, we will be shortly releasing a new beta version of the task board in Spira v7.5. Using the same design principles and concepts as the new beta planning board, the new task board will allow for greater flexibility and customizability and provide multi-dimensional views of Spira tasks.

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How To Access The Task Board Beta

Firstly, once the new version is released next month, you will need to enable the beta for your users in the Administration > System > General Settings:

Enable Beta Features

Once it has been enabled at the system level, your users can then access the new task board by going to Tracking > Tasks and clicking Try the Beta:

Old Board with Beta button

This will then take you to the new beta task board ( and use them for remainder of your session (unless you click on the Exit the Beta button to return back to the old board).

Beta task board

Introducing the New Task Board

The new agile task board in Spira has been redesigned to have a more consistent user interface across its different views, support multiple boards in a product, provide more customization options, and also allow you to have both horizontal and vertical swim lanes in a single view. Previously we only allowed rows or columns, but not both.

Key Elements

The overall planning board page has these parts to it:

  1. Top toolbar: this is where you configure the board itself (and all of the features below)
  2. Grouping: divide up the list of items into a major grouping. Each grouping is its own independent board on the page and is selected from a few options (e.g. release, team, priority)
  3. Columns: within each board / group, you must choose a field to show across the columns (e.g. status)
  4. Rows: within each board / group create rows (swim-lanes) that can be used to divide up the data (e.g. person, parent requirement)
  5. Cells: A cell is the intersection of a row and column to give a single reference point
  6. Cards: with rows and columns, we get cells (like on a spreadsheet). All items that match the settings of a cell (e.g. have that team and status) are shown in individual cards. You can pick what information to show on cards

We will now explain the different parts of the board in more detail.

The Release Selector

This selector has three basic selection options:

  1. All Releases - displays artifacts that are planned for any release
  2. Release X - displays artifacts that are planned for the selected release and its child sprints
  3. Sprint X - displays artifacts that are planned for just the selected sprint

Release selector

Grouping

The new task boards have the option to have multiple, separate boards displayed. This is used when you want to display a board for each release, sprint, team, type, status, or priority:

Group By Selector

Rows

Inside each of the boards, you can choose to organize the cards by row. This is optional, and depending on the grouping selected, the options will vary.

Row Selector

Columns

Inside each of the boards, you can choose to organize the cards by column. Unlike groups and rows, this is required and is the minimum level of categorization needed.

 

Common Use Cases

In the example below, Spira is displaying tasks grouped by Release/Sprint, with the type of task being the rows and the columns being the task status:

Task board showing releases, type and status

In the example below, Spira is displaying tasks grouped by Release/Sprint, with the parent requirement / user story being the rows and the columns being the task status:

Task board showing tasks by requirement and status in a sprint

In the example below, Spira is displaying tasks grouped by Team, with the assigned user (in the team) being the rows and the columns being the task status:

Task board showing tasks by person and status in a team

As you can see, there are many different combinations and permutations available in the new boards.

Changes to the Card Display

Finally, you may have noticed that the task cards on the boards look different. We have taken the opportunity to restyle them a little. The changes also mean that you can now customize what information is actually shown on each card to a much larger degree than before. Previously you could switch on/off:

  • Detailed Mode
    • displayed the description
    • showed the progress
    • showed the position

With the new cards, you can configure each of these individually, as well as show new items such as the status and type that were previously not possible:

How you can customize the task board cards

If you enable all of the individual options, the maximum display will look like this:

Task card with all the options displayed

We have made some stylistic changes:

  • The position number is displayed on the bottom left vs. the entire background.
  • The priority is now shown as a colored circle, vs. the left-hand border

How Do I Provide Feedback

Once you have started using the new boards in beta mode, you will have feedback, suggestions, and questions! That is great. Please send them along to our product team by means of this customized support ticket mail link.

We hope you like the changes and improvements we have made with Spira's new agile task boards. Once we have collected the feedback, we plan to implement the key changes and then release the boards as production boards to replace the current ones.

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