Tagging Followers using @Mentions
One of the most requested features we've had from our users in the past year has been the ability to tag users in a conversation in Spira by using the @mention method that was first popularized by Twitter and has been adopted by other messaging tools, such as Slack and Teams. In our latest version of Spira, we have upgraded our text editor CKEDITOR and enabled the ability to use the @mention option to pick a user from the project membership:
Once you select the name of the project user, the text in the new comment will be highlighted in pink shading / bold font as shown below:
When you save the comment, it will automatically highlight the name of the person in the artifact comments as well as add them to the list of people emailed about the artifact in question (in this example, an incident).
So in this example, the user Fred Bloggs would be emailed on the specific comment and also added to the general list of followers that will receive updates on any other comments in the same conversation:
In addition to receiving both email notifications and in-app notifications, once the user is subscribed to the item, they will appear in the follower list, allowing quick access to them via the Spira instant messenger:
This new @mention feature makes it easier and more natural to add participants to a conversation without needing to break their flow and access the Followers menu. It also adds a record in the comments of when the user was added to the conversation.
Scaled Agile Reports
In the last release of SpiraPlan, we added program-level capabilities and milestones to allow teams to define program / large solution backlogs of requirements and tie them to specific milestones.
Now that these new program-level artifacts can be managed in the system, we have added a completely new program-level reporting center that lets program members run key program reports:
- Program Capabilities Detailed - This report lets you generate a document (in PDF, Word, HTML formats) that contains a detailed description of all the program capabilities along with details of their associated product requirements and any history changes.
- Program Capabilities Summary - This report lets you generate a summary table (in Excel, HTML, PDF, and Word) of the program capabilities in a tabular format.
- Program Milestones Detailed - This report lets you generate a document (in PDF, Word, HTML formats) that contains a detailed description of all the program milestones along with details of their associated program capabilities, product releases, and any history changes.
- Program Milestones Summary - This report lets you generate a summary table (in Excel, HTML, PDF, and Word) of the program milestones in a tabular format.
When you click on the link, you are taken to the report configuration page. This lets you choose the desired output format as well as the ancillary items to include in the report (in this case the list of associated product requirements and change history records):
Once the report is ready, you can click on the button to open the report, and you will see something like the following:
In this example, we have run the report with Linked Requirements displayed and the Acrobat PDF output format selected.