The way you view and analyze product data is essential for determining critical prioritization and planning decisions. Yet, each organization and product team has its own unique needs and requirements when it comes to how they want to make these decisions. Craft.io empowers product managers to set up unique, custom-made frameworks for viewing product data that maximize productivity for the entire team.
Craft.io offers an intuitive, user-friendly interface that enables you to create different views to manage and control important product-related decisions. Our views are unified and convenient, giving you a clear understanding of how to navigate the platform and visualize your data.
View types
Craft.io offers the following built-in views that you can use as the starting point for your own custom views. More information on each view is detailed in the linked articles below.
The Table View - Provides spreadsheet functionality that allows to you arrange your view in any order you wish and update values inline. It is the best view for comparing items, making bulk changes, and using custom fields and formulas.
The Kanban View - A Kanban board, great for setting up and viewing roadmaps, reviewing objectives, managing workflow, and tracking statuses. This view is useful for creating boards that clearly visualize a single dimension (when grouping by a certain field), and it enables easy drag & drop of items between groups.
The Timeline View - This is a dependencies view, which allows you to visually define and track the relationship between items and view and modify specific item dates.
Swimlanes View- This view allows you to easily view and order your items in two dimensions. The ability to color-code the swimlanes adds another level of clarity and differentiation between the Swimlanes.
The Capacity Planning View - A table that lets you plan which features to add to your releases and sprints in accordance with available resources.
Guru Views- A collection of out-of-the-box views that were designed based on best practices in the industry. You can view the view components as a preview before implementing.
Creating, Saving and Organizing your Views
To create your unique custom view, click on the “+ New View” button at the bottom of the left navigation panel and then select a view type.
Once inside the view, you can customize it to your needs. For example, in the Table view, you can add new columns by clicking on the “+” button on the column row and then selecting which type of column you want to use from the drop-down. You can use predefined fields or create custom fields based on your unique methodologies. Add formulas to your custom fields so that you can prioritize according to your specific needs. Take your customization even further by setting up grouping, filtering, and sorting for your unique view.
After creating the view that answers your requirements, we recommend saving it for future use.
If you’re a workspace admin, you can save the view you created as a "Workspace view" so that it will be available to all team members invited to the workspace. Just click on Actions-> Save As Workspace View. Next, name your new view and select the navigation category in which you’d like to embed the view (Strategy/ Define/ Plan/ Track/ Discovery), add a description and you’re set. The new view will be added to the left navigation menu.
You can also save views for your own personal use. These views are called "Personal Views", and are accessible only to you. Once you’ve finished customizing your view, just click on Actions -> Save As Personal View, and add a name and a description. The view will automatically be added to the Personal Views category under the left navigation menu.
Group your View
In all view types (except for 'Capacity Planning'), you can organize your items using the 'Group by' function. The purpose of the function is to group your items in a way that serves the purpose of the view. For example- Product, Release, Status, or Objective.
Define the View hierarchy levels
Customize the view by defining the hierarchy levels that will be included in the view.
By default, you can select one hierarchy level, either Epic, Feature (along with its sub-item types), Sub Feature, or Idea.
Alternatively, when switching on the 'Flexible Hierarchy' toggle you can select multiple hierarchy levels in one view.
Sort your View
With all views, you can sort your product items by practically any available field and component, including custom fields. You can sort your view by using the 'Sort by' drop-down menu to select a specific field. Switch from ascending to descending order by clicking on the small arrow on the left.
Filter your View
Craft.io offers powerful searching and filtering throughout the product. In any view you create, you can filter according to item type or item property. Alternatively, you can select another filter by clicking on 'Add filter' and choosing the relevant filter from a list of many other fields and seeing instant results. You can also export the results to a CSV file. Learn more about Filters and Search Tools here.
