Month: September 2020

Introduction

We’re really excited! This release represents a major milestone for us. We’re officially no more beta. This means that the product has reached maturity. We’re actively working with the 2100+ companies actively using Scrumpy Poker to add new features in a time-frame as short as possible. Thank you all who participated in the shaping of this product and make the planning sessions fun. Please read more about this news here.

New Features

Officially no more Beta!

There is a slight change in the subdomains. The play-beta.scrumpypoker.com is now play-game.scrumpypoker.com. The beta.scrumpypoker.com is now game.scrumpypoker.com. There are certainly automatic redirects so that the old links are also valid. To avoid the redirect hop and having obsolete links in the future though it’s preferable that you update your bookmarks. We have great plans with this product. Happy non-beta voting 😉

Note: Please update/upgrade the Jira add-ons and then do a full page refresh in the browser if you experience timeouts or screen freeze at loading. We have changed DNS records, sometimes they are cached in the browser and doing a full page reload in the Jira backlog view after upgrading the add-ons solves the issue.

Note: Jira Software Server users need to update to the latest version 1.1.7, there are bugs addressed with inability to load the poker room.

Note: Corporate firewall/proxies may block the new game.scrumpypoker.com and play-game.scrumpypoker.com domains. Please contact your devops/admin to allow those new sub-domains.

Jira Automation integration

Scrumpy Poker now supports Jira Automation in both directions. With this great new feature it’s now easy to automate the integration with Scrumpy Poker and Jira. Here are some use cases that can help you understand the benefit.

From Jira to Scrumpy Poker

Usually adding new tickets means that they have to be estimated before adding them to the sprint. The usual process is to go to Scrumpy Poker and add the new tickets or use the Micro and Mini poker links to add them from inside the Jira search or backlog view. Now it is possible to implement a Jira Automation with just few clicks that will send every new story to Scrumpy Poker for estimation. This way the stories will be in the poker room just waiting for someone to estimate them.

Sometimes existing tickets are either marked or unmarked for estimation by adding a label or changing the ticket state. There is a duplicate work – first mark the ticket for estimation and then manually add it to Scrumpy Poker. Now this process is easy, with just few clicks you can create a Jira Automation that sends or removes a story for estimation to a poker room.

The new setting is available from the Settings page, the Integrations -> Jira tab. When creating a Jira Automation you should choose the Send Web Request POST type of action and paste the endpoint URL above.

Note: There are 2 URLs – one for adding or updating stories and one for removing stories. The remove URL can be used to remove stories for estimation when the status in Jira transitions to Estimated for example.

Note: Please set the Webhook body to Issue Data inside the Jira Automation interface. If you fail to do so, the web request will fail as it expects the issue data in its POST body.

The reset button resets the key that is used to send the POST request. You can reset it if you believe your link was compromised due to too much copy-pasting and sharing.

From Scrumpy Poker to Jira

When a story is added to Scrumpy Poker for estimation a Jira Automation can be created to update its status, flag it, add a label, etc.

Sometimes it is convenient to also change the ticket status or mark it as estimated when the estimation in Scrumpy Poker is completed and probably even add it to the next sprint.

We’ve got feature requests before to do multiple actions and update multiple fields when a story is estimated. Now this is possible through this feature.

The option is available in the settings page of a room in Integrations -> Jira tab. You need to paste the Jira Automation Incoming Webhook URL in the box to see the developer section with the details.

As per documentation the request contains the list of issues that were added/removed/estimated and the action itself – either add, remove, or estimate. The action can be accessed as {{webhookData.action}}.

Note: A previously released feature – be able to JQL search stories inside Jira that have been estimated in Scrumpy Poker or are scheduled for estimation is now superseded by this feature. It’s up to you to decide if this will be a status (e.g. To Estimate) or a searchable entity property.

Please contact us or raise a support request if you need help with advanced automation.

Optional Slack add/remove notifications

Before the Slack integration was only sending a message to a room when an issue is estimated. Now the integration can optionally send a message when a story is added or removed.

The setting is available in the settings page, the Integrations section, Slack tab.

After enabling the Post when added and Post when removed, you can see messages like this in your Slack channel (depending on how you customize the icons and label).

Bugfixes

Stories list jumping around

While adding and removing stories with the button in the search box list (center top of Scrumpy Poker room) the layout was a bit jumpy due to selecting the last added story. Now the story is not selected by default and when you add/remove stories from the search box list the drop down box will stay as it is.

This is a convenience bugfix which was needed for quite some time.

Add all stories adding only the first story

This was a recent regression. When multiple stories are listed adding them all has failed the first time adding only the first story from the list.

Now this is fixed and the Add all stories button does indeed add all stories to the list of planned stories.

Add all stories somewhat slow

Due to a recent regression on enabling the feature to search for Scrumpy Poker stories in the Jira’s advanced search view there was a delay when adding multiple stories. Now this delay is no longer observed.

Happy voting!

All those nice features (and fixed bugs) have been completed thanks to our users – they have requested and we have implemented them. Please help Scrumpy Planning Poker become even more convenient for you by submitting a feature request/bug to our Feature Requests page or up-vote an existing feature that you find useful. Thank you!

We’re thrilled to announce that Scrumpy Poker is no longer Beta! The product is now mature enough to continue its way further. Thank you all who contributed to this release! Thank you all who patiently waited until most of the bugs are fixed. Thank you all who suggested improvements in both the usability of the interface and the feature set currently available in the product!

Scrumpy Poker started with the idea to make fun out of the Scrum planning sessions. To make them pleasant and productive. Fun comes first, it makes people more open to discussion during the estimation process. It can turn a boring refinement session into something somehow more interesting than it usually is. This leads to more accurate story estimates.

Fun comes first, so is the user interface adapted to this fun process to make refinement sessions smooth. Yes, this reflects the UI – sometimes a bit clumsy, but it makes cool experience once you get the feeling of collaboration.

At some point it was a challenging task to catch up with the demand of both features and performance. Today we get hundreds of thousands of daily sessions from companies worldwide. We serve a lot of small projects, more than 2100 active Jira instances, many fortune 500 companies and big enterprises, all enjoying the Scrumpy Poker’s estimation experience.

Our journey continues with more and more features targeting the enterprise customers. We aim to provide on-premise installations for Jira Server/DataCenter. We have plans to continue expanding in the segment of integrations with other platforms. And a lot of new features in the backlog are waiting for attention.

Note: if you experience page load problems after the update, please read the notes under the first section at the release notes, there are is a small set of troubleshooting remarks and don’t hesitate to contact us.

Thanks again and happy voting!

The Scrumpy Poker team.

Scrumpy Poker is a web-based estimation tool with several integrations to enterprise systems. We’re aware how much data residency matters especially for the enterprise. That’s why we’ve decided to launch our paid on-premises version of Scrumpy Poker for Jira Software Server and Jira Software Data Center! Later on the standalone installation with GitLab and GitHub will be available. With such an installation there will be no data at transit and external data residency. Here are the benefits that you’ll get:

• Data residency under your control
• Branding
• Custom card images
• Priority support and feature requests

We’re preparing the setup and until we’re ready in the following couple of weeks, we’d be glad if you notify us for your intentions to use the on-premises installation. If you file a support ticket in our systems with your intent and requirements, it would be easier for all of us during the installation process.

Please file a support request to us and include the following information:

• Your cloud provider if you install on-premises in the cloud (e.g. AWS, AZURE, GOOGLE, IBM) or NONE if you host it on your own infrastructure. This will help us prepare the customized installation scripts to make installation easy.
• The rough number of expected users that will use it to help us specify the default horizontal scalability settings for the on-premises cluster

I am interested

If you need more information, don’t hesitate to contact us by e-mail. Looking forward to hearing from you!

Introduction

The new release is out and this time it contains more bugfixing and improvements rather than new features. Most of the improvements are due to customer feedback. Yes, we’re glad when we receive a support request with a usability improvement, a new feature or a reported bug! Bugs are fixed as soon as reported aiming for the same day release.

New Features

The new feature are small and we hope most of you will treat them as convenience improvements. Also special attention is paid to our friends who translate Scrumpy Poker in their language. We’re so glad that we already have Portuguese (Brasil) translation! Now translation is way easier than before and can be tried out immediately inside the app.

Free scale voting with input box

Some customers find the slider not convenient enough when voting using free scale both for story points and for time estimates. That’s why now the free scale is available also as numeric input box and is synchronized with the slider.

The rounding on hours, days and weeks depending on the switch settings of the story preset might not be convenient for all users as snapping may not result in accurate estimate. To solve this, there is a shuffle button the switches between snapped and unsnapped free scale voting. Toggling the shuffle button hides the hours/days/weeks/months switch button.

The unsnapped voting allows entering expressions like 1w 2d 4h or 2d - 4h. The values will be synchronized with the slider.

Sorting of stories

The order of stories was previously fixed. In some cases it’s convenient to sort them by estimate value or by title. When sorted by estimate value it would be obvious which are the most heavy tasks to implement and which are the lightest to implement. Additionally, sometimes stories are added ad-hoc and it’s convenient to sort them by title.

The sorting order is applied to the current user only, e.g. not to all participants in the voting room. That’s why, for the moderator, the drag handle for moving issues up and down will disappear since order is now overridden. The visible order can be applied to all users (e.g. all stories reordered) by pressing the “Apply for all participants” button. Then the custom sorting will be reset and the drag handle for manual sorting will appear again, this time the order of the stories will be according to the new sorted order.

The widgets are as follows:

1. Sorting subject (either estimate or title)
2. Sorting order (either ascending or descending)
3. Apply this order to all participants
4. Reset current sorting order

Sorting is also available in the history drawer. The sorting order there can be set independently for the sorting order of the planned stories.

Gitlab weight and time estimate

Before the Gitlab integration was setting the story points as labels in the format estimate:3. Now the estimate is set to the Weight field of the issue and those labels are no longer used.

Before the Gitlab integration wasn’t able to update the time estimate at all. Now the time estimate field is updated when time mapping is used in the room settings.

Mini Poker now also in Jira Cloud Mobile

The Mini Poker (e.g. issue extra compartment) is a nice UI extension for ad-hoc estimations inside Jira Cloud. As of this release it is now available also in Jira Cloud Mobile (iOS and Android).

This way voting can be done from inside the mobile app without any join requests for registered Jira users in the current instance. For all external voters the old rules apply – using the PWA Scrumpy Poker mobile app with a request to the moderator to join the planning session.

Dynamic translations

Warning: developer zone. We had quite some interest in our translation program. Our friends have contributed Portuguese (Brasil) translation. We’ve found out that it’s a bit tricky to translate and then wait for the next release cycle to see the results.

That’s why we’ve added a new feature targeting people who translate the texts – the current translation can be automatically tested in the browser both for the add-ons and standalone.

The procedure starts by creating a free PASTEBIN account (if not already available). Then create a new paste out of the translation file that you have so far, e.g. es_AR.json for example and remember it’s ID. The ID is the identifier at the end of the PASTEBIN URL. For example, if your URL is https://pastebin.com/raw/V1S2ae8D, the identifier that you need is V1S2ae8D.

After the paste identifier is available, please copy it to the clipboard and press the “Select new translation” button in the language menu at the top right corner (the one with the translate icon).

Note: if you click the Translate… text or the Github icon you’ll be redirected to our translation repository. So click on the translate button on the right.

Then you’ll see a small input dialog box where you can finally paste the identifier of your paste.

If the ID is valid and all went well, the new translation will appear at the top right corner inside the language menu.

The “New translation” language behaves as the other languages when selected – it changes the language of all widgets as specified in your PASTEBIN paste.

You can switch between languages to compare the result. When you edit your paste inside your favorite PASTEBIN editor and then reload the page, the new translation will be immediately available. This way you can use the PASTEBIN editor for editing the text and view the changes from inside Scrumpy Poker.

Bugfixes

Clear stories list while typing

Before, while typing a JQL/Gitlab/Github query in the search box the stories results were merged leading to enormously huge lists of stories. This was not convenient at all when all the stories had to be added to the list of planned stories.

This has now been fixed and after each editing of the search box the results are cleared. This way only the last result after typing has stopped will be visible in the drop down.

Not able to complete voting from Micro Poker

The complete button in the Micro Poker section of the Jira Cloud add-on was not visible and thus not able to complete the voting. Now it is visible and the Micro Poker section can be fully utilized for ad-hoc voting.

Happy voting!

All those nice features (and fixed bugs) have been completed thanks to our users – they have requested and we have implemented them. Please help Scrumpy Planning Poker become even more convenient for you by submitting a feature request/bug to our Feature Requests page or up-vote an existing feature that you find useful. Thank you!

Overview

The new release brings many new improvements some small bugfixes. The most prominent new features is the ability to limit allowed moderators to rooms in Jira Cloud. Other features include the Micro and Mini poker which is an extension to the Jira Cloud user interface for more convenient voting. And certainly the concurrent external user join requests handling is much improved.

New Features

There are many new features introduced, so we’d be glad if you provide feedback and bug reports to our support page so that we can address any issues in a timely manner.

Moderators restriction

Now for Jira Cloud users we’ve provided an extension to the add-on configuration page to restrict moderators for a room to only certain Jira Cloud users. This way not any registered user can become a moderator, but only those who are allowed by the instance administrator.

The instance administrator can navigate to the configuration page of Scrumpy Poker from the Configure button in the manage plugins section.

The configuration page has a specific yellow toolbar to indicate that this is an administrative area. When you navigate to the Rooms tab, you’ll see the list of projects in the system. If your instance has many projects, the list can narrowed down with a search criteria as displayed in the screenshot below.

When you expand the project, you’ll see one or more tiles which define the available rooms in this project. There can be more than one room in a project – one room for the project itself and one room for each board in this project. The rooms may not exist yet since they might not have been used yet.

The tile color indicates the existence of the project room. A dark color indicates that the room was already created and used. A light color means the room is not there yet. Even if the room is not there though, you can set the allowed moderators for this room.

When there are no moderators allowed, this means any Jira user in this instance with access to Scrumpy Poker can become a moderator. To change this, you can add at least one person as a moderator. When the list of moderators is not empty, only the users in the list can be moderators. The Become Moderator button and the Star button in the user interface will disappear to users who are no longer allowed to become moderators.

The moderator is added from the + button in the right middle of the tiles. When the button is pressed, a small user selector dialog box pops up where you can search for users in the instance by name. Clicking on the listed user will close the selector and choose the user to be a moderator in the room. There can be many moderators in each room. No moderators means any instance user can be a moderator.

When a moderator has to be removed from the room, the small (x) button displayed as a badge to the user can be pressed.

Each tile has some real-time status badges showing information like the current status of the room (e.g. none, preparing, voting, summary), the number of participants and the number of stories that are scheduled for estimation.

The information is updated in the admin page in real time as users enter rooms and modify them.

Micro poker

The micro poker is a small section in the issue screen that allows you to schedule a ticket for estimation and even start the estimation if you’re the moderator. The micro poker section is convenient when you need to see all Jira ticket information and extra fields and still be able to quickly vote without too much hassle.

You can use the micro poker section to only prepare the room by adding issues to the top or the bottom of the list when in the advanced query section in Jira or you can use it for ad-hoc estimation of any ticket in the backlog or the current sprint without leaving the usual Jira screens.

The Micro Poker room is displayed when pressing the poker icon in the Issue Toolbar. Pressing the button is usually once per Jira issue, but Jira Cloud can adjust the behavior, show/hide the button and the section at its convenience while monitoring the usage of the feature.

If the Micro Poker section is visible in the issue screen, it will show a POKER NOW button. Pressing either the button or the poker icon in the issue toolbar will open the poker section with all its bells and whistles. The reason for having the explicit button in the section is to not generate excessive needless traffic. Nevertheless, Scrumpy Poker prepares everything in the background so that when you press the button the Micro Poker content is displayed immediately.

If you don’t want to see the Micro Poker for this ticket, you can hide it from the Jira interface (the three dots in the upper right corner of the section).

The following bullets describe the interface parts that are different from the usual full poker user interface.

1. Schedule/unschedule story for estimation. A scheduled story is visible in the main poker room. Extra options for scheduling on top or on bottom of the list of stories is also available (see below)

2. Number of stories scheduled for estimation in this room. This is the number of tickets in the planned stories list of the poker room.

3. Open extra compartment for voting. To start voting, you can either press the play button or open this extra compartment and select a card or move the slider if a free-scale voting is configured.

4. Switch between the available rooms in this project. There is usually more than one room per project – one for the project itself and a separate room for each project board.

5. Shows connected users to this room. This is the list of connected users and their vote status/votes depending on the room state.

Before the story is scheduled for estimation, there are some extra option about the scheduling of the story and the story itself as described in the following picture:

6. Issue estimation history. If the issue has been estimated in the last month and the planning session has not been yet deleted, the issue estimation history is shown. The history shows what is otherwise available in the left pane of the regular poker room, but specific to the currently selected issue.

7. Add to top of issue list. This will add the story on top of the stories list of the planning session.

8. Add to bottom of issue list. This will add the story on the bottom of the stories list of the planning session.

After the story is added, there is an extra button that helps with switching the card preset for the story:

9. Switch story preset. When you have at least one preset defined, you can assign it to this story.

When voting, you can lower down the list of cards (or free scale) with the down arrow button (10) as described in the screenshot below:

The Micro Poker section can be completely disabled for the whole instance from the configuration section of the add-on. Go to the Configure button and then on the main page, at the bottom check the Disable Micro Poker checkbox as described in the screenshot below:

Mini Poker

The Mini Poker section is a bit bigger than the Micro Poker and that’s why it’s named like that. It occupies bigger vertical space and the same toolbar and rules appear for the Mini Poker as with the Micro Poker.

The Mini Poker has most of the features available in the regular poker room with some exceptions (like the options for example, the vertical history button, list of issues planned, etc.). This view is more designed for ad-hoc voting from inside Jira rather than a separate dedicated session.

1. Switch Room. This button is used to switch between project and board rooms for this particular project

2. Show connected users. This button brings in the right pane from the regular planning poker to see who is online and who has voted.

The rest of the buttons are the same as the ones available either in the full poker room or the Micro Poker room.

The Micro Poker room can be disabled from the configuration section:

Switch Room

A new Switch Room button is available both in the context menu for the regular poker room as well as the bottom action line. It allows you to switch to another room for the current project. Each project maps to a room, so does each board from this project. A project with two boards maps to 3 rooms that can be switched using this button.

The button is also available from the bottom action line

When the Switch Room button is pressed, a room selector is displayed at the bottom of the screen:

Query issues that are scheduled for estimation

You can now execute a JQL from Jira advanced issue search to locate issues that have been scheduled for estimation.

The query above shows all issues that are scheduled in any room. The ‘name’ property actually contains a comma separated list of room identifiers.

To show the issues that have been estimated, you can use this query:

issue.property[room].name = “”

To show issues that have never been scheduled for estimation, you can use this query:

issue.property[room].name is empty

Enable/disable extra cards

Now it is possible to disable the extra cards (coffee, brownie, etc.). When all cards are disabled, the extra card disappears and voters won’t be able to vote with the funny cards again until enabled.

The extra cards can also be enabled/disabled per preset – e.g. to have extra cards in one ticket and no extra cards for another ticket.

Copy Jira link

Now it is possible to copy Jira link instead of the regular guest (external) link. This way there won’t be any questions for the moderator to accept external voters in case the user has Jira registration and is logged in.

Please use the Copy Jira link option when sending to users which are registered Jira users in your instance.

Fixed bugs

Multiple simultaneous join requests

There were some concurrency issues when more than one external person tried to join the room at the same time. Only the first one was let in. The concurrency issues have been solved and now multiple join requests can be handled by the same time by the moderator:

Estimate not rounded

When the result of voting resulted in more than one digit after the decimal point, it was not rounded in Jira.

Now this is fixed and the result 2.3 would be set in the story points field.

Happy voting!

All those nice features (and fixed bugs) have been completed thanks to our users – they have requested and we have implemented them. Please help Scrumpy Planning Poker become even more convenient for you by submitting a feature request/bug to our Feature Requests page or up-vote an existing feature that you find useful. Thank you!