Facebook sign-in in release Apr 21 2019

Introduction

The new release is out and contains several new features as well as some bug fixes on issues reported by our customers.

New Features

Facebook sign-in

Now it is possible to sign in with your Facebook account. This is done from the main screen after you sign-out from the Settings page or create a new room. The Facebook application as well as all the rest sign-in integrations read only the public data – name and avatar which are displayed in the application.

After sign in, inside the left pane the information which platform was used to sign in, or “Anonyous user” is displayed.

Information on the sign-in platform used

Preserving settings when signing in from another browser or device

Now when you sign in from one device with one of the social sign-ins, the settings you make are preserved and are loaded when you sign in from the same account on another device.

Add all stories

In Jira, GitHub and GitLab there is a new button on top of the stories list that allows you to add all stories that are in the drop-down list as long as there is more than one story there. For example, this way you can add with one click all un-estimated stories from the next sprint. It works well in combination with the bookmarked story queries.

Settings optionally changeable by any user

Now there is an option in the settings page to allow anyone from the team to change the settings. When this option is set, the settings can be adjusted by any participant during the time when there is no current vote.

Settings optionally changeable by any participant

Disallow moderator changes during the refinement session

Sometimes participants intentionally (or not) click on the Request Moderatorship button and change the currently active moderator. The Scrum Master is not happy and tries to restore the moderator state unless some other participant “steals” it.

To avoid this, there is an option in the settings page that disallows any moderator change requests once the room has an active connected moderator. Unless this moderator disconnects from the room, nobody else can become a moderator.

Bug fixes

In rare cases connection cannot be established (Jira add-on)

In some rare cases, some of the users of the Jira add-on could not connect. Now this is fixed.

PWA broken

Installing the mobile app (Add to desktop) allows installation of Scrumpy Planning Poker as native application. When installed this way and starting the app for the second time caused it to loop the loading screen forever. Now this is fixed and the PWA application starts normally.

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!

April 14, 2019May 19, 2019

Jira Server in release Apr 14 2019

The new release is out and it contains 2 major and long anticipated improvements like the JQL bookmarks and Jira Server as well as some minor bug fixes.

New Features

Jira Server

The Jira Server is finally approved and available for installation on your Jira Server instances The marketplace link is here.

When installed, the add-on behaves like the well known Jira Cloud add-on. There is still no Confluence integration with automatic summary generation though.

Recent queries and query bookmarks

Finally, we introduced a great improvement on the way how JQL queries are maintained (same for GitHub and GitLab queries).

The drop-down box for the queries now shows the recent queries, the bookmarked most-often used queries and example queries which can be used as a starting point. Note that the bookmarked queries are excluded from the recent queries to save space in the drop-down box.

Bugfixes

Gravatar sign in

The Gravatar sign in now works again. It works by first entering the e-mail address of the profile, then the avatar appears on the right side of the e-mail box and then when pressing this button with tooltip “Sign in as <your user>”, the Gravatar profile is used.

Add To Home Screen

Sometimes after installing the Scrumpy Planning Poker as a mobile application, starting it leads to infinite loop. Now the most recent room is open and the application starts immediately.

Disabled cookes

Navigating to a room with the local storage (cookies, etc.) disabled caused by add-blockers, anonymizing tools, etc. lead to inability to enter the room. Now Scrumpy can be used with those tools.

Happy voting!

April 7, 2019September 20, 2020

GitHub and GitLab integration in release Apr 07 2019

Introduction

In this release there are quite some major improvements. A lot of work has been done to improve the performance and add support for new platform integrations.

New features

The quite big set of new features include GitHub, GitLab, Confluence summary improvements and complete refactoring of the code to allow great performance in the browser.

GitHub support

Now it is possible to integrate with GitHub directly and using GitHub queries it is easy to list and add stories for estimation. Both issues from free public repositories as well as private repositories can be estimated.

Sign In with GitHub

Signing in Scrumpy Planning Poker can now be done with GitHub. Just select the button from the list of social sign in and you’ll be listed in the planning poker room with your GitHub avatar and name:

After signed in, others will see your GitHub profile, but access to issues is still not set up.

Integration

To complete the configuration, go to the Settings page and set the GitHub access token that was previously created.

To create a personal access token for access with GitHub, go to your settings page and choose Personal Access Tokens.

As in the Jira Cloud integration, there is an option to add comments to issues that are being estimated. The comment includes a link to the poker room as well as the result of the estimate.

Listing issues

To find the issues that will be estimated and add them to the list of planned story, as usual, search for the issues in the query box. The queries supported are GitHub queries which can be used to find any issue in both public and private projects. For example, to list only issues in a particular project, use the repo: prefix, for example repo:scrumpypoker/test. You can list stories assigned to a user, created by a user or just do a free-text search for example Abracadabra+repo:scrumpypoker/test will search for all issues that have Abracadabra in the summary or description and belong to the scrumpypoker/test project. More information about the GitHub queries can be found in the GitHub Search documentation.

In case you forget about this link, it is always accessible from the story context menu (About GitHub queries):

Show more information about GitHub queries

Editing issues

The collaboration editor is integrated with GitHub so you can edit in-place the GitHub summary, description and labels as in the Jira add-on.

Estimating the stories

Since there is no field that is designated to story points in GitHub, this is done using labels. The label estimate:<points> is used to mark the estimate of a story. Any previous estimate is removed prior to assigning a new estimate.

GitLab support

Now it is possible to integrate with GitLab directly and using GitLab project-based free-text search, it is easy to list and add stories for estimation. Both issues from free public repositories as well as private repositories can be estimated.

Sign In with GitLab

Signing in Scrumpy Planning Poker can now be done with GitLab. Just select the button from the list of social sign in and you’ll be listed in the planning poker room with your GitLab avatar and name:

After signed in, others will see your GitLab profile, but access to issues is still not set up.

Integration

To complete the configuration, go to the Settings page and set the GitLab access token that was previously created.

Configure GitLab access token and project

Except the personal access token, the GitLab integration needs also a root project that will be bound to this planning poker room. All queries for issues from now on will be for this project only. This is a bit different from the GitHub integration due to the GitLab specifics.

Note: you cannot start estimating stories until both the token and the project is selected. You can generate a personal access token from the GitLab settings page. Just make sure you give it API scope.

Listing issues

Issues can be listed from the search query using free text and wildcard matching as described in the GitLab search documentation. For example, exception free text pattern matching, you can use #1 for for issue number 1, #2453 for issue with IID 2453, etc.

Editing issues

The collaboration editor is integrated with GitLab and the currently focused issues can be edited as usual. Additionally, comments can be viewed (only the ones added by real people, e.g. excluding the system comments) and labels can be edited.

Estimating the stories

Note: the estimation now utilizes the Weight field when story points are used and Estimate when time mapping has been specified in the room settings. Please refer to the latest release notes about this here.

As in the GitHub and Jira integrations, when the Add Comment option is checked, a comment is added in the issue after each successful estimate:

Comment generation and history record from the issue

Manual Confluence summary generation

Now there is an easy shortcut to generate a Confluence summary page after the refinement session is over. Previously, this was done automatically. From now on, this option is available only for manual trigger. The generation can be triggered from the … context menu of the refinement session when the root Confluence Page that will hold the reports has been assigned from the Settings page.

Fixed Bugs

Together with the features, several bugs have been fixed.

Social login not working

Due to Twitter requesting extra information and Google migrating away from Google Plus, those two social login buttons did not work. Now they are back in order.

New Room creation not always successful

Sometimes, creating a new room required you to manually refresh the page to see the cards. Now this is no longer required and the room is open as soon as it is created after pressing the Poker Now button.

Confluence not able to select a root page

The configuration to choose the root Confluence page in the settings was gone and now it is back in place:

December 8, 2018

Open voting in release Dec 9 2018

Introduction

The new release includes valuable new features requested from the feedback form like open voting, extra cards, custom Jira story points numeric field, etc.

New features

The following new features are included in the latest release.

Open voting

The open voting feature is accessible from the settings and discovers the vote of each participant as soon as it is done. This is also called open voting and allows immediate discussion of each vote in the team.

To open the voting, go to the Cards tab in the Settings page and check on the Open voting checkbox:

Once it is enabled, during the voting process the the votes of each participant are open and visible to the others.

The open voting is both available as a global setting as well as a preset that can be assigned to particular tickets.

Custom Jira field for story points

Some Jira projects have a non-standard structure and the Next Gen field Story point estimate or the Jira software’s Story Points are not the used field for story points. Now a custom field for the story points is available to be configured from the Integrations tab of the Settings page. The new option is called Jira estimate field and is used only when there is neither Story point estimate nor Story Points field in the project’s Edit screen.

Note: as a kind reminder, if the story points is not updated, please make sure that either Story point estimate or Story Points or the new custom field is available in the Jira project’s Edit screen. Please contact your Jira project administrator to configure those fields properly in case of non-standard Jira setup.

Extra cards

Now optionally there are 6 more cards available for voting. They increase the scale for all types of cards. Those cards are a natural extension in case the highest estimate points/time value is higher than the available cards.

The new “Joker” cards are disabled by default, but can be quickly enabled from the Cards tab of the Settings page globally or per preset as any other voting set card.

Some extra choices of card backgrounds

Optionally, per-participant it is possible to change the card background out of several available options. In the near future we’ll add more and improve the existing backgrounds.

Those backgrounds are available only when the simplest monochrome types of cards are selected from the personal settings tab of the settings page.

Happy voting!

November 25, 2018

Custom steps and days/weeks/months breaks in release 25 Nov 2018

Introduction

The new release is out and has some small bug fixes on the free scale voting as well as some extensions for the scale and steps for the free scale voting. The release also gradually prepares for the future addition of custom cards and support for private Jira instances.

New features

Custom step for the free scale

Now the step for the free scale can be changed between 1, 0.5 and 0.25. This brings fine granularity for the ad-hoc voting. The scale step can be changed from the Cards section of the Settings page as shown below:

Custom days/weeks/months breakpoints

The breakpoints when switching between hours to days, days to weeks and weeks to months can be now explicitly defined instead of using the default values only. The default breakpoints are set to switch from hours to days after reaching 8, days to weeks after reaching 5 and weeks to months after reaching 4. Those can be completely customized allowing to estimate with 32.5h or 8.5 days for example. The breakpoints can be adjusted from the Cards section of the Settings page as shown below:

Better backgrounds for card images in monochrome mode

For the most simplified cards version, now the background is a bit nicer. This small improvement opens the door for custom card backgrounds in the future release.

Happy voting!

November 18, 2018November 18, 2018

Jira Server support in release 18 Nov 2018

Introduction

The new release is out with one major new feature – support for Jira Server. Finally, integration is possible through username and password from the Settings page. Jira Cloud has support for the Next Gen projects field “Story point estimate”. Additionally, this release opens a lot new possibilities with time estimation and ad-hoc voting.

New features

Jira Server support

The Integrations tab of the Settings page now has the ability to connect to Jira Server using username and password. The password is entered where the token field is located for Jira Cloud. The Scrumpy Planning Poker is now smart enough to detect if it is connecting to Jira Cloud or Jira Server and properly authenticate. Just specify your username and password for Jira Server and the application will be able to integrate with Jira Server.

Briefly, use API Token for Jira Cloud and your password (plain text) for Jira Server.

The special check box called “Use HTTP instead of HTTPS” is used to communicate with Jira Server using insecure protocol. Although this is not recommended, some instances run insecure.

The Next Gen projects

There are new agile projects in Jira Cloud which have the Story point estimate field by default. This field was so far not updated by the application. Now we’re updating it.

Using estimate values over sizing for T-Shirt

For some users the L/XL/M/3XL etc. cards were a bit confusing. Now there is an option to add a label for each card with the custom mapping value. This can be either story points according to the custom mapping table or time in case the story point to time mapping is activated.

Additionally, the participants votes are displayed as values (1.1w, 5.6h, 42, etc.) instead of L/XL when using values is preferred. Same goes to the results in the left pane.

When the story point to time mapping is configured in the Settings page, the card labels, user votes and results are displayed using time instead. The format of the time is 2.5h (hours), 4.7d (days), 1.2w (weeks), 4.4m (months). This is particularly useful for projects using time estimates.

Note: that when using time estimates, the Jira Cloud/Server stories are updated with time too. This can happen though if only the project to which the ticket belongs is properly configured to use time estimate instead of Story Points or Story point estimate. Make sure those fields are removed from the edit screen of projects that use time estimates.

When using presets, some stories can be estimated with time, some with points.

Time estimates

This is another major improvement in the latest version that allows to estimate with time not only with T-Shirt, but with the other card sets. Additionally, this option is available not only to Jira users, but to all our customers.

Time estimate is enabled only when the mapping between story point and time is configured in the Settings page.

When using time estimates with Jira integration, it’s recommended that the Jira project to which the ticket belongs is properly configured to use time estimates instead of story point estimates. Otherwise the stories will be updated only instead of the time.

The time estimate can be part of any card preset so for some stories it is possible to have a different story point to time mapping. This is particularly useful when estimating stories from different teams, or there is specific overhead for some set of stories that needs to be reflected.

Time estimates work well with card labels (values) and T-Shirt cards. On each card there is a custom mapped value displayed. The value is calculated as the card story points multiplied by the time mapping in hours and converted to the shortest representation of time, e.g. 1.1w if more than 5 days.

Free scale voting

This is kind of free ride with voting as it allows to vote with any arbitrary value. The free scale voting can work equally well on story points as well as on time. Certainly, as all the other card set settings, free scale voting is available in the card presets.

When using free scale, the minimum and maximum story points form the T-Shirt mapping scheme are used to determine the size of the scale. In case you don’t see the large numbers on the scale, please make sure that the big values in the T-Shirt story points mapping is enabled and properly set. For example, in the image below the minimum scale value is 2 and the maximum is 58 (assuming that all cards above 44 are disabled).

After the min/max scale ranges are configured, it is time to finally display the nice new voting window that allows arbitrary points or time estimates.

The step when voting with story points is 0.5 so that 18, 18.5 and 19 can be selected by sliding the thumb of the slider. The voting widget also displays the currently selected estimate as well as the overall complexity of the task. The more time it takes, the more complex it is. When you move the thumb to the rightmost side, it will show 100% complexity.

The color of the thumb and the circular progress bars change with the complexity of the ticket. It starts from green color for the least complex tasks and and goes to red color for the most complex.

The – and + buttons on the two sides of the slider can be also used to move the thumb one step (0.5) to the left or to the right.

Note: after the value is properly selected, you need to press the Vote Now! button. If you don’t press it, your vote won’t be regarded. The more you vote with different estimates, the more the vote uncertainty will decrease. The voters and summary sections will display the certainty level as when voting with the regular cards.

When the story point to time (in hours) mapping is configured to non-zero value, the time estimates become active. The free scale voting gets one more extra sub-widget to select the time scale for easier voting with less slides and convenient estimate. This widget appears on the upper left corner of the voting screen.

Additionally, the extra cards are also displayable from the upper right corner. Still, you can vote to rest, have a snack or indicate no idea what’s going on or emphasize the complexity by voting with infinite estimate.

Happy voting!

November 10, 2018November 10, 2018

Time estimates in release 11 Nov 2018

Introduction

The new release contains very few bug fixes as well as new features including time estimates through the T-Shirt styles, better view for the cards when some of them are not active and started with writing the full documentation and instructions for Scrumpy Planning Poker

New features

Time estimates

For the Jira integrations now it is possible to estimate tickets with time. The Jira estimated time and remaining time fields are automatically updated after the voting. To enabling using time, you should first properly configure Jira to use time estimates instead of story points and the Time Tracking and/or Log Work fields are enabled in the default screen for the project.

Voting with time is enabled only for the T-Shirt styles. When you switch to T-Shirt preset or switch to T-Shirt voting, a new section will appear in the Settings page that will enable to create a mapping between a story point and time (hours). If the mapping is 5.75, this means that for each story point the team will need 5.75 hours. When the accepted vote is 2 story points, the estimate will be set to 2 * 5.75 = 11.5 hours or 2 days 3 hours and 30 minutes when estimated in work time. By specifying custom story points for each T-Shirt card and using the time multiplier, it is possible to properly estimate each task with time instead of story points.

The time estimates will not be updated in Jira if the mapping is not set or set to 0 (the default). If the current Jira project is configured to use story points, time estimates will not be used.

Hiding disabled cards

Now the cards that are disabled are not shown on the screen instead of showing a disabled card. This increases the concentration of the team during the refinement process since the cards that are not used are not visible at all.

Hide cards instead of showing disabled card

Detailed documentation

It will take some time until this documentation is fully completed, but we’ll be working on it with priority. This documentation will help a lot to new users that are getting used to Scrumpy Planning Poker. It will define every aspect of the use cases and details, tips and tricks for smooth planning sessions.

The documentation can be found on our web site or using the new shortcuts in the application on the right pane and the Welcome screen.

Happy voting!

November 4, 2018May 19, 2019

Simplified cards in release 04 Nov 2018

Introduction

The new release of Scrumpy Planning Poker includes some minor bug-fixes as well as few new features which includes something requested for quite some time – simplified cards.

New features

Simplified card images

Now it is possible to use 2 more type of card images – gray-scale and monochrome. This was asked quite some time lately – why not just use simple images to allow better concentration on the game itself. For most users though it’s still fun to use the original images so now the images style is available as an option in the settings. The images are changed for the current user only and do not affect the rest of the users in the room. This way, participants can use color, gray-scale or monochrome images depending on the personal preference.

The gray-scale images for cards reduce a bit the color saturation of the whole application and look like this:

For users who want even more simplified card images, which include only the schematics of a card, the monochrome option is ideal. When monochrome card images are chosen, the cards look like this:

Fun factor: zero 😋 but it definitely looks more serious… uh.

Micro-voting

It is convenient from time to time to ask simple questions like “shall we re-vote?”, or “Do you agree with adding a new acceptance criteria?”. Now you can turn any chat message into an up-down vote poll or simple like-only counter and check the team preference on a particular question. The chat message can be converted to a poll using the three vertical dots context menu of it on the upper right corner as follows:

The up-down vote can be used to collect pros/cons and check if the positive votes prevail over the negative votes:

The simple like-only polls can be used to check how many participants like the question from the poll:

Refine again

It is now possible for our Jira-integrated users to move an already refined story back to the list of stories to refine. This can be done from the left pane using the small arrow below:

Happy voting!

October 14, 2018

Chat and labels in release Oct 14 2018

Introduction

The new release contains nice new features like chat, labels and flags, vote reminders, carousel view for attached images as well as some fixed bugs.

Fixed bugs

Votes of disconnected users were displayed.

Now the votes of users who have been disconnected (mostly by turning off the screens on mobile phones) are hidden and revealed only after the session is over.

Game could not be paused when all participants have voted

Now the pause and resume works as expected all the time.

New Features

Chat support

As a courtesy to our thousand supporters on Facebook we’ve released a surprise feature – Chat! The feature allows exchanging text messages with links during a voting session, which is a very common case for collaboration and saves the time and effort to use another chat software.

We’ve also paid attention to using the proper notifications for each chat message, both visual and audible, which is shown on the next screenshot:

Are we going to soon support video and audio in Scrumpy Planning Poker? Let this be another upcoming surprise 😊

Labels and flags

Especially for our Jira users, we’ve added the ability to see and modify the labels attached to an issue. With a single click new labels can be added as well as issues can be easily flagged. Flagged issues are also displayed in red in the list of stories to refine.

Voting reminders

This is an old feature that was pending in the list of requests. Finally, it was implemented and now there is a button during voting which creates an inviting sound to all the users as well as a visual message that it is time to vote. Sometimes discussions can go for ages and a reminder to stop chatting and start voting is very useful unobtrusive attraction of attention.

Carousel view

Before it was not much convenient to view the image attachments in a ticket as the images had to be downloaded before viewing. Now the images are displayed in a carousel view and displayed on the bottom of the screen. This way the navigation is still usable while the bottom half of the screen is occupied with the image carousel. The old way of downloading the images is still possible when clicking on the file name.

Happy voting!

September 30, 2018September 30, 2018

Vote certainty in release Sep 30 2018

Introduction

In the new release you can find nice new features like vote certainty level, guest mode, collaboration view for mobile users as well as significant improvements in the way how votes of disconnected users are displayed and few bugfixes.

Fixed bugs

Confluence add-on

Now the Confluence add-on is separated from the Jira add-on as required after the latest updates of Atlassian APIs. If you need to generate nice summary page after each refinement session ends automatically, please install the Confluence add-on located here (currently reviewed by Atlassian)

Story search box

When the vertical space was not enough to fit most of the stories retrieved using JQL query, the drop down search box was a bit off hiding the search field. This lead to inability to add new stories to the list of stories to refine.

New features

Vote certainty level

If enabled from the settings panel, the number of different votes that each participant gave will be displayed on the as badges. The idea is that if during a discussion people vote more than once with a different card this means that they are not certain enough. When the certainty level drops too much, it’s recommended to discuss again the task and re-vote.

Once the setting is enabled, the number of different votes for each participant and the calculated certainty level is displayed on the right pane as follows:

The calculation is as follows: If someone votes twice, this vote weights 0.5, if someone votes 3 times differently, this vote weighs 0.33 and so on. The certainty level is considered in info, warning and error level according to the following percentages:

Between 50% and 75%: info level
Between 25% and 50%: warning level
Below 25%: error level

For voting count, the levels are calculated as follows:

2 votes: info level
3 votes: warning level
4 votes: error level
6 votes is the maximum that is accounted

The voting certainty level is also displayed in the summary panel. The team’s scrum master can make a decision whether to re-vote the story or accept the current certainty level.

Guest mode

Recently we had a request to implement guest mode. The guest mode does not allow to participate in the vote, but the guest participant can still watch the voting process and be part of the discussion. The list of guests is separated from the list of regular participants in the right pane:

The guest mode can be enabled from a switch on the bottom of the planned stories.

The option is not available for the moderator. If the moderator is not allowed to vote, there is a separate setting about this in the settings panel.

Disconnected participants

Sometimes when using smartphones, participants get disconnected when they switch them off during a discussion. Now the disconnected users who voted are displayed in a separate section in the right pane so that their votes are visible:

Collaboration view for mobile users

Before the collaboration view was available for desktop users. Now the stories, the comments and attachments can be also viewed on smartphones. This removes the need to switch between tabs in the mobile browsers to read the story.

The collaboration view for the currently selected story can be open with the large round button on the bottom left corner: