Using templates to schedule issues and releases

Templates allow you to create repeatable stages through which your issues and releases go. Stages have their start date, end date, and status and are visible via the Swanly roadmap view or report panels; you can manually track the status.

Use templates and stages for issues

For bigger issues like initiatives, programs, or epics, you can use stages to plan and track transition phases. For example: preparation, initiation, planning, phase 1.0, phase 2.0, and closure.

For small issues such as stories, you can use stages to represent and track repeatable activities required to deliver an issue. For example, a marketing campaign will go through several phases during its life cycle: pre-launch, soft-launch, maintain, test, and measure phase.

Use templates and stages for releases

Release templates can be used to tag various types of releases that go through different processes.
For example, hotfixes are different from the usual release, or web app release differs from mobile app release. Templates can also be used when different teams or projects are following different release processes.
Release stages are repeatable activities required in order to release each version. Depending on your team practices, you may have common stages such as UAT, integration, smoke testing, alpha and beta release, or even market content creation, documentation update, and so on.

More on how to use release templates

Define release stages with your team using the Release Governance Template

3. Go to Swanly Settings > Templates.

4. Click Create new template.

5. Name your template and click Save.

6. Click +Add new stage to create the stage.

7. Give your stage a name; you can add a default stage duration and set the color, then save it.

You can create as many stages and templates as you need. Once you create your templates, you can start using them for your issues and releases.

Add stages when scheduling issues on the roadmap

1. Click +Add issue in the Issue view.

2. Find the issue you want to add stages to (you can only view issues that aren’t scheduled yet).

3. Click Schedule.

4. Select the template in the Template drop-down.

5. Click Add stages and fill in the dates.

6. Click Save.

The issue is now scheduled on the roadmap, together with the stages.

Edit stage dates from the issue report view

To edit the assigned template and stage dates from your issue detail, select the issue in the roadmap or in List view.

1. Select the template in the Template drop-down..

2. To schedule stages, click Edit stage dates.

3. Add dates to stages.

4. Click Save.

Add stages when scheduling a release on the roadmap

1. Click +Add issue in the Issue view.

2. Find the issue you want to add stages to (you can only view issues that aren’t scheduled yet).

3. Click Schedule.

4. Select the template in the Template drop-down.

5. Click Add stages and fill in the dates.

6. Click Save.

The release is now scheduled in the roadmap, together with the stages.

Edit stage dates from the release report view

To edit the assigned template and stage dates from your issue detail, select the issue in the roadmap or in List view.

1. Select the template in the Template drop-down.

2. To schedule stages, click Edit stage dates.

3. Add dates to stages.

4. Click Save.