The 8 Best New Features in Aha! in 2020

Tough. This word perfectly captures the essence of 2020 for me. From illness and staggering unemployment, to isolation and not knowing what will come next, it feels like everything was turned upside down. At the same time, I have been inspired by the ways people adapted. I hope that when things do return to "normal" we will be grateful for what we have regained. We decided in early March to keep boldly investing in customers and our team.

Our goal was to give customers more effective ways to set strategy, make progress against plans, and capture customer requests — so you can keep delivering value to your customers.

We introduced a new certification program for people who want to become Aha! Roadmaps experts and enhance their product management skills. More than 250 folks have achieved Aha! certification so far. We also announced a Partner program with industry-leading organizations that are well known for their agile transformation consulting work.

And we launched Aha! Ideas. It is the best way to crowdsource feedback, engage your community, and develop customer empathy. From empathy sessions to in-app community feedback, this new product builds on our idea management capabilities with new ways to connect with and truly understand the heart of the customer.

This summer, we also shared our plans to support social justice organizations and launch a new fellowship program to provide product management training to people from historically underrepresented groups. The inaugural group of fellows graduated in November and we just announced our increased commitment to charitable giving in 2021.

We kept hiring at a steady pace to allow us to create even more value. We shipped hundreds of improvements to Aha! Roadmaps throughout the year. Let's a take a look back at what you have told us were the biggest enhancements from 2020:

New workspaces

At the start of the year, we launched new workspaces — adding IT, project management, services, and business operations to our existing workspaces for product management and marketing. We wanted to give teams of all types a dedicated space in Aha! Roadmaps to set strategy, build visual plans, and prioritize work. With purpose-built workspaces, the entire organization can rally around a shared vision and clear set of business goals.

Beautiful roadmaps

We enhanced two of the roadmap views that you rely on most — the strategy roadmap and the Gantt chart. Both help you communicate how you will make your big plans become a reality. Use the improved strategy roadmap to show how initiatives tie to epics and features. And then coordinate your efforts across teams with the faster and smoother experience of the new Gantt chart.

Interactive dashboards

Aha! reports are a powerful way to show the real impact of your work. And our new dashboards let you bring multiple reports together in a single view — so you can see your product KPIs in one place. We also introduced a redesigned report builder, making it easier than ever to turn your data into beautiful visualizations.

Enhanced idea management

Ideas portals are designed for crowdsourcing feedback. This year, we streamlined the way you create, customize, and brand portals. We also introduced a more modern look and feel for the portal itself. And of course we delivered new functionality with the launch of Aha! Ideas. Aha! Roadmaps customers can upgrade to benefit from the new functionality in the Ideas Advanced plan — including portal translation, empathy sessions, and in-app community feedback.

Notes improvements

We made a number of improvements to notes — our wiki-like functionality for documentation. For example, we created a better way to visualize collections of notes. And you can embed live views of roadmaps, tables, and charts in notes, making it easier than ever to share information with others. This type of knowledge share is even more critical when you are working remotely.

Improved drawer and details view

One of our goals this year was to improve your everyday experience using our software. The redesigned drawer and details views was a big step forward in how you organize and view information. We delivered additional capabilities for customizing record layouts to match the way you work. Your feedback helped to make this new experience even better.

We also introduced advanced capabilities for our Enterprise+ plan — capacity planning for teams and automation.

This plan is ideal for organizations that want the most sophisticated capabilities. Enterprise+ also includes advanced levels of support, security, and backup features as well as ongoing consulting services. Here are a few of the gifts we delivered to customers on our Enterprise+ plan:

Capacity planning for teams

We tackled one of the biggest challenges you told us you wanted help with — capacity planning for teams. This sophisticated functionality helps you set plans based on the availability of each team using people, hours, or cost. Create multiple scenarios for your plan and select the optimal path.

Flexible automation

Everyone wants to minimize repetitive tasks so strategic work can be the focus. We launched Aha! automation features to help you do just that. Use these custom rules to update fields, dynamically assign work, send notifications, and more.

It is important to take the time to look back, reflect, and celebrate all you and your teams have accomplished this year.

Throughout 2020, I have been inspired by continual acts of grit, humanity, and hope. And we are looking forward with optimism for what 2021 will bring. So please keep the ideas coming for what you need to be successful in the future. We want to give you what you need to plan for what comes next.

Start a free trial today — be happy

We ship product updates every week for all Aha! customers. If you are not already an Aha! customer, you may want to sign up for a free 30-day trial or join a live demo to see why more than 400,000 users trust our software to build lovable products.