Welcome to Our ZenHub Board 2.0!

It’s time we let you in on a little secret, we’ve been quietly working behind the scenes to rebuild our board from the ground up to bring you a faster and more reliable experience than ever. Our board is the most used feature in our product, and for good reason, it helps Agile teams deliver their work with transparency through efficient Agile practices.

We’re excited to announce that today we are launching a Beta of the ZenHub Board 2.0 for all users.

We’re sure the idea of a new board has already got you excited, and you’re probably asking yourself, “What exactly is this ZenHub Board 2.0?”. In short, our team has been working to rewrite and rebuild every feature of the board from the ground up. We’ve focused on optimizing board performance for teams of all sizes and along the way we’ve added in a few new experiences to make the overall board more enjoyable to use.

Our team undertook this journey to build ZenHub Board 2.0 after hearing customer feedback describing performance hiccups and anomalies. These users weren’t alone, internally we were hearing whispers and mentions from our own team members that there were areas of the board that could use a bit of investment to create a smoother, more seamless experience – especially when working with large workspaces.

We started this journey to build a faster and more performant board several months ago. In this time, we ran a small Alpha program that was available to internal users and select customers that we used to gauge our progress. Even with the initial limited Alpha, the immediate feedback was positive and ultimately brought us to today’s Beta.

What to expect with the ZenHub Board 2.0

When it came to rebuilding the board, the main focus for our team was performance. We wanted to zero in on the aspects of the board that weren’t as performant as we would have liked. For example, user actions that may have taken a second or two too long to complete. Nobody likes waiting for their board to load as they’re trying to get into their morning standup or screen sharing during a refinement session.

We’re happy to say we’ve seen a marked improvement in the way ZenHub Board 2.0 performs across workspaces. We’ve observed the following improvements:

In addition to our feature improvements, we’ve also taken the opportunity to add a few new features to the board and make incremental improvements to existing ones. We’ve made the following feature changes to the board:

Easily groom your board with an improved drag and drop experience

We’ve rebuilt our drag and drop experience for the board to make moving and re-ordering issues on the board buttery smooth. We’ve also added new subtle animations and made tweaks behind the scenes to improve reliability when dragging issues across the board.

Identify bottlenecks with separated pipeline counts

Our pipeline counts provide a quick summary of issues and PR’s in a pipeline. To help our users better understand this count, we’ve broken out the count into separate categories for Issues, Pull Requests, and Points. This change trades the obscurity of the previous count for the accuracy and detail of seeing card-specific counts at a glance.

Easily scan your board with less clutter thanks to a cleaner board view

Over time, we’ve heard feedback from users that the board can appear cluttered once each issue has several labels, sprints, and releases that are tied to each card. To help create a cleaner board view, we’ve elongated each issue card and removed some of the auxiliary information from each card in the board view.

Minimize interruptions with increased reliability

As part of our board rebuild, we’ve taken the time to address several bugs and reliability issues that were occasionally present in the old board. By addressing these issues we have created a more reliable board experience that results in less error for users when taking board actions, including creating issues.

What’s Next for ZenHub Board 2.0

With the launch of the beta, our team is still laser-focused on making additional improvements to the board experience including adding new features and tweaking current ones. To that extent, we are looking to add the following features to the beta board in the coming months:

• Issue Multi-select and Bulk Actions
• Board Settings and View Options
• Updates to High Priority Issues

Opt-in to the Beta

The ZenHub Board 2.0 beta will be available to all users, simply opt in to experience the new board. If you’d like to opt-in to the new board, please complete the following steps:

1. Click on ‘Board Settings”
2. Toggle the switch to opt-in to the new Beta Board
3. Accept the opt-in prompt
4. Try the ZenHub Board 2.0!

After opting into the Beta, you are able to opt-out at any time through your board settings which will return you to the previous board experience. Data is preserved between the two boards during opt-in and opt-out. If you choose to opt-out of the board, we’d love to hear your feedback through the prompt displayed when you return to the old board.

Share Your Feedback

We’re excited to share the ZenHub Board 2.0 with you and even more excited to hear your feedback. If you’d like to share feedback about the Beta, feel free to share via the following:

• Submit feedback through Product Board
• If you opt-out of the board, share your feedback using our in-app feedback modal that is presented after you opt-out
• Schedule a meeting with Joseph, the Product Owner for ZenHub Board 2.0 using Calendly