Parts of a zipBoard project

Activity Feed

The “Activity” section is a running history of all modifications made to the project. The application captures the following information:

Date of change
Who made the change
A brief description of the change

Uploads

The “Uploads” section contains all the assets and resources attached to the project. Accessing this section also gives you the option to select a file or link for review. In this section, you can

Add a new file/link to the project.
Filter through files and links based on their type and phase.
Search for project resources across all files based on the file name.
Access file/link properties to open, delete or share a particular file or link.

Opening any file takes you to the Review Panel; which shows the following information and options:

The file name/link is shown at the top of the Review panel (#1).
Edit, delete and download options are available at the top right corner of the review panel (#2).
The file/link content is launched when you click the ‘Review’ button (#3).
The date and person who added the file or link is displayed in the lower-left corner of the Review panel (#4).
The 'Share' button enables you to generate a custom link that can be shared with others to get feedback from external reviewers (#5).
As the project life cycle progresses and issues are reported, there could be numerous screen captures as issues are identified. The bottom table of the Review panel keeps a running tab for the number of screens captured, and the number of tasks and comments added (#6).

Tasks

All bugs, issues, feature requests, enhancements, or communication that needs to be tracked can be added as a comment in projects. Tasks can be associated with either a file or just the overall project.

Tasks can be created by all collaborators on a project. They can be used as implementation reminders, emphasize a process to be followed, or document style or format requirements from the client style guide.

Selecting Tasks from the project menu bar displays the project task manager where you can:

View and access all the tasks added to the project.
Filter the tasks table according to phases, files, reporter, assignee, priority, status, type or screen resolution.
Sort the tasks table either according to the creation/update date or in an alphabetical manner. By default, the last created task appears at the top of the task manager.
Search a task by entering task title, keywords or any of the other task properties.
Add a new generic task to the project.

External Feedback

The comment is a part of project communication that does not need to be tracked as tasks. They are accessible by clicking on the ‘External Feedback’ tab in the menu bar on the left.

Comments are especially useful for collecting reviews and comments from external reviewers and collaborators. All comments gathered from the custom share link is displayed in the ‘Comment’ section. This Comments can always be converted to tasks if needed. However, it cannot be converted back to comment.

Selecting to add a comment opens a basic dialog panel similar to a Task modal. The information added to the text field, however, is the full content of the comment. Unlike tasks, comments do not have a title field.

can also tag someone using the @name format. Anyone related to the project can view and respond to feedback.

Running communication within comments can be easily followed as well. As replies are entered, the comment summary shows that there is an ongoing thread.

Phases

Project progression across different stages or milestones can be identified by defining different phases in your project. Selecting the Phase option from the project menu bar enables you to set up such a phase for your project.

To set up project phases, follow these steps:

1. Open the project.

2. Select the ‘Phases’ option from the project menu that appears on the left.

3. Click on the ‘Add Phase’ button.

Enter the phase name, description, status, and estimated completion date. Click on the ‘Add’ button.

Once you have set up a phase, you can directly add files, tasks, and comments to it.

You can also assign existing files and tasks to a phase by modifying their properties. However, you cannot assign existing comments to a phase.

Captures

All screenshots taken when reviewing a file can be seen in the ‘Images/videos’ section. Each screen card displays a thumbnail image, along with a limited set of property values displayed on the bottom of each card. The property values include the date the screen was captured, who captured it, and the title for the screen.

You can search through the screens based on the 'on-screen' title and even can filter them based on who captured the screen and for which file the screen was captured.

To quickly review bugs or issues, selecting the “Screens” option allows you to quickly view the slide or section where issues have been noted. Selecting the thumbnail displays the capture and any associated pointers/annotations. Selecting a pointer immediately directs you to the bug or enhancement request.

Settings

Selecting the settings option from the project menu bar opens an edit setting modal. As a project owner, you can update general project settings at any time during the project life cycle.

You can modify the Project ID, Title, and Description, as desired. Select Save to retain any changes; select Cancel to retain existing content.

Integrations

If you wish to integrate your zipBoard project with your team’s Slack or JIRA account you can do that right from the edit project settings modal.

JIRA Integration

With JIRA integration, all the tasks that you add to your zipBoard project are automatically reflected in your mapped(selected) JIRA project. zipBoard tasks appear in JIRA.

Click on the JIRA icon at the bottom of the project settings modal, to proceed with JIRA integration. Once Jira integration is done, mapping can be done by clicking on the Jira icon.

now you need to map the zipBoard project to one of your JIRA projects to continue. A step-by-step guide for this can be found here.

Slack Integration

The Slack integration allows all team members to view on-going project activity on a Slack channel, which makes tracking things easy. The Slack communication too is a one-way function from zipBoard to Slack, which means that issues and communication from zipBoard will appear in Slack but not the other way round.

On the project properties panel, scroll to the bottom of the panel and select the Add to Slack option. The Slack integration properties panel will be displayed.

On the Slack properties panel, select the appropriate channel as the “Post to” location. Select ‘Save’ changes. zipBoard will establish a connection with Slack. Setting the integration for a particular project does not impact the integration with other zipBoard projects and Slack.

You can see a step-by-step guide here.