Our 2020 product launch year in review

2020 was a challenging year. That goes without saying, but absolutely cannot review this year without saying it. We've been enormously lucky here at Shortcut to be in an industry that enables our entire team to work from home and to have loyal customers who've been here with us through the entire year.

As we look back at 2020 and look forward to 2021, we want to start by thanking you for your continued support of Shortcut. If you're not currently a Shortcut customer then we'd also like to thank you for considering us.

We started the year off very well in January with the announcement of our Series B fundraise, which you can read all about here:

Series B funding announcement

And continued right along to release lots of new features that we are pretty proud of. The biggest of these was also our most recent launch:

Shortcut Labs

Shortcut Labs gives anyone with a Standard plan or higher early access to new features before they're broadly released. These features are ready to use, but are also still in development, which means your feedback helps shape what these features become, as well as what they don't become.

Shortcut Labs currently include the below (all of which are described in detail even further below):

• Roadmap
• Advanced Reporting
• Google Sheets Integration

The biggest of these features is:

Roadmap, which helps plan, visualize, and communicate work

Roadmap (which some of you may know by its name from private beta, Timeline) was released as part of Shortcut Labs in November. With the Roadmap, you can visualize and communicate planned work to leadership and stakeholders while also getting a clear look at how work is progressing across the entire org.

Roadmap is flexible, easy to use, and makes communicating and sharing progress a whole lot faster and easier. Map short-term efforts to long-term business goals, keep your team ahead of blockers, plan the best course of execution, and manage expectations with an easily digestible big picture view of everything going on.

Another feature we're excited about that has also been (and continues to be) in private beta is:

Groups, renamed to Teams (in private beta)

Teams help you view, organize, and report-on product development efforts. This is the sole feature on this list that is only available in beta, and here's a quick preview of what it does:

• Filter and view settings to quickly focus-in on your Team’s work
• Aggregate and summarize that work through the Team overview page
• Customize and automate your processes through a direct Team to Workflow connection
• Stay informed of your Team's progress through Slack (and other) notifications

Reach out to us at support@clubhouse.io if you're interested in joining the Teams beta.

Something you can do right now without contacting support is:

Execute commands more efficiently with the Action Bar

The Action Bar is a quick launch command menu that puts many useful Shortcut actions at your fingertips. Execute commands with just a few keystrokes. Get out of here mouse!

Activate the Action Bar with two keystrokes

Depending on whether your loyal to John Hodgeman or Justin Long (very relevant 2020 reference we're making here), you'll activate the action bar like so:

• For Mac: cmd + k
• For PC: ctrl + k

See the full list of Action Bar commands.

One of the Action Bar commands enabled you to quick navigate to your:

Reporting

Gain insights with Cycle and Lead Time Reports

Use these reports to gain insight into how much time and human thought and typing power it takes to complete different kinds of Stories in Shortcut. Toggle between Cycle Time and Lead Time, depending on what you'd like to see:

• The Cycle Time Report shows how long it takes a Story to be completed after it's started.
• The Lead Time Report shows the amount of time that passed between when a Story is created and when it's started.

We also launch a number of new charts as part of:

Shortcut Labs Reporting Enhancements

• Time Spent in Workflow State: A chart showing the amount of time your Stories spend in each workflow state.
• Created vs Completed:  A visual representation of the Stories you've created vs the Stories you've completed.
• Expanded reporting dates: You can now expand your reporting beyond our original 100 day limit. Go all the way back the beginning of time or to January 2016, whichever is most recent for you.

We didn't just improve how we work internally was also made:

Integration Updates

Communicate faster with @mention notifications in Slack

The newest update to our Slack integration helps you communicate faster and with less context switching. Now, when someone mentions you in Shortcut, you'll receive a Slack notification that you can respond and react to directly in Slack.

Git more done with our updated VCS Integrations

Our VCS integrations are now even more integrated. Git ready, git excited, and git more done! Also git ready to see us use the word "git" instead of "get" over and over again any time this comes up.

The workflow between GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, and Shortcut became stronger than ever thanks to these additions:

• Setup your preferred naming convention with customizable GitHelpers
• Get smarter controls with open work autodetection
• Gain more control over drafts with Draft PR support
• Take advantage of better bidirectional syncing with GitHub Autolink Support
• Tell a PR to skip updating the associated Shortcut Story
• And even more!

Connect Shortcut to Google Sheets for custom reporting and analysis (Shortcut Labs)

Our Google Sheets integration allows for real-time updates of Shortcut data to be sent to a connected Google Sheet. Any updates that happen in your Shortcut Workspace will be dynamically updated to that Google Sheet. Specifically, the data sent from Shortcut to Google is the same data that's captured from your Workspace when you export to CSV.

We also made it easier to switch to Shortcut from other PM tools with:

Importers

Outgrown Trello? Switch on over

To help make the transition from Trello to Shortcut as easy as possible, we launched our self-service Trello Importer. Use it to move your Trello boards and data to Shortcut in just three quick steps.

Find Jira unwieldy? Easily switch from Jira to Shortcut

Also, much like the above, to help make the transition from Jira to Shortcut as easy as possible, we've launched our self-service Jira Importer. Use it to move your Jira Issues and data to Shortcut in almost as little time as it takes fellow developers on your team to roll their eyes when you say the word Jira.

We also gave ourselves a makeover with:

Our new layout and navigation

We made some pretty big improvements to the look and layout of Shortcut. You've probably seen this considering happened months ago and we hope you like it, assuming you even remember what it used to look like!

Last year was a big year for Shortcut and we expect this year to be a bigger and better one. And we hope that 2021 is also a bigger and better year for you too.