Changelog

Roadmaps and initiatives

Our big update this time is that we have completely revamped how roadmaps and initiatives (previously themes) work. Notable changes:

• Initiatives no longer need roadmaps.
• The work items are now listed in fully featured real boards and lists with all the functionality you get within the spaces.
• Roadmaps are enabled on the organization level, and all roadmaps will be visible in the “Roadmaps” section in the sidebar.
• Both initiatives and roadmaps can be shared among spaces, allowing for better cross-team collaboration.
• Roadmaps are editable boards, so you can change the column titles, add and remove columns, and make the roadmaps fit your needs.

There are many new things. Just go explore, or head over to our guide to read more.

Beta features

AI in product development

We are currently working on various AI features for Kitemaker. Some are small and some are larger things. If you have specific things you would like to see in Kitemaker regarding AI, LLM, or machine learning, ping us, and we'll take a peek. And if you are lucky, maybe we are already working on it 😊

✨ Parts of this changelog were written using one of our features in testing ✨

Sentry integration

We currently have a Sentry integration that we are waiting to get approved, but in the meantime we have a way for teams to test it. So if you are a Sentry user and would like it connected closer to Kitemaker ping us.

Contacting us

We're always happy to hear any feedback you have. To reach us, you can:

• Send us an email at hi@kitemaker.co,
• Contact us through the built-in chat by going to "Help and support" and clicking "Support chat"
• Join our community Slack organization.

Other

• Fixed an issue where newly created work items were not appearing in the recent list.
• Improved the handling of email addresses during pasting and markdown processing to prevent unexpected behavior.
• Optimized performance issues with numbered lists to prevent sluggishness.
• Enhanced automation of todos to support multiple todos per commit.
• Introduced a shared header for work items and initiatives for better user interface consistency.
• Fixed a bug where clicking an update wouldn't show the correct comment.
• Added security enhancements, including Microsoft Account log in.
• Fixed the tag overflow issue on feedbacks to ensure all tags are displayed correctly.
• Fixed an issue preventing clicks on the end of lines when a custom emoji or user mention is present.
• Resolved the problem where the organization avatar was not displayed in the organization picker.
• Addressed an error causing deleted starred items to remain visible on the sidebar.
• Corrected the focus issue enabling kitemaker command to properly highlight the modal when opened.
• Added a "Copy link" option for to-do items.
• Ensured deactivated user statuses are correctly synchronized with Vanta.
• Addressed reports of problematic scrolling described by users.
• Fixed the search screen interface breaking UI elements such as '...' pickers.
• Enabled Slack/Discord to unfurl links to feedback.

Cycles

Kitemaker has always been about managing the work not the workers. It took us a few attempts and lots of internal and beta testing to figure out what that entails when it comes to managing your development cycles/sprints in Kitemaker. We’re really excited to show you what we’ve come up with and hope you’ll love it too.

You can read more about it in the guide, but here are the cliff notes:

• Enable cycles in your space from the space settings menu
• Add work items to the upcoming cycle using the ‘…’ menu on work items and todos
• Go to the cycle screen from the sidebar to see the work items you’ve added and optionally reorder (if you want some temporal prioritization goodness)
• When it’s retro time, go to the “Summary” tab and see everything that happened during the cycle, planned and unplanned

Custom emojis

If you hate emojis, then this feature isn’t for you. Otherwise get ready to step up your emoji game in Kitemaker! In the organization settings menu, you’ll find the option to add custom emojis for your entire org. They can be used in descriptions/comments as well as reactions.

If you use custom emojis in Slack, you can import them all with the click of a button.

Star your favorite screens

You can now add a link to any screen in Kitemaker directly to your sidebar. Just look for the ★ icon in the header of any page and click it to have that page added to your sidebar.

Beta features

Roadmaps and initiatives

We’re working on reimagining roadmaps and themes in Kitemaker. The main difference is that we are planning to allow them to live at the organization level. This allows you to have a company wide roadmap and makes it easier to use Kitemaker to manage multiple different teams. We’ve also decided to rename themes to initiatives to use words that a wider group of people are familiar with.

If you're interested in trying this out and/or provide us some relevant opinions or insights, send us an email at hi@kitemaker.co or ping us on our community Slack!

Contacting us

We're always happy to hear any feedback you have. To reach us, you can:

• Send us an email at hi@kitemaker.co,
• Contact us through the built-in chat by going to "Help and support" and clicking "Support chat"
• Join our community Slack organization.

Other

• Added the ability to set an avatar for your organization! No more looking at that bland placeholder.
• When creating a new label it’s now possible to immediately set the color rather than it always being gray
• Improved markdown handling when copy-pasting in and out of Kitemaker
• Fixed a bug that prevented you from inviting guest users to your organization
• Improved the look of the work item screen on smaller screens
• Improved the toast notifications when you moved a work item
• Improved the performance of numbered lists in descriptions
• Fixed a bug that prevented --> from being copy-pastable into code-blocks
• Fixed a bug in Firefox that broke drag-and-drop in text areas
• Improved the behavior of multi-select menus when using keyboard shortcuts
• Removed the organization name from breadcrumbs
• Improved performance
• Fixed a bug that prevented the creation of feedback items from Intercom
• Made the placeholder card in empty columns interactable (click to create a new work item)
• Fixed various typos
• Stopped the bell icon from moving when changing between the board and work item screen
• Made the support message indicator more obvious, so it’s easier to see when you get a reply from support
• Various design tweaks to improve the feng shui of Kitemaker

Inline comments

Discussions in the activity feed are great, but sometimes you may want to comment on a specific text in a work item or theme. We have now made it possible to select a portion of the text and comment on that specific part.

To make an inline comment, simply select text and click the “new comment” button in the hover. Alternatively, you can use ctrl/cmd + shift + m. In addition, you can directly make inline comments on other types of content, like todos, images, etc. by clicking the comment icon that appears in the top right corner when hovering the elements.

Inline comments will appear in the activity feed, and here you can also reply and resolve the inline comments directly.

Beta features

Cycles

We are developing a new feature that will enable you to plan and track progress on your cycles/sprints. Although it's still in the early stages, we have some exciting plans for it. An initial version is now available for beta testing.

If you're interested in trying this out and/or provide us some relevant opinions or insights, send us an email at hi@kitemaker.co or ping us on our community Slack!

Contacting us

We're always happy to hear any feedback you have. To reach us, you can:

• Send us an email at hi@kitemaker.co,
• Contact us through the built-in chat by going to "Help and support" and clicking "Support chat"
• Join our community Slack organization.

Other

• Fixed “old” to-dos not always rendering correctly.
• Fixed a bug that would let you open a image preview in the “new work item” modal and thus close the modal.
• Fixed a bug where sometimes pressing up from the new comment input would focus on the wrong element in the comment thread.
• Fixed various small selection bugs in the document editor.
• Fixed a bug which would cause the filters in the “All” tab in feedback to not work.
• Fixed a bug that prevented line breaks within quotes from rendering correctly.
• Updated to ensure all file types are attached when creating feedback from an email.
• Implemented a limit of one stale work item notification and auto-archive pass-through per day.
• Enhanced the Updates screen to make it easier to distinguish between notifications and updates.
• Made several improvements to the new comment input interface.
• Improved the detection of duplicates from GitHub.
• Resolved an issue in our importers that caused them to hang.
• Fixed a bug where changing the status in the "new work item" modal would reset other metadata.
• Corrected an issue with the download button in Electron, which previously opened the browser instead of downloading.
• Addressed some visual bugs in the PR hover feature.
• Resolved a bug where adding white-space would disrupt the person/company picker in Feedback.
• Fixed an issue where the "New theme" button defaulted to the incorrect space.
• Corrected a bug that affected the proper attachment of Vercel deployments.
• Reduced the size of headlines in various sections for better readability.
• Fixed a bug where using shift + enter when creating a new card did not focus on the description field.

Create work items and themes from almost anything

We have now added an option to create a work item or a theme from selected text, comments, and todos. It makes it easier than ever to split work items and themes, and to create work items from discussions in Kitemaker. Just look for the "+" icon.

Public boards

Do you want to share your boards publicly or with users who don't have access to Kitemaker? We now have a public board feature. It opens up boards and anyone can view the board through a special link. You can also toggle to share metadata and decide if all work items (including the ones that are not publicly shared) should be visible on the board.

Create PRs from branches

You can quickly create PRs in GitHub from activities in Kitemaker. Just click on the pull request button in a commit activity and you’ll be taken to GitHub to finalize the PR.

Beta features

Inline comments

Discussions in the activity feed are great, but sometimes you want to comment on specific text in a work item or theme. We’re making that possible with our new inline comment feature.

If you're interested in trying this out, send us an email at hi@kitemaker.co or ping us on our community Slack!

Contacting us

We're always happy to hear any feedback you have. To reach us, you can:

• Send us an email at hi@kitemaker.co,
• Contact us through the built-in chat by going to "Help and support" and clicking "Support chat"
• Join our community Slack organization.

Other

• Improved the Insight tab on work items and themes.
• Fixed a bug that would sometimes not select all the elements when undoing an operation.
• Improved how inline code looks in finished todos.
• Fixed a gap after user mentions.
• Fixed a bug that would prevent the "Duplicate work item" shortcut Cmd/Ctrl+D from working.
• Improved the placement of the format hover when editing text.
• Made it easier to move content from the insights tab to descriptions, and improved the insight tab UI on work items and themes.
• Fixed a bug that would prevent the formatting toolbar in the new work item modal from being clickable.
• Fixed a bug where arrow keys would stop working after pressing j/k in the work item screen.

Better status column management

You asked for it, and we listened 😁 Now you can once again move columns on the board by dragging and dropping, rather than needing to go to your space’s workflow settings.

You can also make new status columns and edit existing ones by clicking on them, all without leaving the board.

Beta features

Public boards

Do you want to share your boards publicly or with users who don't have access to Kitemaker? We currently have a public board feature in beta. It opens up boards and anyone can view the board through a special link. You can also toggle to share metadata and decide if all work items (including the ones that are not publicly shared) should be visible on the board.

Inline comments

Discussions in the activity feed are great, but sometimes you want to comment on specific text in a work item or theme. We’re making that possible with our new inline comment feature.

If you're interested in trying these out, send us an email at hi@kitemaker.co or ping us on our community Slack!

Contacting us

We're always happy to hear any feedback you have. To reach us, you can:

• Send us an email at hi@kitemaker.co,
• Contact us through the built-in chat by going to "Help and support" and clicking "Support chat"
• Join our community Slack organization.

Other

• Improved the welcome board that new teams see when signing up for Kitemaker
• Improved the UI for the screen that shows when Kitemaker is configured to automatically open links in the desktop app
• Dragging and dropping of lists (bullets, todos, numbered lists) now automatically brings nested children along with it
• Fixed some unwanted padding on the popover that shows when hovering the todo counts on the board
• Fixed a bug where authenticating with Figma inside of the desktop application didn’t work properly
• Fixed a bug where deployments didn’t show up in PRs linked to work items
• Make it easier to make an empty line at the end of a description simply by pressing down
• Added tooltips to the buttons in the “Create work item/theme” modal
• Fixed a bug where you had to press escape twice to close the “Create work item/theme” modal
• Fixed some spacing around mentions of work items and themes in the editor
• Fixed a bug where setting the work-in-progress limit for a column would show a validation error before the user had a chance to type anything
• Made it so that titles are saved on the work item and theme screens, even if enter isn’t pressed (e.g. if the back button is pressed instead)
• Kitemaker now automatically adjusts custom colors for better contrast/readability
• Fixed up the Kitemaker Command onboarding for non-macOS users
• Fixed some grammar errors on the feedback screen
• Fixed a bug where some emojis (e.g. ❤️) wouldn’t render properly in Chrome
• Fixed a bug where list view on mobile would continuously scroll to the top
• Made it possible to click the toast that appears whenever you make a new work item or theme
• Fixed a bug with adding owners to feedback
• Fixed a bug with capturing insights in feedback
• Fixed a bug where todos couldn’t be marked in progress on the My Work screen
• Fixed a possible crash when duplicating work items
• Fixed a bug where the “Move all” option in the … menu for a column didn’t respect current filters
• Fixed a bug with adding a space’s first snippet from a description didn’t work
• Fixed a bug where the popover showing a work item’s dependencies would inadvertently close
• Improved the search functionality in the “Add to…” Slack shortcut
• Improve the search results of /giphy blocks
• Improve the automatic scrolling of work item descriptions when dragging/dropping blocks
• Improved the placement of the formatting hover that appears when selecting text in the editor
• Removed the FirstPromoter affiliate program

Auto order columns

We replaced the previous sorting functionality with the ability to automatically order columns. This way, you can ensure that everything is ordered by impact and effort, or that the newest work items are on top.

Auto archive

To help you avoid having the "Done" column on your current board full of old work items, you can now configure Kitemaker to auto-archive work items that have been there for a while. You'll find the setting at the bottom of the "Workflow" section in your space settings:

Stale work items

You can now get notified when work items haven't been touched in a while. This is great for picking up those things that are no longer relevant or as important anymore. When a work item gets stale, we'll notify members and watchers. You'll find the setting at the bottom of the "Workflow" section in your space settings.

Watching columns

Do you want to know about everything that is added to the todo column? Or do you want to know whenever something new is ready for testing? Now you can watch columns and get notified when work items are added to them:

Beta features

Public boards

Do you want to share your boards publicly or with users who don't have access to Kitemaker? We currently have a public board feature in beta. It opens up boards and anyone can view the board through a special link. You can also toggle to share metadata and decide if all work items (including the ones that are not publicly shared) should be visible on the board.

If you're interested in trying these out, send us an email at hi@kitemaker.co or ping us on our community Slack!

Contacting us

We're always happy to hear any feedback you have. To reach us, you can:

• Send us an email at hi@kitemaker.co,
• Contact us through the built-in chat by going to "Help and support" and clicking "Support chat"
• Join our community Slack organization.

Other

• Fixed a bug with how themes were rendered in the dependency graph
• Fixed a bug where clicking insights wouldn't take you to the insights tab on work items
• Made improvements to bulk actions
• Fixed a missing space between filters and board view options on mobile
• Made it clearer how you can change the colors of themes
• Fixed a bug where following links to the app would fail
• Fixed some visual bugs on todos
• Fixed bugs related to installation of Intercom integration
• Fixed a few bugs related to workflow settings
• The color for impact and effort are now reflected in the pickers
• Improvements to the billing screen in settings
• You can now remove members from an organization
• Fixed bugs related to hotkeys on todos on the My Work screen
• Fixed bugs related to todos at the top of work item description
• Changed how feedback content looks in updates
• Fixed a few bugs related to todos in descriptions of work items and themes
• Added activities for impact and effort changes
• Fixed a few bugs related to the save buttons in settings
• Fixed a bug where hovering a deployment would close the PR hovers
• Fixed a bug where the insights counter on the work items would be incorrect
• Fixed a bug where the Intercom bubble would be visible on public boards
• Now the member picker will prioritize members of the space

Admin roles

Paid customers now have access to admin roles. You now have to be an admin to access billing, invite new users to the organization, set up integrations, and more. You will always receive a warning in the UI if you are not an admin and try to perform an action that requires admin privileges.

Admins will not have access to or see private spaces unless they are invited.

To view and edit admins, go to "Organization settings" and click on the "Members" section.

Toggle metadata

You can now toggle the metadata you will see on boards and the roadmap. Press the new "View options" button next to the notification bell, and you can turn metadata on and off. These settings are per user, so changing them for yourself won't affect your teammates.

Themes and labels visuals

We have changed how labels and themes are rendered, now making themes more visually prominent compared to labels. This should provide a clear visual hierarchy of themes → labels → other metadata.

Let us know how that works for you!

Beta features

Public boards

Do you want to share your boards publicly or with users who don't have access to Kitemaker? We currently have a public board feature in beta. It opens up boards and anyone can view the board through a special link. You can also toggle to share metadata and decide if all work items (including the ones that are not publicly shared) should be visible on the board.

If you’re interested in trying this out, send us a mail at hi@kitemaker.co or ping us on our community Slack!

Contacting us

We're always happy to hear any feedback you have. To reach us, you can:

• Send us an e-mail at hi@kitemaker.co,
• Contact us through the built-in chat by going to “Help and support” and click “Support chat”
• Join our community Slack organization.

Other

• Added the "Add myself" option back to the "..." menu on work items and themes.
• Added a link to go to the theme from the top of the work item boards.
• We redesigned the integrations section in settings.
• Improved performance on the emoji picker.
• Fixed a bug where pressing "," would focus on the wrong element.
• Fixed sorting/filtering by recently created not working properly.
• Fixed "@" key for German keyboards.
• Fixed a few bugs that would cause the cards on the board to sometimes be rendered overlapped.
• Made the order we render impact and effort consistent on all screens.
• Fixed bugs related to the Feedback screen on mobile.
• Fixed some bugs that would cause the list of next/previous work items to change when work items changed status.
• Fixed a bug where deleted work items would appear as empty lines in the work item/theme picker when capturing insights.
• No longer show a non-working /snippet in the feedback editor.
• Fixed a bug that would break filter by creator.
• Fixed a bug that would prevent inviting people to spaces.
• Fixed a bug that would show the wrong hotkey hint when there are multiple done columns.
• Fixed a bug that would prevent escape from working when the search input field has focus.
• Fixed a scrollbar bug on MacOS and Firefox.
• Fixed a bug that would cause copy/paste images to not work on the feedback screen.
• Fixed a bug with the hotkey for uploading image not working.
• Fixed a bug that would prevent users from deleting spaces.
• Fixed a few bugs related to visual inconsistencies in the sidebar in settings.
• Fixed a bug that would prevent users from deleting themes.
• Numerous improvements on security.

Hi!

Here is a fresh dose of recent updates in Kitemaker!

As always, we appreciate your continuous feedback! You can check out the new changes by heading over to Kitemaker. Don't forget to follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.

All new UIs

We touched every single UI and refreshed them. We hope you like it. The aim was to remove all the known design issues, make the UI more consistent, and improve the UX. If you have any feedback or comments on the new UIs, please let us know at hi@kitemaker.co.

Thanks to all the teams that have been trying the new UIs out and providing feedback these last few weeks!

Multiselect

You can now select multiple work items and themes and edit them. You can either shift+click, use shift+up/down, x , or cmd/ctrl+ato select multiple elements. Using the Kitemaker command, hotkeys, or dragging them will let you edit all the elements at the same time.

All settings in one place

We have discontinued the numerous settings modals and put everything in one place. This has been done to make it easier for you to discover settings and features that you can enable.

New Kitemaker Command

We have completely overhauled the Kitemaker command. This includes better groupings, support for multiselect, and a ground-up rebuild of the command structure.

Filters on search and extended search

We have simplified the search screen. First, we moved the search modifiers out of the input field and added filters to the search results instead. You can also use common Unix modifiers to narrow down your search results further.

Contacting us

We're always happy to hear any feedback you have. To reach us, you can:

• Send us an e-mail at hi@kitemaker.co,
• Contact us through the built-in chat by clicking the icon in the bottom right corner, or
• Join our community Slack organization.

Other

• Fixed a bug where you couldn't create insights that didn't contain text.
• We renamed the "backlog" board to "planning".
• Descriptions now remember the scroll position.
• Fixed a few bugs that could cause clients to get out of sync and show incorrect data.
• Fixed a bug that prevented Loom videos from appearing in insights.
• You can now print work items!
• When you submit a new comment, the keyboard focus stays in the "new comment" input field.

Intercom

We just released an Intercom integration which will allow feedback from Intercom conversations. The conversations will be synced with Intercom, so you’ll always be able to see the latest state of the conversation inside Kitemaker, and select text to connect insights to work items.

To install it, simply head over to the integrations section in Kitemaker. You can also read the detailed instructions in the guide.

Github deployments visible on PRs

We love having automatic deployments on development branches. It's a great way to share progress with the rest of the team. Now we're adding links to deployments registered in Github and Gitlab to all PRs. You'll get a little link icon on PRs when we detect a deployment, and clicking that will take you directly to the deployment.

If you already have the GitHub or GitLab integration installed, Kitemaker should automatically capture the deployment activities there. Therefore, there is no need for additional setup.

Beta features

Here are some of the upcoming features we’re currently iterating on which are not generally available to all users yet.

If you’re interested in trying out one of these features, send us a mail at hi@kitemaker.co or ping us on our community Slack!

• We're currently rebuilding the UI of Kitemaker, as well as making plans to improve the usefulness of roadmaps and themes, and creating another iteration of cycles. They are not ready for immediate release yet, but if you would like to be a beta user when we are ready, we'd love to hear from you. Here is a sample of the new UIs:

Contacting us

We're always happy to hear any feedback you have. To reach us, you can:

• Send us an e-mail at hi@kitemaker.co,
• Contact us through the built-in chat by clicking the icon in the bottom right corner, or
• Join our community Slack organization.

Other

• Fixed a bug that could cause the wrong color to be displayed for blocked work items in the dependency graph.
• Fixed a bug that would sometimes display the wrong total amount for an upcoming invoice in the UI.
• Fixed a bug where the notifications bell menu wasn't always scrollable.
• Fixed a bug where the todo popover in My Work displayed incorrect labels.
• Fixed a bug where horizontal scrolling into view didn't work properly when going back to the board.
• Improved the background color on our Figma document embeds.
• Made a bunch of improvements to feedback created from the Slack integration.

Feedback and insights

We're really excited about introducing our feedback and insights module. It's a place where you can collect feedback from users or people outside of the product team and link insights to one or more work items and themes. It's a great place to keep the messier parts of user input and tie the important parts to the things you’re building. Simply highlight the relevant text in the feedback and click the insights button (you can also press cmd/ctrl+shift+i) to link it to the relevant work items and themes.

You can also tag feedback and add owners to process them. After you're done processing them, you can click "Mark processed" to move them out of the "Unprocessed" state.

Using filters, you can always find feedback based on tags, title, owners, and the source of the feedback, among other options.

Get all the details in the guide.

We also have email, Zapier and Slack integration, with more integrations coming up. If you are looking for specific integrations, let us know!

Group mentions

We now support group mentions. Use @organization to notify everyone in the organization, @space for everyone in the space, and @members for all members of the work item or theme.

New comment focus behavior

We have slightly changed how keyboard focus behaves in the new comments box. If you submit a comment, the keyboard focus will now stay in order for you to easily make a new comment. Also, if you use the keyboard to navigate into the new comment box, it will gain focus. Pressing the up arrow from the new comment box will also make you navigate the activity feed.

Beta features

Here are some of the upcoming features we’re currently iterating on which are not generally available to all users yet.

If you’re interested in trying out one of these features, send us a mail at hi@kitemaker.co or ping us on our community Slack!

• We’re experimenting with adding a data warehouse syncing function to Kitemaker to enable teams to query their Kitemaker data right from the comfort of their own data warehouse.

Contacting us

We're always happy to hear any feedback you have. To reach us, you can:

• Send us an e-mail at hi@kitemaker.co,
• Contact us through the built-in chat by clicking the icon in the bottom right corner, or
• Join our community Slack organization.

Other

• Title changes now creates activities in the activity feed
• Fixed a bug where comments wouldn’t scroll properly into view when following a notification
• Fixed a bug where if an invited user ignored the invitation and simply logged in with Google Account would create a new organization
• Improved performance of the dependency picker
• Fixed a bug where the Intercom bubble wouldn’t hide when entering new comments
• Disabled the ability to check todos in the snippets editor
• Fixed a bug where the todo popover had scrollbars
• Added a feature for remove inactive users from all active work items
• Fixed a bug that would prevent impact/effort symbol from showing
• Fixed a bug where deleted work items would leave empty lines in the recent list on the search screen
• Fixed a bug that would prevent left/right arrow keys in Kitemaker Command.
• Added highlight of mentions where you are a participant
• Fixed a bug which would cause merged PRs to appear as open
• Improved the todo git branch names
• Fixed a bug that prevented commits for branches for todos not showing in activity feed
• Fix a bug that would cause duplicate activities for marking a todo in progress
• Fixed a bug where opening an image in the description causes it to scroll to the top

Updates and notification screen

To simplify navigation and going through updates and notifications, we made the updates into a screen in addition to the quick modal. You can press g then u to go to the updates screen, or click "Updates" in the sidebar. The notification bell in the header now only shows new notifications.

Magic branches for todos

We have added magic branches support for our todos. That way, you can get a magic branch that will automatically set a todo to in progress and done based on the state of the branch and pull/merge request.

You can get the name of the Git branch by either using the Kitemaker generated name (press ctrl/cmd+ shift+ g, or find it in the “…” menu for todos), or you can simply include the identifier for the todo in the branch name (the ABC-123a number).

Beta features

Here are some of the upcoming features we’re currently iterating on which are not generally available to all users yet.

If you’re interested in trying out one of these features, send us a mail at hi@kitemaker.co or ping us on our community Slack!

• We’re adding a place in Kitemaker where you can collect feedback from your users and link the insights from them to work items and themes.
• We’re experimenting with adding a data warehouse syncing function to Kitemaker to enable teams to query their Kitemaker data right from the comfort of their own data warehouse.
• A “create work item” button at the bottom of the screen for each column

Contacting us

We're always happy to hear any feedback you have. To reach us, you can:

• Send us an e-mail at hi@kitemaker.co,
• Contact us through the built-in chat by clicking the icon in the bottom right corner, or
• Join our community Slack organization.

Other

• Added activities for title changes in the activity feed
• Fixed a bug where a user that was invited and signed up using Google account without following the invite link would create a new organization
• Fixed a bug where the sometimes the color picker closes when you click the input field
• Made all of the todos styled consistently
• Fixed a bug that made it impossible to close a comment thread with the mouse pointer
• Made the dependency graph a screen
• Fixed a bug which would cause websockets to fail to reconnect
• Made it possible to disable spellcheck in Kitemaker command
• Fixed a bug where the history slider would freeze the app
• Fixed a bug that would cause work items created with snippets always end up in “Inbox”
• Made scroll smoother for virtualized columns
• Fixed a bug that could cause notifications to not appear
• Improved label search
• Fixed a bug which caused the dependency pickers to have no default values
• Fixed a search bug when mentioning work items
• Fixed a typo in "add theme" activity
• Fixed a bug that caused some blinking in the toast that notifies about new versions of Kitemaker
• Fixed the hit region for the checkbox in "Open in app" toast
• Fixed a crash when moving work items between spaces
• Fixed a flickering in the … menu for todos when copying git branch name
• Fixed some weirdness with the todo popover

Responsiveness

By popular demand, we’ve started improving the responsiveness of Kitemaker, making it work better on smaller screens and some initial mobile usability. This is an on-going initiative, so stay tuned for more updates!

Search improvements

We’ve made it easier for you to locate the work items you’re looking for in Kitemaker. First of all, search has been improved in general making searching using metadata and selectors more accurate.

When at the search screen, we’re now surfacing recent work items, making it less random and easier to find the work items you’re currently working on.

In addition to this, you can now jump straight to work items from the command menu (cmd/ctrl+k). Our next steps is to improve the performance of the search indexing in general, making it more responsive.

Beta features

Here are some of the upcoming features we’re currently iterating on which are not generally available to all users yet.

If you’re interested in trying out one of these features, send us a mail at hi@kitemaker.co or ping us on our community Slack!

• We’re adding a place in Kitemaker where you can collect feedback from your users and link the insights from them to work items and themes.
• We’re experimenting with adding a data warehouse syncing function to Kitemaker to enable teams to query their Kitemaker data right from the comfort of their own data warehouse.

Contacting us

We're always happy to hear any feedback you have. To reach us, you can:

• Send us an e-mail at hi@kitemaker.co,
• Contact us through the built-in chat by clicking the icon in the bottom right corner, or
• Join our community Slack organization.

Other

The smaller fixes and improvements this time around include:

• Made toggle switches look nicer in light mode
• Made emoji reactions on comments and activities look nicer in light mode
• Fixed a crash that occurred when all impact/effort levels were removed
• Added verbose Slack and Discord subscriptions so that comments would be posted in addition to activities. See the help text in the integration for more info.
• Fixed error when Giphy was unable to find gifs
• Github PR embed now correctly shows the merged state
• Fixed inconsistent spacing around work item numbers
• Fixed issue where searching for labels gave inconsistent results
• Fixed styling on source icons when work items were created from API integrations
• Users are now shown a clear message if the space/work item/theme they’re on is deleted
• Fixed issue where the Github integration could not be installed from Electron app
• Fixed bug where the theme screen would scroll horizontally
• Fixed rendering of emojis in comments
• Now clicking anywhere in the status header in the list view expands/collapses the section
• Added the possibility to delete roadmaps and release plans
• Improved emoji search, making it easier to find flags etc
• Fixed bug where archived themes would still appear when picking themes to add to work items
• Fixed visual issue where the scrollbar would appear in the wrong place
• Fixed issue where escape wouldn’t work for the command menu on the work item screen
• When a file is added via a URL, Kitemaker now renders portion of the URL to identify the file
• Fixed inconsistency of spacing between themes in the dependency graph
• Fixed a bug where list view items could slightly overlap if background updates occurred
• Fixed visual inconsistencies between internal and shared roadmaps
• Fixed bug where the offline cache would not clear after a logout
• Fixed bug where Kitemaker would appear to be logged in after a session timed out
• Big clean-up of the CSS structure, resulting in a more efficient stylesheet
• Made the setting for whether to show the list/board view apply separately to the Current and Backlog boards
• Added support for Gherkin in code mentions
• Fixed a bug where activities would not update the last updated of work items and themes
• Fixed issue where the todo popover would close before being able to interact with it
• Fixed issue where a connection could time out when importing a large number of GitHub issues
• Fixed visual issue where the comment actions would appear behind the header for the first comment on a work item
• Fixed bug where the favicon would incorrectly show unread updates in Safari
• Fixed a bug in the impact/effort picker where the hotkeys had an off-by-one error
• Fixed issue where todos would not pick up the correct indentation when converting from bullets, etc.
• Fixed a bug where closing a PR would trigger automation

New visuals

The list view (accessible the list view by pressing alt/option+v or via the dropdown in the down right corner of the board) has a clean new look with the different statuses clearly separated. Additionally, the rendering of metadata (e.g. labels, impact/effort, dependencies) has been changed to make things a bit tidier.

Big thanks to all the teams that gave us feedback and helped us iterate on the new designs ❤️

Improved My Work

The My Work screen (accessible by pressing = or by clicking “My work” in the sidebar) has gotten a number of improvements including separating work items and themes into different sections, and showing todos that you are a member of inline with the work items themselves.

Compact metadata

By pressing the ; key or by choosing “Compact metadata” from the profile menu, you will get a more concise view of metadata such as labels, impact and effort. You can hover over the compact elements to get a more detailed view.

Vanta integration

Kitemaker now has a Vanta integration that allows security-related tasks to be automatically synced to Vanta, helping teams achieve their SOC2 compliance. To set up the integration, search for “manage integrations” in the Kitemaker Command or click the ⚙️ menu next to the name of your organization in the sidebar.

Once the integration has been installed, simply apply a label containing “vanta” to a work item in Kitemaker to cause it to be pushed to Vanta. In Vanta, a set of rules will be applied to the security issue to ensure compliance. Information about Kitemaker users will also be automatically synced to Vanta.

Beta features

Here are some of the upcoming features we’re currently iterating on which are not generally available to all users yet.

If you’re interested in trying out one of these features, send us a mail at hi@kitemaker.co or ping us on our community Slack!

• We’re adding a place in Kitemaker where you can collect feedback from your users and link it to work items and themes.
• We’re experimenting with adding a data warehouse syncing function to Kitemaker to enable teams to query their Kitemaker data right from the comfort of their own data warehouse.

Contacting us

We're always happy to hear any feedback you have. To reach us, you can:

• Send us an e-mail at hi@kitemaker.co,
• Contact us through the built-in chat by clicking the icon in the bottom right corner, or
• Join our community Slack organization.

Other

The smaller fixes and improvements this time around include:

• Kitemaker now shows an icon on work items that were created by integrations such as Slack, Discord or Zapier
• When adding a dependency to a work item, it’s now possible to create an entirely new work item on the fly
• Fixed a bug where it was possible to accidentally deactivate yourself when managing your team
• Fixed a bug where Kitemaker would sometimes put a theme in the wrong column when it was unarchived
• You no longer need to include /items or /themes in URLs. Very handy for GitHub autolinks
• Fixed a bug where the refresh button was missing from Figma embeds in comments

Improved todos

Todos in Kitemaker have just gotten a bunch of new features. Now you can add metadata such as members, labels and impact/effort.

Todos can also be marked as being in progress by either holding shift while clicking them or by pressing ctrl/cmd+shift+enter.

Much like work items themselves, todos now have a unique identifier of their own (e.g. ACM-9J). By mentioning this identifier in git commits and pull/merge request descriptions, Kitemaker will automatically associate the pull/merge requests with the todo and will even mark it as in progress or completed for you.

You can read all about the new todos in the Kitemaker Guide.

Beta features

Here are some of the upcoming features we’re currently iterating on which are not generally available to all users yet.

If you’re interested in trying out one of these features, send us a mail at hi@kitemaker.co or ping us on our community Slack!

• We’re adding a place in Kitemaker where you can collect feedback from your users and link it to work items and themes.
• We’re experimenting with adding a data warehouse syncing function to Kitemaker to enable teams to query their Kitemaker data right from the comfort of their own data warehouse.

Contacting us

We're always happy to hear any feedback you have. To reach us, you can:

• Send us an e-mail at hi@kitemaker.co
• Contact us through the built-in chat by clicking the icon in the bottom right corner, or
• Join our community Slack organization

Other

The smaller fixes and improvements this time around include:

• Added options to sort columns by only impact or effort
• Add a button to manually refresh embedded Figma designs
• Fixed a bug where links from GitHub Enterprise were not being recognized properly
• Fixed a bug causing unnecessarily high CPU usage in Firefox
• Ensure that archived work items and themes are properly sorted by archived date in the archive screen
• Fixed a rare crash involving opening a work item by a link and moving it to/from the backlog
• Added missing options for moving work items to the top and bottom of the column in the Kitemaker Command
• Kitemaker now shows details about users when you hover over avatars
• We no longer show archived themes in the theme picker unless the work item already has those themes

Custom impact and effort

T-shirt sizes aren’t a perfect match for everyone. For some, slim fit is more suitable, and others might prefer longer variants. We’re heard you and made changes so that you now can tailor impact and effort levels to your own needs.

We support up to nine custom effort and impact levels, including hotkeys for all of them. You can name them, choose their abbreviations, and even give them your favorite colors! They are specific to a space, so each team or product can have their own.

Of course it still supports sorting board columns by impact and effort, respecting the sort order defined in settings (high impact and low effort being higher).

To customize impact and effort, go to the space settings (cogwheel on the space list in the left sidebar) or locate “manage impact and effort levels” from the Kitemaker command menu (Ctrl/Cmd + k).

Filtering activities

While activities are great at showing the progress of a work item and gives insight into what’s going on, it can get cluttered on larger work items over time. We’re made an effort to improve that by allowing you to filter out any automation messages, leaving only the user-created comments in the activity feed.

You can toggle this in the activities panel on on the right hand side in the work item screen, or use the f hotkey to show comments only (c) or all activities (a).

Changing block types

We continue to make improvements to the editor to better the usability and performance. This time around, we’ve made it easier to change the type of blocks.

Are there things in the editor you’re missing or should be improved? We’re always very happy to receive your feedback. You can reach out by email or through our community Slack.

Beta features

Here are some of the upcoming features we’re currently iterating on which are not generally available to all users yet.

If you’re interested in trying out one of these features, send us a mail at hi@kitemaker.co or ping us on our community Slack!

• We’re making to-dos much more powerful by allowing the addition of metadata (like members, labels and impact/effort), surfacing to-dos in My Work and allow to-dos to be automatically closed via the GitHub/GitLab integrations.
• We’re experimenting with allowing data exports from Kitemaker to enable querying the raw data for insights.

Contacting us

We're always happy to hear any feedback you have. To reach us, you can:

• Send us an e-mail at hi@kitemaker.co
• Contact us through the built-in chat by clicking the icon in the bottom right corner, or
• Join our community Slack organization

Other

The smaller fixes and improvements this time around include:

• General availability of GitHub Enterprise integration
• General availability of self-hosted GitLab integration
• Fixed issue where referencing a deleted work item would not render correctly
• Allow public sharing of roadmaps
• Fixed a bug where moving a work item between spaces would return a 404
• Fixed an issue where subscriptions in Slack/Discord would not function properly
• Now clearing text selection properly in the title on blur
• Enabled support for European data residency for an organization
• Fixed issue where a comment wouldn’t scroll into view on page load
• Fixed issue where Ctrl/Cmd + Enter would not blur description on all blocks
• Allow for creation of new work items from the mention dialogue
• Fixed release plans not being shown on the work item screen
• Fixed an issue where automation might move a work item to the left
• Made back/escape more consistent
• Fixed an issue where work item limits could not be removed from a status
• Significantly improved the performance of writing to the offline cache
• Fixed an issue where a work item would not be visible on the board when coming back from the work item screen
• Fixed issue where the Discord integration could not be uninstalled
• Now rendering the status of themes in mentions
• Fixed bug where the work item count in themes would render incorrectly

Zapier integration

You can now supercharge automation with Kitemaker and Zapier. Zapier is a workflow automation platform which allows you to create “Zaps” from triggers like Slack messages or e-mails to create new work items in Kitemaker etc.

To set it up, go to manage integrations from the Kitemaker Command (Ctrl/Cmd + k), choose Zapier and follow the instructions.

GitHub issue embeds

We now enable you to keep track of GitHub issues within Kitemaker. Managing an open source project and want to link public issues to your work item? Simply paste the link to the issue in the editor and press enter to embed it. You can also use the /github command in the editor to embed an issue.

This functionality requires additional permissions for the GitHub integration. If you already have the GitHub integration installed, you should receive an email from GitHub to accept the updated permissions.

Beta features

In the last changelog, we introduced this section about beta features. These are the things we’re currently iterating on and would love to hear your feedback.

If you’re interested in trying out one of these features, send us a mail at hi@kitemaker.co or ping us on our community Slack!

• We’re making to-dos much more powerful by allowing the addition of metadata (like members, labels and impact/effort), surfacing to-dos in My Work and allow to-dos to be automatically closed via the GitHub/GitLab integrations.
• We’re rolling out support for GitHub Enterprise, as well as self-hosted GitLab. If you’re using one of these, we’d love to hear from you.
• We’ve got an improved updates experience coming that automatically groups updates together by work items and lets you reply to comment threads without even leaving the updates screen.

Contacting us

We're always happy to hear any feedback you have. To reach us, you can:

• Send us an e-mail at hi@kitemaker.co
• Contact us through the built-in chat by clicking the icon in the bottom right corner, or
• Join our community Slack organization

Other

The smaller fixes and improvements this time around include:

• Fixed a bug where the member picker wasn’t closing
• The work item limit for a column now respects filters
• Fixed a performance issue on the work item screen where it could re-render whenever a work item or theme was updated
• Fixed a bug where accepting suggestions to mention a user could result in some weird trailing characters
• Landing page performance improvements

Editor drag-and-drop

You can now quickly and easily reorder blocks in the description of work items, themes, snippets and more using drag and drop.

If you prefer to use hotkeys instead, you can move blocks up and down with cmd/ctrl+up and cmd/ctrl+down.

Editor presence

Now when your teammates are typing in the same work item as you, you’ll be able to see them as they type. It’s especially useful when the team starts together when hashing out work items.

Work item limits

It’s often good practice to limit the amount of work your team has in process. Kitemaker now makes this easy with work item limits. To configure work item limits for a status column, press the … for the column and click “Set work item limit”, or search for “Set work item limit” in the Kitemaker Command (cmd/ctrl+k). Then if the number of work items in the column exceeds the limit, you’ll get a clear visual cue.

Beta features

We’re introducing a brand new section to our change log this time around. We’ve got some new features in the works and we’re looking for teams to try them out and give us some feedback. If you’re interested, send us a mail at hi@kitemaker.co or ping us on our community Slack!

• We’re making to-dos much more powerful by allowing the addition of metadata (like members, labels and impact/effort), surfacing to-dos in My Work and allow to-dos to be automatically closed via the GitHub/GitLab integrations.
• We’re rolling out support for GitHub Enterprise, as well as self-hosted GitLab. If you’re using one of these, we’d love to hear from you.
• We’ve got an improved updates experience coming that automatically groups updates together by work items and lets you reply to comment threads without even leaving the updates screen.

Contacting us

We're always happy to hear any feedback you have. To reach us, you can:

• Send us an e-mail at hi@kitemaker.co
• Contact us through the built-in chat by clicking the icon in the bottom right corner, or
• Join our community Slack organization

Other

As always, we’ve also shipped a slew of smaller fixes and improvements recently:

• You can now sort columns by created or updated date via the … menu for the column.
• Improved the typing latency in the editor.
• Fixed a bug where pressing cmd+enter when creating a theme in the roadmap didn’t correctly clear the input.
• Improved URL detection in the editor so that URLs are checked against a list of well known TLDs so there aren’t as many false positive links.
• Fixed a bug where work items accidentally ended up in the To-do column instead of the Inbox when the Space had a backlog.
• Fixed a bug where the cmd/ctrl+shift+a hotkey didn’t work when attaching files in the editor.
• Fixed a bug where the sort order of cards didn’t always update properly after going offline and coming back online.
• Search results coming from Spaces contained in My Spaces now get priority.
• Added a “Not updated/created since” filters.
• Fixed a bug where keyboard focus was sometimes broken when moving between work items with j/k.
• Fixed a bug where the hotkey combos for jumping to different screens (e.g. g+i and g+r) wouldn’t always work.
• Fixed a bug where it was impossible to add the same guest user to multiple spaces.
• Fixed a bug where the UI would indicate that an email had been successfully change when it had not.

My spaces

As your organization grows and you add more teams/products, you may find that you end up with a large number of spaces in Kitemaker. This can make it difficult to find the spaces you’re looking for and makes it hard to find an ordering of spaces that makes all of your team members happy. To address this, we’ve launched a feature called “My spaces”.

“My spaces” allows users to have their own list of their favorite spaces, where they decide the ordering (and therefore the numeric hotkeys for switching spaces).

To add spaces to “My spaces”, you can either drag spaces in the sidebar to the “My spaces” section, click on the ⚙️ icon for a space and toggle the “In My Spaces” toggle, or search for “My spaces” in the Kitemaker command. To set the ordering/hotkeys, simply drag spaces up and down. By default, the spaces in “Other spaces” will not be shown so the sidebar stays nice and clutter-free, but you can see them by clicking on “Other spaces” to expand that section.

Performance improvements

We’ve landed another round of major performance improvements for Kitemaker, which provide a much snappier experience when changing screens, adding/removing filters on the board, and more.

For those who are interested in the technical details, we achieved these gains by changing the way Kitemaker manages state, switching to a library called Recoil.js.

Contacting us

We're always happy to hear any feedback you have. To reach us, you can:

• Send us an e-mail at hi@kitemaker.co
• Contact us through the built-in chat by clicking the icon in the bottom right corner, or
• Join our community Slack organization

Other

We’ve also released a bunch of smaller fixes and improvements recently:

• Fixed a bug where the title wasn’t getting the focus when users clicked the “New theme” button the roadmap screen.
• Fixed a number of bugs in the Figma integration, making it much more reliable to embed Figma designs.
• Fixed a bug where sometimes updates wouldn’t be correctly scrolled onto the screen when using keyboard navigation in the updates view.
• Made it easier to find labels when creating a new work item from Slack using the “Create work item” shortcut.
• It’s now possible to find deactivated users when filtering boards by members.
• Pressing cmd/ctrl+down in the activity feed now correctly scrolls the feed to the bottom.
• Fixed a bug where sometimes some of the breadcrumbs at the top of the screen were not clickable.
• If a user adds an image, file, or video block to a comment using /image and friends but then doesn’t actually upload an image, we no longer show the placeholder in the submitted comment.
• Fixed a bug where the editor would recognize a non-color as a color code and attempt to show a preview of that color.
• Fixed a bug where moving work items or themes to the archive would result in the archive being incorrectly sorted.
• Improved the typing latency of work item and theme descriptions.
• Fixed a bug where if you were on My work or Search screens, you couldn’t open settings for your spaces.
• Fixed a bug where if you quickly double pressed enter when adding a label, theme, emoji, etc. if would actually add and remove the thing you were trying to add.
• Fixed a bug where if you unarchived work items via a hotkey, the keyboard focus would move one item too many.
• Now when you hover links, the URL editor input doesn’t steal the focus from the editor.
• Improved the loading times and caching of images in descriptions and comments.
• Fixed the d hotkey to edit descriptions on freshly unarchived work items.

Theme metadata

It’s now possible to add metadata such as members, labels, impact and effort to themes. They work with all of the usual hotkeys (e.g. # for adding a label) that you’re already used to from work items.

Additionally, we’ve added some other theme improvements like the ability to mention themes in descriptions and comments using the ABC-123 syntax (more on mentioning here) as well as the ability to search for themes (more on that below).

Search improvements

We’ve improved the search experience in Kitemaker in a few key ways:

• As we mentioned before, matching themes will now be returned along with work items in the search results.
• We now have suggestions/autocomplete when you’re typing in the search field, so you can quickly and easily filter search results.

Automatically opening links in the desktop app

For users of Kitemaker’s desktop app, if you open a link to Kitemaker in your browser (e.g. when following a link from a notification email) you’ll now be prompted about whether or not you’d rather open that link in the desktop app. You can also ask Kitemaker to remember your preference so you can open every link in the app.

Contacting us

We're always happy to hear any feedback you have. To reach us, you can:

• Send us an e-mail at hi@kitemaker.co
• Contact us through the built-in chat by clicking the icon in the bottom right corner, or
• Join our community Slack organization

Other

Here are a few of the other fixes and improvements that we released recently:

• Major improvements to how the back button works when using Kitemaker in the browser.
• We now update the “breadcrumbs” at the top of the screen based on the path you take in visiting a work item, theme, etc.
• The hover that appears when you put your mouse over a link no longer steals the focus from the description/comment you’re editing.
• Fixed a bug where a work item’s description couldn’t be edited via the d hotkey after it was unarchived.

Snippets

We’re introducing Kitemaker’s approach to templates - it’s called Snippets. By using snippets, you can set your team up with a consistent set of templates that’ll help keep you organized and save you time on typing.

Snippets are super flexible and allow you to use any of the standard content blocks (headings, lists, images, etc.) that you use in descriptions and comments today.

Snippets provide a way to create new work items or themes with a pre-filled template (using the hotkey cmd/ctrl+; from the board or roadmap). Additionally, snippets can be used in work item or theme descriptions, in comments, or even in other snippets by typing /snippet or pressing cmd/ctrl+;. You can read about the full functionality in our guide article.

Performance improvements

Performance is super important to us, and we want Kitemaker to remain snappy regardless of how much data your team puts into it. To that end, we’ve done a bunch of performance improvements to make it much faster when navigating from a work item back to the board and also when loading a long list of updates.

Check out this before and after comparison of pressing escape on the work item screen to go back to a board that contains 1000 work items 🔥

Contacting us

We're always happy to hear any feedback you have. To reach us, you can:

• Send us an e-mail at hi@kitemaker.co
• Contact us through the built-in chat by clicking the icon in the bottom right corner, or
• Join our community Slack organization

Other

Here are a few of the smaller fixes and improvements that we released recently:

• You can now click the icon to open the file chooser after you create a /image, /video, or /file block.
• Significantly improved copy/paste behavior, particularly on Safari.
• Fixed bugs related to mouse selection in the description/comment editor.
• Fixed a bug where sometimes images/videos would show a Not Found error due to network hiccups.
• Made it easier for new team members to correctly join existing organizations instead of accidentally creating new ones.
• Fixed a bug where sometimes comments wouldn’t correctly generate notifications.
• Fixed a bug where mentioning a user in two different paragraphs of a comment could trigger duplicate notifications.
• We now show the status of work items when you mention them in descriptions and comments.
• If a work item’s title is too long to show when adding dependencies, you can now see the whole thing with a mouse hover.
• The theme screen now scrolls newly added work items into view.
• If you type a ) after mentioning a user, Kitemaker will correctly remove the trailing space.
• Fixed a bug where archived themes got put in a strange order in the archive screen.
• Fixed a bug where branch names with a / in them messed up our “magic branch” detection for GitLab.
• Added a hint to the “Create work item” shortcut in Slack to let users know that the Kitemaker bot needs to be in the current channel in order for it to automatically attach videos and files from messages.

Dependency graph

Marking work items as depending on or blocking one another is a great way to understand how different pieces of work relate to one another. However, chasing the chain of dependencies through a number of work items can sometimes be a bit tricky. Well, not anymore 😁 Using the new dependency graph view, you can now visualize the dependencies across your entire organization.

The dependency graph can be found by searching for “dependency graph” in the Kitemaker Command (press ctrl/cmd+k) or by pressing the ⚙️ icon next to your organization.

Simply select a work item in order to highlight the connections to the other work items it depends upon, enables, blocks and is blocked by. And of course you can navigate the graph entirely with your keyboard and use all of your favorite hotkeys.

Simplified sidebar

In order to make the structure of Kitemaker a bit easier to understand, and to handle the fact that we have some new structural elements coming soon, we’ve simplified the sidebar. Now every space is just a flat list where you can easily find the different views Kitemaker offers.

Additionally, we’ve unified the archive so you can find both archived work items and archived themes in the same place.

In our blog

A bit belated, but check out our post about some of the best product development articles of 2021 over on the Kitemaker blog.

Did we miss any great articles? Let us know!

Contacting us

We're always happy to hear any feedback you have. To reach us, you can:

• Send us an e-mail at hi@kitemaker.co
• Contact us through the built-in chat by clicking the icon in the bottom right corner, or
• Join our community Slack organization

Other

Here are a few of the smaller fixes and improvements that have been released recently:

• Work items are now created at the bottom of lists by default, such as when clicking the “Create work item” button or using the Slack integration. Hope that helps make prioritization easier!
• Fixed an issue where sometimes when a work item was moved between spaces it would accidentally retain themes from the old space.
• After following a notification to a comment, pressing escape will now take you back to the correct place in the update view.
• We now show something useful in the updates view when a comment only contains an image, video, file or giphy.
• The code language picker now has a filter and also works better in comments.

Slack integration improvements

Our slack integration has gotten three major new features. We hope you like them!

Shortcut for creating new work items

You can now create a work item from any message in Slack using the new “Create work item” shortcut. It automatically includes the full message, including any image or video attachments and also provides an easy way to get back to the full Slack conversation via an activity.

Support for the Kitemaker bot in private channels

The Kitemaker bot watches for mentions of work items in any channel it’s in and automatically creates a two-way link between Slack conversations and any mentioned work items. This previously only worked in public channels, but now we have full support for private channels as well.

Please note: to take advantage of this feature, you’ll need to reauthorize the Kitemaker app in Slack. To do this, open the Slack integration in Kitemaker (cmd/ctrl+k → Manage integrations → Slack) and click “Reauthorize”.

Support for images and videos in activities

If a message that mentions a Kitemaker work item contains images, videos or other file attachments, those attachments will now show up in the activity in Kitemaker.

Please note: similar to the private channel feature above, this feature requires reauthorizing the Kitemaker Slack integration.

Giphy

A discussion really isn’t a discussion unless there are gifs to along with it. To that end, we now support adding Giphy blocks to descriptions and comments 😀

Just press space when the Giphy has focus to cycle through different gif options.

Contacting us

We're always happy to hear any feedback you have. To reach us, you can:

• Send us an e-mail at hi@kitemaker.co
• Contact us through the built-in chat by clicking the icon in the bottom right corner, or
• Join our community Slack organization

Other

Lots of smaller improvements and bug fixes this time around too!

• New app icon and favicon!
• Fix a bug where attachments would not be imported when cards are imported from Trello. Also improve the text formatting of cards that are imported.
• Fix a bug where sometimes image attachments would only show up for the user that uploaded them
• Fix a bug where descriptions of some archived work items didn’t load
• Fix scrolling on the work item archive screen
• Handle non-latin-1 characters in space names
• Truncate super long commit messages from the GitHub and GitLab integrations
• Ensure emoji shortcuts (e.g. :p) work at the end of comments
• Fix embedding of Figma links to full pages
• Reorder the hotkeys for impact/effort t-shirt sizes
• Make the list of themes at the top of the work item board scrollable if there are too many of them
• Improve the sorting of themes in the “theme picker” when adding themes to work items
• Fix a bug where the /timestamp shortcut could accidentally delete some characters
• Make the work item screen behave better when the width is very small
• Save the status name when the input is blurred
• Improve copy/paste in Safari
• Make it possible to edit Theme titles directly in the roadmap board

Description history

Ever accidentally deleted the description of a work item or theme? Or maybe just wished you could go back and find some content you'd previously written? Kitemaker's new description history feature allows you to go back in time and see all of the previous versions of your themes and work items.

Just open the history by clicking the history icon in the bottom left corner (looks like a 🕓) or pressing alt/option+h. Then you can move through the history and restore any previous version you want. And don't worry, all of the versions will still be available in the history after you restore.

Contacting us

We're always happy to hear any feedback you have. To reach us, you can:

• Send us an e-mail at hi@kitemaker.co
• Contact us through the built-in chat by clicking the icon in the bottom right corner, or
• Join our community Slack organization

Other

As always, we've also got a bunch of smaller improvements and fixes:

• Improved the behavior of the menus for selecting impact and effort
• Improved the algorithm for sorting work items by impact and effort
• No longer require a space after wrapping text in markdown shortcuts like ```, \*\*and~
• Added the ability to filter the My Work screen by status column
• Fixed a bug where pressing F and then backspace very quickly didn't actually clear the filters on the board
• Improved copying/pasting of todo lists in Safari
• Remove the trailing space after @mentioning other users if you follow the mention with a punctuation mark
• Fixed a bug where comment text couldn't be selected
• Fixed a bug where ... menus would sometimes be stubborn to close
• Fixed copy/pasting of work items on the board in Safari
• Improved the transition animations on the onboarding flow
• Further improvements to how Kitemaker detects Figma comments
• Fixed a bug where the titles of work items sometimes got trailing spaces
• Improved drag/drop of files in comments
• Fixed an issue with scrollbars appearing in comments unnecessarily in Windows and Linux
• Added a mutation to the GraphQL API to allow external links to be added to code review requests. Handy for linking to dev deployments right from Kitemaker

Improved comments

We've overhauled our comment experience, making working with attachments like images, videos, and Figma designs much easier. Additionally, we now remember comments you've started typing, even if you leave the discussion or work item entirely, so you can always go back and finish where you left off.

Simpler link editing

It's now much easier to add links to descriptions and comments! Just select the text you want to add a link to and press the link button (or press cmd/ctrl+k).

Also, if you want to change the URL of an existing link, just hover over it and you can edit it.

Contacting us

We're always happy to hear any feedback you have. To reach us, you can:

• Send us an e-mail at hi@kitemaker.co
• Contact us through the built-in chat by clicking the icon in the bottom right corner, or
• Join our community Slack organization

Other

Of course, comments and links aren't the only things we've been working on. Here are some of the other things we've shipped recently:

• Fixed a bug where the modals for images and Figma didn't work when sharing work items publicly
• Fixed a bug where the selected work item was not always properly visible when coming back to the board
• Made it possible to search for work items for which a particular user is a member
• Added a filter to the board to see work items you're watching
• Improved the GraphQL API - it's now possible to fetch work items and themes by their number
• Added a hotkey (cmd/ctrl+shift) for toggling todos with the keyboard
• Shrunk the button to add a new status, so users get to use even more screen width when in wide column mode
• Made the entire activity clickable when one work item mentions another, so it's easier to jump to the mentioning work item
• Improved our detection of Figma comments

Dependencies

It's now possible to create dependencies between work items, using either a depends on/enables or blocked/blocking relationship. Blocked work items will get a red highlight in the board.

You can add dependencies from the ... menu on the work item card or via hotkeys by pressing - then d (to mark a work item as having a dependency) or - then x (to mark a work item as blocked).

New onboarding

We've completely overhauled our onboarding, improving the experience and giving the whole thing a fresh new visual style.

We've carried the new look through a number of other screens in the app as well, our personal favorite being our new error screen that blinks with the same pattern as the flashing lights from Quake 🤓

Contacting us

We're always happy to hear any feedback you have. To reach us, you can:

• Send us an e-mail on hi@kitemaker.co
• Contact us through the built-in chat by clicking the icon in the bottom right corner, or
• Join our community Slack organization

Other

As always, we've also shipped a bunch of smaller improvements. Here are some of the highlights:

• You can now use the "in:" modifier to searches to restrict results to a single space
• Ensured that changes to work item and theme titles are correctly saved if you press the back button while editing
• Fixed a bug where newly created labels didn't always show up in the label picker
• Fixed a bug where links to freshly-created work items didn't always load correctly
• Handled a case where work items could accidentally be moved to a recently deleted status column
• Fixed a bug where comment threads with deleted comments had an incorrect reply count
• Fixed a bug where the history could get duplicate entries causing unnecessary escape or back button presses
• Improve the rendering of archived work items on the theme screen
• Fixed a bug where it could appear that both the activity feed and the list of work items had keyboard focus at the same time on the theme screen
• Added cmd/ctrl+shift+x as a hotkey for strikethrough text formatting

Improved collaborative editing

We've dramatically improved the collaborative editing experience in Kitemaker. Now multiple team members can edit the same work item or theme at the same time without worrying about overwriting each other's changes.

We really hope you like all the new possibilities for collaboration this feature unlocks and we look forward to hearing your feedback. And a major thanks to the teams that have been beta testing this feature for us over the past few weeks!

Contacting us

We're always happy to hear any feedback you have. To reach us, you can:

• Send us an e-mail on hi@kitemaker.co
• Contact us through the built-in chat by clicking the icon in the bottom right corner, or
• Join our community Slack organization

Other

We've released a bunch of smaller improvements lately as well. Here are some of the highlights:

• You can now double click the navigation portion at the top of the screen in macOS to maximize (and unmaximize) the window
• Fixed a bug where the keyboard focus could get stuck in a popover and prevent the list and board view from being navigated properly
• Fixed a bug where pressing escape on the email notification settings didn't properly close it
• Fixed a bug where issues imported from GitHub issues appeared in the wrong order
• Made it so holding space only previews a work item in the description editor if that mention is currently selected with the keyboard
• Fixed a bug where Kitemaker would report that your email had successfully been changed when it in fact had not
• Fixed a bug that would sometimes cause activities comprised of zero commits to GitHub or GitLab
• Fixed an authentication bug with embedded Figma designs in the desktop app
• Fixed a bug where escape didn't work properly when you were editing labels
• Ensured that the status selector stays on the screen regardless of where you press the 'm' hotkey on the work item screen
• Fixed a bug where if you clicked "Change title" in the ... menu for a work item, the title editor didn't correctly get the keyboard focus
• Fixed a bug where sometimes clicking a notification did not result in the notification being marked as read
• Some small tweaks to how comments are displayed in updates to make them easier to read
• Fixed a bug where the editor to rename a status column had white text on a white background in light mode
• Made it so various editor suggestions (like for emojis, @mentioning users, etc.) can be done right after an open parenthesis
• Handle the fact that our webhook provider was renamed from Diahook to Svix

New desktop apps

We've released a new set of desktop apps for Windows and Linux, as well as a macOS app supporting Apple silicon. Big thanks to the teams that have helped us out by beta testing these new releases! You can head over to https://kitemaker.co/downloads to grab the apps or just search for "download" in the Kitemaker Command (ctrl/cmd+k). Big thanks to the team at toDesktop for all of their help with our new apps 🙌

In addition to support for new platforms, these apps also bring with them some small improvements like a proper right-click context menu. More to come!

Space reordering

You can now drag and drop the spaces in the sidebar to reorder them, so you can make sure your most used spaces are always just a hotkey away.

Contacting us

We're always happy to hear any feedback you have. To reach us, you can:

• Send us an e-mail on hi@kitemaker.co
• Contact us through the built-in chat by clicking the icon in the bottom right corner, or
• Join our community Slack organization

Other

Here are some other improvements that we've released recently:

• Fixed a bug where the styling on board columns wasn't correctly updated when the window was resized
• Fixed the margins on headline elements in the editor
• Fixed some emojis that weren't rendering properly in the editor (e.g. :four:)

Redesigned boards

We've given the work item board and roadmap a new design. The new design helps clearly distinguish the separate columns, particularly early on when you haven't loaded up the board with content yet.

The new designs provide a fresh look in both light and dark mode, with and without the background image.

Faster loading times

For our customers with the most work items, loading times were starting to become a real problem. We've now redesigned how Kitemaker loads data from the ground up so that Kitemaker fetches the minimal amount of data it needs before becoming usable.

Contacting us

We're always happy to hear any feedback you have. To reach us, you can:

• Send us an e-mail on hi@kitemaker.co
• Contact us through the built-in chat by clicking the icon in the bottom right corner, or
• Join our community Slack organization

Other

Here are some other improvements that we've released recently:

• Now if multiple commits are pushed to a GitHub/GitLab branch for a work item at the same time, we collapse these commits into a single activity
• Fixed a bug where you couldn't set up integrations or import data if you weren't in a space
• Fixed a bug with webhooks where updating work items would result in a workItem.created event instead of a workItem.updated event
• Improved the hover state for the action buttons on activities
• Improved the logic for how updates get marked as read when opening comment threads
• Added an option to the ⚙️ menu for spaces for setting the space key
• Fixed checkbox visibility in dark mode for Firefox
• When coming back from the work item screen to the board, ensure the focused card ends up more centered on the screen
• Fix a regression where archived work items were interspersed with active work items when mentioning a work item in the editor

Image resizing

Just because you've uploaded a giant image to Kitemaker doesn't mean you want it to take up a lot of space. Now you can grab the resize handles on the side of the image and shrink it down to the size you want.

Notification settings

By default, Kitemaker sends you new emails every hour if you have unread notifications. Now you can control if you'd like to receive them less frequently (or not at all!). Just look for "email notifications" either by clicking on your profile down in the bottom of the sidebar or in the Kitemaker Command (ctrl/cmd+k).

Better uploads

Whenever you type /image, /video, or /file in a work item, theme or comment, you get a block that helps you attach files. We've improved these so that you can now upload multiple files at the same time.

Contacting us

We're always happy to hear any feedback you have. To reach us, you can:

• Send us an e-mail on hi@kitemaker.co
• Contact us through the built-in chat by clicking the icon in the bottom right corner, or
• Join our community Slack organization

Other

Here are some other improvements that we've released recently:

• We've made attaching files to comments work better, so that now you don't need to wait for uploads to finish before submitting your comments
• We now ensure there's always a bit of breathing room at the bottom of the screen when editing work items/theme descriptions and when making comments
• Improved the payment flow to more clearly show things like coupon discounts and VAT

Figma integration

We've had a Figma integration for a while in Kitemaker, but it just got a whole lot better. To get the changes, you need to install the Figma integration for your Figma team. Find "Manage integrations either in the organization ⚙️ menu or in the Kitemaker command by pressing ctrl/cmd+k.

The integration currently provides the following functionality:

• Kitemaker will update the thumbnails of the Figma designs whenever they're edited in Figma
• If a comment explicitly mentions a Kitemaker work item ID (e.g. ACM-123) we'll attach that Figma comment to the respective work item
• If a design that is embedded in the description of a work item gets a new comment thread created on it, we'll automatically attach that comment thread to the Kitemaker work item and even keep track of whether or not the comment thread has been resolved or not

Improved updates and notifications

We've received a lot of feedback on our updates and notifications over the past few months and we're excited to release some improvements that should make them a lot more useful.

The updates view (which you access by clicking "Updates" in the sidebar or by pressing u at any time) has gotten a refreshed look. Now it's easy to differentiate between notifications that need your attention and updates that are just "nice to know", making things less noisy and easier to scan.

The notifications also now provide more context, such as a snippet of the relevant comment. This context is visible not only in the updates view, but also in the browser/app notifications and notification emails.

Full-text search

We've improved our searching so we now search the full text of work items when you're on the search screen. Additionally, you can mention themes by title and we'll find work items that are a part of that theme.

Contacting us

We're always happy to hear any feedback you have. To reach us you can:

• Send us an e-mail on hi@kitemaker.co
• Contact us through the built-in chat by clicking the icon in the bottom right corner, or
• Join our community Slack organization

Other

Here are some smaller improvements we've released this week:

• Fixed a bug where using shift+enter when creating a work item caused some focus issues
• Fixed a bug where pressing cmd/ctrl+enter on the board (to create a work item and start a new one) didn't work
• Fixed a bug where pressing escape to discard edits to theme titles was broken
• Fixed a bug in our emoji detection that could occasionally make some activity feed items from Slack and other integrations look a bit wonky
• Fixed a bug where the work item "updated at" time would sometimes change merely by opening the work item
• Fixed a bug where if you inserted a Figma design by pasting the link and then continued editing before the design was loaded, the design would never load
• Fixed a bug where using markdown syntax for links would sometimes cause the cursor to jump down a line for no good reason

Editor improvements

The biggest change this time around is our new editor. While it will feel very familiar to Kitemaker users, it's almost a complete re-write. With the new editor comes a bunch of improvements:

Formatting toolbar

Now when you select text in the editor, you'll be presented with a little hovering toolbar that will let you format your text.

Markdown links

Kitemaker's editor has always detected links, but now it's possible to use the [Link text](Link url) syntax to add new links.

Improved "/ menu"

Previously, users needed to be in an empty paragraph to use the / menu (i.e. the menu that pops up when you type /). Kitemaker will now let you use the / menu anywhere. Additionally, we've added a bunch of new aliases so you can type things like /h1 instead of /headline1. Finally, we've also added a /timestamp option, handy if you want to note the date/time of when you're adding something to a work item description.

Soft line breaks

One of our most requested features has been the ability to add soft line breaks. Now you can hold shift while pressing enter and get a soft break.

Better undos

Kitemaker's editor always tries to do the The Right Thing™ when it comes to things like recognizing markdown shortcuts. However, every once in a while, you don't really want **your words** to become bold. Now when you press cmd/ctrl+z the first time, the editor will just undo the styling, leaving your text unchanged.

Compatibility with Grammarly and the MacBook Pro touch bar

Our previous editor unfortunately didn't play very nicely with the native autocorrect/suggestions on macOS. Nor did it work with extensions like Grammarly. But that's all a thing of the past now!

Titles in work item mentions

When you mention another work item, we now show the full title in addition to the work item's ID, so you're not left guessing what that mentioned work item is.

And much more

From an improved experience embedding Figma designs, to much better accuracy when positioning drag-n-dropped files, we hope you find the new editor much nicer to work with. Even more importantly, this new editor sets up a bunch of exciting new features that we're looking forward to telling you about soon! If you experience any challenges with the new editor, please don't hesitate to reach out to us.

Better work item previews

Did you know that you can press and hold spacebar to get a preview of a work item without leaving the board? You can also use this spacebar trick in other places work items are referenced, such as in descriptions, comments and activities.

However, these previews have always been a bit of a challenge to use since they didn't have space for much content in them. We've overhauled the way we format these previews so you now get a much better look into what a particular work item contains.

Contacting us

We're always happy to hear any feedback you have. To reach us you can:

• Send us an e-mail on hi@kitemaker.co
• Contact us through the built-in chat by clicking the icon in the bottom right corner, or
• Join our community Slack organization

Other

Here are a number of other smaller improvements we've shipped since the last edition of the changelog:

• Fixed a bug where users were accidentally taken to the top of the activity feed when closing a comment thread
• The "breadcrumbs" at the top of the screen are now clickable
• We improved the layout of the dialog for managing integrations
• Fixed a bug where users mentioned in work item descriptions didn't get notifications
• Added a "help & feedback" section to the side bar so that users can quickly jump to the Kitemaker Guide, join our Slack community or submit feedback

GitLab integration

We're happy to announce that one of the features we get the most requests for has launched -Kitemaker now has a GitLab integration! This integration gives teams using GitLab the ability to connect activities happening in GitLab to work items in Kitemaker. Just install the integration by searching for "Integrations" in the Kitemaker command or by clicking the ⚙️ icon for your organization and selecting "Manage integrations". Once the integration has been installed, you can select which GitLab projects Kitemaker should watch for commits and merge requests.

Then, simply by mentioning your work items by ID (e.g. ABC-123) in your commit messages or merge request titles/descriptions, Kitemaker will automatically tie the activities in GitLab to your work items.

The GitLab integration also supports automation, so if you write "Fixes ABC-123" or "Closes ABC-123" in your commit messages or merge request descriptions, Kitemaker will automatically move work items across the board based on your automation settings.

Recently visited items

Sometimes you want to quickly jump back to a work item or theme that you've recently been working on. Instead of searching or navigating to the work item via the board, you can now jump to your recently visited work items and themes instantly by pressing g then l.

You can jump to recently visited items using the number keys

This will bring up the list of the last items you visited, allowing you to jump to them right away with a single keypress.

Sharing work items with metadata

We've had the ability to share work items in Kitemaker for a while now, but it only just showed the work item's title and description. Now when sharing you can optionally choose to share all of a work items metadata.

By switching on "Share metadata", viewers will be able to see labels, members, themes, impact, effort and more for the shared item.

Contacting us

We're always happy to hear any feedback you have. To reach us you can:

• Send us an e-mail on hi@kitemaker.co
• Contact us through the built-in chat by clicking the icon in the bottom right corner, or
• Join our community Slack organization

Other

We've also made a bunch of little improvements that we hope make the experience of using Kitemaker even better:

• A number of new properties are now exposed by the GraphQL API, including which users have access to which spaces. Handy for auditing your access control!
• Added an "updated since" filter so you can find work items that have been recently updated (use hotkey f then u to activate this filter)
• Fixed a bug where file and image attachments wouldn't work if they contained certain characters like "@"
• Fixed a bug where installing integrations from the desktop apps would sometimes fail
• Fixed a bug where moving work items to your "Done" column using the a hotkey could result in the ordering getting messed up or even the item ending up in the wrong column
• Fixed a bug where entering an invalid coupon in the billing flow could result in a user getting stuck and needing to restart the flow
• Fixed a bug where searching from the discord integration would fail if a large number of search results were returned
• Fixed a bug where users who already have a Kitemaker account and then are invited to an additional organization would never receive the invite

GraphQL API access

Access to our API has been invite-only so far, but now we're opening it up to everyone. You can get access to API tokens by searching for "developer settings" in the Kitemaker command, or by clicking the cogwheel/settings icon ⚙️ for your organization and selecting "Developer settings".

From this settings dialog, you can issue tokens for new applications or get a personal access token in order to access the API as your own user.

Documentation for the API is available in the Kitemaker guide. The API is still in an alpha state, so expect some changes going forward.

Using our API to build something awesome? We'd love to hear about it! Drop us an email at hi@kitemaker.co!

Webhooks

Kitemaker now also supports webhooks, allowing your applications to be notified whenever interesting events happen in Kitemaker. Webhook support is provided by our partner Diahook and instructions on how to use them are available in Kitemaker guide. Currently we have hooks whenever work items, themes, and comments are created or updated.

Just let us know if you'd like to see additional hooks. Happy hacking!

Contacting us

We're always happy to hear any feedback you have. To reach us you can:

• Send us an e-mail on hi@kitemaker.co
• Contact us through the built-in chat by clicking the icon in the bottom right corner, or
• Join our community Slack organization

Other

We've also made a bunch of little improvements that we hope make the experience of using Kitemaker even better:

• You can now move work items between spaces via the cmd/ctrl+shift+m hotkey (or by selecting "Move to space" in the ... menu for a work item). All comments and activities are maintained when moving to a new space
• You can now remove the work item backlog from a space if you decide you don't want to use it. Simple search for "Remove work item backlog" in the Kitemaker commands. All work items in your backlog columns will automatically be moved to the leftmost column on the "Current" board
• We have some new hotkeys for moving work items that result in the work items being moved to the bottom of a status column instead of the top. You can use shift+m to move a work item to the bottom of any status column, and < and > to move items to the bottom of adjacent columns
• Made option+m a hotkey to move all work items in one status to another status
• Made a change to lowercase letters in our hotkey hints in order to remove some confusion (e.g. whether something is an uppercase I or a lowercase L)
• Fixed a bug where sometimes notifications didn't correctly open the comment thread when you received a reply to one of your comments
• Fixed a bug where moving work items to your done column via the ... menu had unexpected result
• Fixed a bug where it was impossible to pick some users when mapping Trello users to Kitemaker users during an import
• Adding a filter to the move hotkey so that you can filter for the status you want to move to
• Fixed a bug where the label filter didn't get the focus if you added a label via the Kitemaker Command
• Fixed a bug with the title editor where you could accidentally overwrite the work item title in rare cases
• We tweaked the way the work item search/creation input works on the theme screen because users were reporting they often accidentally added an existing work item when they actually wanted to create a new one
• Fixed a bug where deactivated users would still occasionally show up when mentioning users
• Fixed an issue where the little hover menu on comments (for adding reactions, etc.) covered up the X icon used to close a comment thread
• Rather than saying "Close all work items" in the ... menu for a status column, we now specify the name of the column to move them to since "closing" is not a terminology we use anywhere else in Kitemaker
• Fixed a weird bug where adding reactions to certain activities caused extra messages to be sent to the Slack integration

GitHub integration improvements

We added some new features to make the experience of working with Kitemaker and GitHub as seamless as possible.

First, we've added a button to the work item screen where you can copy a branch name for the work item (can can also use the hotkey cmd/ctrl+shift+g).

Any commits pushed to that special branch name will automatically appear in the activity feed for the work item, even if the commit message doesn't mention the work item by ID. It works with PRs created from these special branches too!

Speaking of PRs, we now show you PRs for work items both in the board and in the work item screen.

Just mention a work item in the PR's title or description (or even in any commits in the PR) and we'll automatically associate the PR with the work item.

Finally, one piece of feedback we've heard often was that it was super useful to see the relevant commits in the activity feed, but it was less useful without knowing which branch they're happening in. Now you get a link to the relevant branch in the activity.

Guest users and private spaces

Many teams have members from outside their company, for example contractors. In many cases, giving these guests access to your entire Kitemaker organization might not make sense. To address this, we're introducing guest users to Kitemaker.

In any space to which you want to invite a guest, use the Kitemaker command and search for "Manage access" or click "Manage access" under the cogwheel icon for your space.

Just type your guest's email address and select "Invite as guest" to invite them. Your guest user will now be able to collaborate with your team on this one space, without seeing any of the other spaces in your Kitemaker organization.

Additionally, teams occasionally need to restrict access to a space within their organization. In the same "Manage access" settings, you can now remove access from all of the members of your organization, and instead individually add the users you want to have access.

This gives you a private space that will only be visible to the members you've specified.

Contacting us

We're always happy to hear any feedback you have. To reach us you can:

• Send us an e-mail on hi@kitemaker.co
• Contact us through the built-in chat by clicking the icon in the bottom right corner, or
• Join our community Slack organization

Other

We've also rolled out a whole bunch of smaller improvements since the last changelog:

• You can now copy the titles of all the work items in a status column in one go by searching for "Copy all work items" in the Kitemaker command (or via the ... menu for that column). Handy for building changelogs like this one!
• The settings icons for spaces and organizations are visible all of the time (not just on hover)
• The "create work item" button will always place work items in the default status for your backlog (e.g. Inbox) if your space has a split-out backlog
• The "create work item" button automatically applies any labels, themes and members from active filters
• Clicking notifications no longer causes a full screen reload
• Made it possible to insert Figma links to entire files in addition to frames
• Fixed the sorting of work items on the "my work" screen so they correct reflect the priorities from their respective spaces
• Added a "Created by" option to the work item filters
• Added a "Manage team" to the sidebar to make it more obvious how to invite team members
• Fixed an issue where mouse hovering wasn't correctly highlighting elements for some Linux users
• Improved the dragging behavior of the activities feed. You may now drag it to your preferred width, and it will automatically shrink as the window itself is made smaller
• Fixed some bugs where deactivated user accounts where showing up where they shouldn't and improved the sorting of users in a bunch of places (ensuring active users are on top, etc.)
• Improved the click area of the hover menu that appears when you hover over activities/comments
• Improve truncation of really long theme names in various places

My work

Kitemaker now has a screen where you can get an overview of all of the work items you're working on. Just click "My work" or press = and you'll be taken to the new My work screen. By default, you'll see all of the work items you're a member of, and you can press tab or click "Watching" in the top right to see work items you're watching.

You can filter your work items and use all the usual hotkeys on this screen like you can in all of the other work item screens in Kitemaker.

Improved search

Now you can quickly and easily search across your entire organization. Press / anywhere in the application (or click "Search" in the sidebar) and you'll be taken to the new search screen. Kitemaker will search across all of your spaces and show you results in realtime as you type. And of course all of the work item hotkeys work in this screen too!

Emoji reactions

Who doesn't want more emojis in their life? Now you can add reactions to all of the activities and comments in the activity feed of work items and themes. Celebrate wins together by giving your teammate a big 🙌 when they land a PR, and quickly give those comments a quick 👍 or 👎.

Just press : to add a reaction or click the reaction button 🎉

Hotkey hints - supercharge your hotkey skills

Some users are happy learning the hotkeys in Kitemaker at their own pace, mastering the hotkeys for the tasks they do all of the time. But for some, they just can't wait to become power users and learn every trick Kitemaker has to offer. For these users, we've added a feature where each time you use the mouse to do something, Kitemaker will tell you how you could have done it using hotkeys.

You can enable hotkey hints by searching for "hotkey hints" in the Kitemaker command, or by clicking your profile in the sidebar and flicking the switch for hotkey hints.

Contacting us

If you have any feedback, you can:

• Send us an e-mail on hi@kitemaker.co
• Contact us through the built-in chat by clicking the icon in the bottom right corner, or
• Join our community Slack organization

Other

We've been cranking out lots of little improvements too! Here are some other things we've rolled out since the last changelog:

• Made it so Kitemaker detects Figma links more accurately in descriptions and comments
• Improved the placeholder in the descriptions of work items and themes to make it more obvious that you can use Markdown and more
• Added icons next to the integration-related activities in the activity feed
• Fixed an issue with uninstalling and reinstalling the Slack integration
• Fixed an issue where deleting status column could cause a crash
• Fixed an issue where deleting a comment caused the keyboard focus to jump all the way to the top of the thread
• Fixed an issue where the keyboard focus jumped when you archived all of the work items in a status column
• Improved the behavior of the ... menus on work items
• Fixed an issue where copying/pasting work items sometimes resulted in the description not getting copied
• Fixed an issue where pressing the hotkey for the space you're already in made the sidebar close for that space

Videos

You can now add video elements to all of your work items, themes, and comments. This is an awesome way to report bugs and to frame discussions around new features. Just drag and drop videos into descriptions and comments as you do with images, or type /video to get started.

Slack and Discord feeds

Kitemaker's Slack and Discord integrations are great for bridging the gap between the tool where your team chats and the work going on in Kitemaker. Now we've made it even more useful! By inviting the @Kitemaker bot to a channel and using the command /km subscribe you can now get a feed of changes happening in Kitemaker delivered to Slack and Discord. Right now we send messages when new work items and themes are created, when work items change status and when themes change horizon.

Want to see more events from Kitemaker in Slack or Discord? Let us know at hi@kitemaker.co

Loom integration

You can now embed Loom videos in your work items, themes and comments. Loom is a great way to capture and annotate screencasts of your product, and to share your feedback with the team. To use this feature, just paste a public Loom URL into your description or comments or type /loom to get started.

Google login

You can now sign up or log in with your Google account. This works for existing Kitemaker accounts that have been registered with your GMail or Google Workspace/GSuite accounts. Pro tier organizations can also use this new login method if they have single sign on configured with their Google Workspace/GSuite domain.

Contacting us

If you have any feedback, you can:

• Send us an e-mail on hi@kitemaker.co
• Contact us through the built-in chat by clicking the icon in the bottom right corner, or
• Join our community Slack organization

You can also follow Kitemaker on Twitter or LinkedIn.

Other

It's only been a week since the last changelog, but we've been busy! Here are some other things we've rolled out since the last changelog:

• You can now add horizontal lines in descriptions and comments by typing --- or using /line
• All filters are now removed when you press F and then backspace in the work item board and archive
• We renamed the command for managing your team in the Kitemaker command to "manage team" (creative!) so it's easier to find
• We fixed up some spacing issues with themes and labels on cards in the board
• We made it possible to delete archived themes
• We improved the API documentation. Let us know if you're interested in trying out our API

Redesign for easier navigation

We've added a sidebar that will help you navigate your organization and all your spaces. You can hide the sidebar at any time by pressing the << icon on the sidebar itself, or using the hotkey cmd/ctrl+s.

Now we have a flexible setup where we can continue to enhance Kitemaker without it becoming confusing or cluttered.

Work item backlog

The first feature to take advantage of this new design is the work item backlog. By clicking "Add element" or using the Kitemaker Command (cmd/ctrl+K) and searching for "Add work item backlog", you can add a separate backlog to your space. This has been a frequently requested feature for teams that want to maintain a large backlog but don't want it cluttering up their board.

When a backlog is added to a space, there will be a separate Backlog board where you can keep your backlog organized and easily move things to your Current board when you're ready to start work on them.

Richer themes

Now collaborating on themes is even easier. Themes now have an activity feed just like work items, so you can have discussions and track the activities related to your themes. Keep an eye out for even more theme enhancements coming soon.

File uploads

This is a feature we've had a lot of requests for and now it's finally here! You can now add any file to your work items and themes by either dragging and dropping them or typing '/file' in the description or comment.

GraphQL API Alpha

We're introducing a GraphQL API that allows teams to manipulate their spaces, work items and themes programatically. It's in its early stages and subject to change, but teams are already testing it out.

Interested in trying it out? Email us at hi@kitemaker.co and we'll provide you access.

Contacting us

If you have any feedback, you can:

• Send us an e-mail on hi@kitemaker.co,
• Contact us through the built-in chat by clicking the icon in the bottom right corner, or
• Join our community Slack organization.

You can also follow Kitemaker on Twitter or LinkedIn.

Other

We're always pushing out small but important fixes, so here's some of the smaller things we've gone live with recently:

• Roadmaps only show up in spaces that have themes. You can also manually add a roadmap by clicking "Add element".
• You can mark individual updates as read or unread. Just press the hotkey 'A' or use the 'Mark read/unread' button.
• Fixed a bug where deleting a space prevented the same space name from being reused later.
• Ensured that comment threads disappeared once all comments in the thread were deleted.
• Fixed an issue where content copied out of Kitemaker would lose its formatting when it was pasted in Google docs, Notion, etc.
• Added a filter to show only work items that have no team members working on them.
• Fixed a bug where sometimes opening the Electron app via a link (for example from the Slack integration) would cause an error.
• Clicking the current themes on the top of the board now filters the board to only show work items in that theme.
• Fixed a bug where the focus followed a work item when it was moved using the 'M' hotkey.
• Fixed a bug where notifications was not showing up.
• Fixed a bug where archiving would sometimes move the focus.
• Made copy/pasting from Slack more resilient.
• Links are once again the proper color in comments.
• Fixed an issue where closing a comment thread could sometimes result in the whole activity feed scrolling to the top.
• Swallowed cmd/ctrl+a outside of inputs to prevent accidental selection of the entire board, etc.

Improvements in performance & handling of bad internet connectivity

The most active teams have been experiencing some performance issues. That is quite bad, so we’ve been working very hard the last month to fix that. It has been a lot of work, but hopefully, Kitemaker works a bit better for everyone now.

As a bonus, Kitemaker will now work much better on bad connectivity since it will store all changes and report them to the server when you get back online.

Issues -> work items, assignees -> members

What you call things affects how you think about them and how you use them. For many it affects their work very little, but for some naming can be a pain in the neck. To make a long story short, issues are now called work items, and assignees are now work item members.

Windows desktop client

We now made a windows client to improve the experience on everyone using that OS. Windows is our second most used OS after MacOS, with Linux in third place.

The client is still in beta, but you can download the client here, or press cmd+k and search for “Windows Desktop Client” inside Kitemaker. Ping us if you experience any issues with the client!

Discord integration

We now have Discord integration for all the teams using Discord. It has the same functionality as Slack to tag work items (also creating backlinks), make new ones, and search for items in Kitemaker.

Contacting us

If you have any feedback, you can:

• Send us an e-mail on hi@kitemaker.co,
• Contact us through the built-in chat by clicking the icon in the bottom right corner, or
• Join our community Slack organization.

You can also follow Kitemaker on Twitter or LinkedIn.

Other

You might have noticed some of our smaller changes as well, so here are some of the other things we’ve launched lately:

• We now have a “Wide board columns” setting, so columns will stretch when you have a widescreen
• Slack messages now have a link to open work items in the desktop app
• We changed the logic a bit on when to show the keyboard navigation hint on the work items board
• Fixed a bug where users had to re-authenticate every time they embedded a design
• Experimentation with a referral program. If you are interested in getting some $ when you promote Kitemaker give us a ping (the program is currently paused, but we’ll be happy to open it again)
• Fixed a bug where the app wouldn’t load if the background image failed to load
• Fixed a bug where we wouldn’t re-import issues you had deleted in Kitemaker (note this only affects you if you import from the same place multiple times)
• We now hide the intercom chat bubble when you are writing comments
• We fixed several small bugs introduced by the design changes we did earlier
• You will no longer get a “thanks for registering” e-mail when you change the e-mail address

New designs

We have now redesigned many of the elements in Kitemaker. We did this to allow more flexibility with the backgrounds. Currently, you can select between the daily background images(changes every day) or a blank background:

A new and clean look for the board

To start or stop using the background image, you can press Ctrl (Cmd on Mac)+K and find “stop/start using daily background.” Alternatively, you can press the cogwheel on the top right and toggle the “Daily background image” setting.

New onboarding

We have spent a lot of time improving the onboarding experience. The two most significant changes are:

1. We encourage imports, integrations, and inviting team members when setting up an organization
2. We no longer create a massive “Welcome to Kitemaker” board in new organizations

New and improved onboarding

A less busy and overwhelming first meeting with Kitemaker

Contacting us

If you have any feedback, you can:

• Send us an e-mail on hi@kitemaker.co,
• Contact us through the built-in chat by clicking the icon in the bottom right corner, or
• Join our community Slack organization.

You can also follow Kitemaker on Twitter or LinkedIn.

Other

We launch new things almost every day, so we sometimes miss to note them, but here are some of the other things we’ve launched lately:

• We now support Single Sign-On for almost any provider
• We made it more evident when you are editing the description on Issues and Themes
• Fixed Github logos in dark mode
• We fixed a problem where resending invitations was not very intuitive
• Fixed a problem where the ordering of issues would be wrong when archiving an entire column and then undoing
• Changed the text in the “verify your e-mail address”-e-mail
• Fixed a problem where the description text in themes would overflow
• Improved the cursor handling when dragging and dropping images
• Changed behavior of un-submitted comments, so now you won’t lose your comments when you leave the comment field.
• The login screen now automatically give keyboard focus to the e-mail field
• Fixed a problem where users would loop through parts of tutorials several times
• Fixed a bug where sometimes archived Trello cards wouldn’t be imported to Kitemaker
• Fixed a bug where you would sometimes end up creating an issue twice
• Fixed a bug where moving from issue to the issue board in list view would put you at the bottom

New things in Kitemaker

Slack integration

We now have a slack integration. It is still in its infancy, but so far, you can mention issues, and the Slack message will be automatically linked to the issue as well as expanded in Slack, and you can create new issues directly in Slack. What do you want us to support in Slack? Drop us a line!

You install the Slack app though the “Integrations” menu.

You can also create issues without leaving Slack

… (more options) menu on issues

By clicking the ... on issues on the board you'll see a menu of all issue actions

We have now added a … (aka more options) menu on issues. By opening it, you can see all actions possible on issues as well as the hotkeys for each action.

Math expressions

We now support math expression using Tex in issue descriptions and comments. Type /math to create a block math expression, or use $$$$ for inline math expressions.

Making math heavy teams happy

Billing

We need to feed our families occasionally, so we are about to roll out payment plans. If you already need a paid plan, we’ll contact you before we enable it for you. For everyone else, you’ll be part of the free plan. Not ready to pay yet? Contact us, and we’ll figure out a plan for you.

Payment plans will be managed inside Kitemaker

Feedback

Feedback, bug reports, and suggestions for improvements are always welcome. We read and respond to all of them. Ping us at hi@kitemaker.co or through the built-in chat, and we’ll look into it ASAP.

Other changes

Things were moving so fast that we might have missed something, but here is a list of some of the other changes we have done:

• You can now manage labels through “Manage labels” found in the cogwheel menu and Kitemaker command.
• You can now deactivate accounts in the “Manage team.”
• You can now delete archived issues.
• You can also change the key of a space through Kitemaker command.
• We fixed a bug where issue preview was broken for some issue mentions.
• We fixed a bug where you would always get the same color when creating labels during issue creation.
• Keyboard hints are now less intrusive than before.
• We made issue descriptions a bit nicer when the first element is an H1.
• If you happen to delete the “Welcome to Kitemaker” space, you can now recreate it through Kitemaker command.
• You can now zoom using cmd+= (so no shift on us keyboards) in the desktop app.
• Updates are now sorted so that unread notifications are always on top.
• We fixed a bug where the issue preview would stay open when the spacebar has been released.

New things in Kitemaker

List view

Alt (Option on mac)+v toggles between board view and list view.

You can now see all your issues in a list view. Each status is collapsable so that you can hide the issues in particular statuses. Simply press enter to collapse a status when it is highlighted in list view.

Impact and effort

Several of our user are utilizing t-shirt sized impact and effort estimates in order to help with prioritization. We therefore added support for this in Kitemaker:

Press E to set effort, and I to set impact

To help with prioritization, you can also sort the elements in a status by impact and effort. Find sorting by pressing cmd+K, or by clicking the “…” on the status.

Sort by impact and effort to help prioritize issues.

Chat with us

We added a chat dialog that lets you ask questions, come with feedback or raise problems directly with our product team.

Chat with Kitemakers in real time

Feedback

Feedback, bug reports, and suggestions for improvements are always welcome. We read and respond to all of them. Ping us at hi@kitemaker.co or through the built-in chat, and we’ll look into it ASAP.

Other changes

We don’t remember everything we did (because it was a lot), but here is a list of some of the other changes we have done:

• Issue names are now included in notifications and notification emails
• Desktop app now support multiple windows
• Archive all issues is now way faster
• The desktop app now auto-updates, and has a nicer icon
• Fixed a few places where the internal “back button” would take you to the wrong place
• Fixed the close icon on the updates slide-in not being visible in light mode
• Fixed multiple bugs where certain operations would make Kitemaker loose keyboard focus
• Fixed cmd+shift+i not working properly everywhere
• Fixed triple clicking in description makes it loose focus
• Fixed a bug where the top of the screen would render incorrectly
• Fixed bugs when copy/pasting snippets from Slack
• Built in chat service to let users easily ask questions or provide feedback
• Fixed a formatting bug when copy/pasting from Kitemaker to VS Code
• Updated the design on issues everywhere

New things in Kitemaker

Lately, we have mainly been focusing on improving existing functionality in Kitemaker, opening Kitemaker up for everyone several hundreds of new users, and improving the underlying code to prepare for some exciting new features for the coming weeks. But, still a bunch of new things here.

Trello import

You can now import Trello boards to Kitemaker. Press Ctrl (Cmd on Macs)+‘K’ and write ‘import.’

As with Github, we will import all content, images, archived cards, comments, labels, etc. Note that when importing a Trello board Kitemaker will create a new space.

Figma preview are now embeds

By clicking on a Figma thumbnail, the large preview will now be an embedding in which you can pan, zoom, and open the file in Figma. The embed works for both private and public files.

List view redesign

We did a redesign on the list views of issues. At the same time, you can now do all issue actions in search and theme screen.

Watching issues

You can now get notified of updates on issues without being assigned. Simply press ‘W’ to toggle watching an issue. You will automatically watch issues you create.

Issue mentions

We have had issue mentions for some time, but we’ve added a new feature so that when you mention an issue, the mentioned issue will get receive and activity with the message. Also, assignees and watchers of the mentioned issue will get notified.

Onboarding

We went through a few iterations on the onboarding. New organizations now get a “Welcome to Kitemaker” board that contains information on how to use Kitemaker.

Feedback

Feedback, bug reports, and suggestions for improvements are always welcome. We read and respond to all of them. Ping us at hi@kitemaker.co, and we’ll look into it ASAP.

Other changes

We don’t remember everything we did (because it was a lot), but here is a list of some of the other changes we have done:

• Cards now display the number of todos completed on the board and in list views.
• We fixed a bug where h/l wouldn’t work on placeholder cards.
• If there is no search result, we will say that now, instead of not giving you a list…
• Emails from Kitemaker should now look better
• We fixed a very edge case bug where filters would cause a 404
• We fixed various bugs with drag and drop images into descriptions
• We now have updated the branding 💄
• We fixed a bunch of small bugs related to Github.
• We fixed issues created on a theme appearing at random places in the backlog.

New things in Kitemaker

We have now released the first version of roadmap and themes. If you are not familiar with themes, it’s, in this context, basically similar to Jira Epics. To add an issue to a theme, simply press ‘!’ when the issue has focus. To view the roadmap, press ‘G’ then ‘!’.

Note that themes that are in the “Current” time horizon are visible on top of the issue board.

'!' means theme, 'G' then '!' means go to roadmap

Board filters

By pressing ‘F’ you can now filter the board. You can so far filter on assignees, labels, themes, free text, and creation dates. You can also press ‘Q’ on the board to instant filter issues assigned to you.

Press 'F' to apply filters. 'Q' will toggle filtering issues assigned to you

Undo

Keyboard shortcuts are powerful, and some more powerful than others. That is why you can now undo all the risky actions in Kitemaker.

Kitemaker telling you about risky undoable operations

Github Issues import

We have met some teams with a long history in Github Issues. That is why we built a Github Issues import. The import doesn’t only bring the issues, the assignees, and labels, but also closed issues, and their history.

Missing an importer for your tool? We’ll build more, so tell us about it at hi@kitemaker.co

Import all your history from Github Issues

Copy/Paste issues

You can now copy/paste issues (cmd+c and then cmd+v). This allows you to duplicate issues or copy issues across spaces. Notice that when you do copy an issue, it brings all history, and both original and new issues will contain an activity referencing the other issue.

Ctrl(Cmd)+C and the Ctrl(Cmd)+V will duplicate an issue

Onboarding when creating a new organization

One of the challenges of Kitemaker is to teach the user about all the cool things in Kitemaker. Therefore are we improving the onboarding. Currently, we’re testing a tutorial that explains how to set up the first space in an organization.

Get to know Kitemaker step-by-step-by-step

Feedback

Feedback, bug reports, and suggestions for improvements are always welcome. We read and respond to all of them. Ping us at hi@kitemaker.co, and we’ll look into it ASAP.

Also, if you want a quicker way of giving feedback and ask questions, you can sign-up to our community Slack channel. Ping us at hi@kitemaker.co to get access!

Other changes

We don’t remember everything we did (because it was a lot), but here is a list of some of the other changes we have done:

• Figma is now part of the ‘/’ menu in comments and descriptions 👀
• Hotkey menu is now searchable 🎉
• If you mention issues, we will add activity to the mentioned issue 🗣
• We now show commit messages from GitHub that mention issues 🧈
• Improved handling of todos in descriptions
• More keyboard hints
• Redid the emails Kitemaker sends out
• Fixed modals not accepting escape (oops! 🙈)
• Improved handling of long label names
• Fixed up the placement of login and tutorial dialogs
• Fixed status column deletion (you can now press Alt/Option+Backspace to delete an empty status column)
• Improved escape handling and commenting highlighting
• Fixed a bug where drag and dropping an image to an description would sometimes delete portions of the description (🙀)
• Fixed a bug where dragging an image into the description would make the spinner never stop
• Made transition from new issue card to newly created issue card 🧈
• Hint about creating cards about shift+enter if you open an issue directly after creating it
• Added Feedback and Help in Kitemaker Command
• Fixed the keyboard focus when opening issues
• Fixed opening notifications sometimes not highlighting correct comment
• Optimized speed 🏎
• Fixed a bug where the + button on the issue screen wouldn’t work

Note: Even though we are in closed beta now, we are willing to open up Kitemaker to anyone affected by COVID-19 and in need of a better tool to handle issues. If you know anyone, please feel free to ping us. If the team is in your organization, feel free to invite them in to your organization and let set up their own space.

New things in Kitemaker

Edit title of card in place

Now you can press ‘T’ on the board screen and now edit the title in place. You can also type ‘@’ and ‘#’ to select the assignees and labels while writing the title.

Use 'T' to edit titles in place

Creating cards above or under current selected card

Pressing ‘C’ on the board will now create an issue above the currently selected issue, while Shift+‘C’ will create an issue below the currently selected issue. This way it should be easier to create issues without breaking prioritization within a status column.

Enter to submit and close, Ctrl(Cmd)+Enter to submit and start next

Most of the time, our users create one issue, or add and remove one assignee or label. That is why we changed Enter to submit, and Ctrl(Cmd)+Enter to submit and start next.

Enter submits and closes, while Ctrl(Cmd)+Enter submits and starts next

Inviting users

You can now also invite people when assigning and mentioning users. Enter their e-mail and select ‘Invite.’ You can now also assign and mention users that have been invited nut not yet registered.

Invite new users when assigning and mentioning

Moving and Archiving issues

We have made some changes on how issues are moved. We have tried to untangle the ‘E’ button so that it is easier to remember the hotkeys.

Use , and ., as well as A to move issues fast on the board

Feedback

Feedback, bug reports, and suggestions for improvements are always welcome. We read and respond to all of them. Ping us at hi@kitemaker.co, and we’ll look into it ASAP.

Also, if you want a quicker way of giving feedback and ask questions, you can sign-up to our community Slack channel. Ping us at hi@kitemaker.co to get access!

Other changes

We don’t remember everything we did (because it was a lot), but here is a list of some of the other changes we have done:

• Clicking an image or Figma design now shows a large version of the image (clicking Figma header will take you to the Figma file)
• We did a minor redesign of the issue screen, and added an archive button
• Pressing Alt(Option)-Backspace now deletes empty status columns
• Press E to edit your comments
• Press Cmd+E to manage labels through the label picker
• You can now access the archive through pressing G and then A.
• Fixed bugs when pasting Figma links into comments
• Search results now respond correctly to hotkeys
• Fixed various elements not being shown properly when rendering comments
• Updates now have full timestamps
• Mac desktop app now has correct copyright message 🤦‍♂️
• Fixed a bug that would cause problem if you invited someone that has already been invited to a different organization, but not yet accepted the first invite
• Usernames are no longer unique, pick whatever you think is right for you (you can change yours through Kitemaker Command)
• In search we now accept spaces after is:, -is:, has: and -has.

Note: Even though we are in closed beta now, we are willing to open up Kitemaker to anyone affected by COVID-19 and in need of a better tool to handle issues. If you know anyone, please feel free to ping us any time. If the team is in your organization, feel free to invite them in and set up their own space.

New things in Kitemaker

Figma integration

By pasting in links to Figma files or frames and pressing enter, we will now fetch a thumbnail from the link and show that in descriptions and comments. The first time you do this, we will need to authenticate you to access the data from Figma:

Simply copy/paste a link from Figma to use the integration

Note that this works both for your public and private boards.

If you click a Figma thumbnail or press cmd+enter when the thumbnail has keyboard focus, we will take you to where the links are pointing.

Github integration

Users that have used Github Issues a lot are familiar with using the ‘fixes/closes # 123’ way of closing issues. We now have a Github integration where you can set up automation steps depending on where an issue is mentioned.

Press cmd+k and enter ‘Manage integrations’ to set it all up:

Follow the steps in the wizard to configure the Github integration

Tip: on any issue (both onboard and when you have it open), press cmd+i on mac, or ctrl+i on Linux and Windows, and Kitemaker will copy the issue number (the ABC-123) to the clipboard.

Note: You can also make Github automatically create links to Kitemaker issue mentions. To do this, follow the directions here. You will be able to find the correct links and reference prefix to your space by visiting Kitemaker in your browser. Ping us at hi@kitemaker.co if you have any questions about this.

Dark Mode

If we detect that your computer is set to dark mode, then we’ll give you a new dark mode of the UI. You can also switch between the two modes using the Kitemaker Command (cmd+k):

Color mentions

Designers love colors. We notice because they keep talking about them all the time ;) To support our designers in the quest to make a more living color world, we now support color mentions using hex codes in issue descriptions and comments.

Designer ❤️

And much more…

We have a long list of other changes at the end of this changelog.

Next steps

Progress on structure

Progress on structure

On the structure functionality, we have gone with themes in a roadmap view. You can learn more about thematic roadmaps from Bruce McCarthy, who wrote the book on roadmaps, in his excellent talk.

A goal for us has been to make themes as easy and functional as issues, while at the same time make them easily visually distinguishable. Here is an example where the themes have ‘portrait’ dimensions and ordered in a simple roadmap.

A simple thematic roadmap

If you want to help us, feel free to drop us a line on your experiences or ideas on ‘Epics’ and ‘Themes’ to hi@kitemaker.co

Imports

A lot of teams ask us for imports. Specifically, importing existing Trello boards, Github Issues or Jira projects. The reason is quite apparent - you have your entire history and current issues in a tool, and it can be hard to switch over. That is why we are currently experimenting with imports. Our imports will import existing issues, your archive, and the users (if applicable). Currently we have a prototype of a Github Issues import, and will probably do a Trello one as the next step. If you have any ideas, wishes or input on importing and integrations, feel free to share them with us at hi@kitemaker.co

Feedback

Feedback, bug reports and suggestions for improvements is always welcome, we read and respond to all of them. Ping us at hi@kitemaker.co and we’ll look into it ASAP.

Also, if you want a quicker way of giving feedback ans ask questions, you can sign-up to our community Slack channel. Ping us at hi@kitemaker.co to get access!

Other changes

We don’t remember everything we did (because it was a lot), but here is a list of some of the other changes we have done:

• Support for Portuguese and Brazilian mac keyboards
• Fixed crash when copy/pasting conversations from Slack
• Improved fuzzy searching of issues
• You can now mention issues, and we’ll link to the issue mentioned
• Added icons on status columns describing the ‘type’
• Minor improvements to the onboarding tutorial
• Fixed a missing space on remove assignee activities
• Fixed a bug where comments appeared on the wrong issue (!)
• Ensured that the activity feed scrolls to the top with keyboard navigation
• Now there is a placeholder while images are being uploaded
• Fixed an edge-case bug where labels wasn’t stored on issues
• Fixed a bug where you seemingly could edit other peoples comments
• Fixed scrolling when hitting d and t keys on long issue descriptions
• Fixed a bug where the issue description would be automatically copied between issues
• Fixed a very-very edge case bug, where you couldn’t move an issue horizontally without moving it vertically first
• Fixed activity list items being rendered over tooltips and menus
• Fixed a bug where deleting statuses could break updates
• Alt+c now creates a status column next to the status column that has keyboard focus
• Fixed a few bugs where you could end up getting a blank screen
• Made certain error messages easier to spot
• Change some tones of grey to increase contrast
• Fixed various bugs when someone else archives the issue or status column you are currently working on
• Fixed ‘Manage team" not being mouse-friendly (oops! Sorry!)
• You can now press 'u’ anywhere and see the updates and notification
• Updates view now has a ‘Mark all read’ button (Also, option/alt+r)
• We now store the last space you visited, so whenever you log back into Kitemaker, we’ll show that space by default
• Fixed escape not canceling issue title edits on Safari
• Made everything more multi-player friendly
• Fixed broken wrapping on issue titles
• Fixed that links wouldn’t wrap in comments
• Fixed weird problems while writing a description while an image is uploading

Redesigned hotkeys

We have now redesigned the hotkeys to make them easier to learn and remember and require less finger gymnastics.

Here are some of the new ones:

Shift+Arrow Keys to move issues on the board

Operations on statuses (columns) are now using the alt (option on Macs) key. For example:

Alt+C (Option+C on Macs) to create a new status

Alt+Left/Right Arrow keys (Option+Arrow Keys on Macs) to move a status

You can press ‘?’ at any time to view the full list of hotkeys.

Redesigned Issue Screen

A new and improved issue screen

We wanted to make the issue screen easier to use and give you a better overview, so now the activities and comments are visible on the right side. Also arrow keys now navigate the activities and comments, while ‘t’ and ‘d’ are still the keys to edit title and description.

We also changed the issue screen so ‘e’ now moves the issue to the next status, and moves to the next issue in the list. While alt+arrows (option+arrows on Macs) will change the status of an issue, but keeps you on the current issue.

... and a lot more

We don’t remember everything we did (because it was a lot), but here is a list of some of the other changes:

• Emojis (we ❤️ emojis)
• New onboarding for new users
• Take-over hotkey: by pressing shift+s, you now remove all assignees and add yourself (s is still assigning yourself)
• More actions create activities in the activity list
• “My” keyword in search that will only search issues assigned to you
• Other improvements to search (still not quite ‘there’)
• There are now hotkeys for editing and deleting comments
• There is now a nice ‘/‘ menu to help you format your text when writing descriptions
• Mac users on web can now download desktop client from Kitemaker Command
• 20+ bug fixes and improvements

Next steps

Our next step is to introduce more structure. We’re thinking in terms of something like ‘Epic’ in Jira and Clubhouse, or ‘Themes’ if you are used to ‘old’ Kitemaker or ProdPad. If you want to help us, feel free to drop us a line on your experiences or ideas on ‘Epics’ and ‘Themes’ to hi@kitemaker.co

Also, if you have any favorite tools you would like us to integrate with, tell us about it at hi@kitemaker.co

Feedback

Feedback, bug reports and suggestions for improvements is always welcome, we read and respond to all of them. Ping us at hi@kitemaker.co and we’ll look into it ASAP.