Archiving in Shortcut explained
Blog

Archiving in Shortcut explained

Shortcut
New and Updates
October 6, 2016

It was with great excitement that we rolled out Story archiving in Shortcut. We figured users would be excited to have a place where deserted Stories could be sent to live out their retirement years. However, because this feature can be misused, we thought we should provide some explicit guidance on when (and when not) to archive.

So, what is the deal with Archive and when should I use it?

Archiving is for those Stories that were proposed, maybe even worked on a bit, but ultimately abandoned. They may have been ahead of their time or just slightly off the mark, whatever the case, they never made it to Done. Since we intend Shortcut to also be a system of record, we should archive Stories when we want to maintain a record that the idea was considered at one point and also reserve the option to revive them in the future, but don’t want them hanging around on our main Story board taking up unnecessary space.

Alright, so how do we mark something as totally done?

To mark a story as done, all you need to do is move it to a “Done” workflow state. If you find that your Story board feels too cluttered, you can choose to just hide those workflow columns from your default view.

Archiving a Done Story:

  • removes valuable Story relationship information
  • removes it from your Epic progress (making it appear that less has been done); and
  • makes it harder to find in Shortcut.

So for all those reasons, we strongly discourage you from archiving Done Stories.

How do I find archived Stories in Shortcut?

Once archived, those Stories will no longer show up in the overhead search bar nor will they be referenced in Story Relationship fields. To find Archived Stories, click on the Archived Stories button at the bottom of the sidebar on the Stories page.

Archiving is also a half step to deleting. In a perfect world, you’d never need to delete anything in Shortcut but sometimes you make a mistake or just need something to be gone forever. In that case, you’d archive first and then delete.

We hope this clears things up, but feel free to drop us a line (we’re @clubhouse on Twitter) if you need more clarification or if you have thoughts about how you’d like to see this feature change/improve in the future.

Shout out to the Arrested Development fans out there!


Topics:
No items found.
Share this Shortcut story
Enjoy your work
Project management software should be helpful, not a hassle.
Check out our words
Shortcut is modern project management without all the management. 
And this is our blog.
Read more stories
No items found.