When should I archive?
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, you should archive Stories when you want to maintain a record that the idea was considered at one point, but also reserve the option to revive them in the future.
Should I archive Done stories?
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)
- makes it harder to find in Shortcut
- Archived stories are not included within any Reports
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, search for “is:archived” in the Search bar:
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.
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