Stories are the standard unit of work in Shortcut. Stories are where collaboration and documentation for said unit of work happen.
The contents of a Story entail user-generated content that can be edited or removed by anyone in the workspace. This article will break down this content by its respective elements.
Story Basics
Click the Story Title to open the title box. Once edited, hit enter or click outside of the title box to save the new title.
There is a 512 character limit to the content of a Story title.
Click the button to edit description. You can also shift+click anywhere in the description to start editing.
There is no character limit to the content of the description. It can be as long or short as you need it to be. Story descriptions support both Markdown and HTML.
Sub-tasks
Sub-tasks in Shortcut help you break down user Stories into pieces of work for your team to execute on. Much like a Story, you can estimate, connect to VCS, and move Sub-tasks across your team's workflow.
Assign Sub-tasks to your teammates and view progress of Stories across Shortcut views. This is a new feature in Shortcut. For detailed technical information, please see our Sub-tasks documentation.
Checklists
Tasks (a legacy feature) are now Checklists! If you need to create a to-do list in a Story, you can utilize the Checklist option. For your descriptions, you can also add a Markdown checklist. Checklist items support markdown formatting and @-mentions.
Need to explicitly assign an item to another teammate? While you can @-mention a teammate on a Checklist item and it will show on their My Work page > My Checklists list, Checklist items can also be converted to Sub-tasks via the three-dot menu.
Owners assigned to a Legacy Task item will still retain Ownership of the Checklist item created from that Task. And though not specifically visible on the Checklist item itself, that assigned Checklist item will show on their My Work page > My Checklists list.
Story Relationships
Stories in Shortcut can be related to each other in a number of ways and within the Story dialog. Once you indicate this relationship in one Story, it will automatically appear in both.
To add one, click Relationships under Add to Story and select the appropriate relation type:
- "Relates to" means there is some relationship between the two Stories.
- "Blocks" means Story A needs to be completed before Story B can start. Story B will be marked "Is blocked by" Story A. When Story A is completed, these properties will be removed from both Story Cards in the Column View - however, they will still be visible in the Story Dialogs.
- "Duplicates" is to be used when an identical or very similar Story already exists in the system. While we expect the duplicate Story to be archived, it will continue to contain the "Is duplicated by" relationship, indicating to all who come across it that it is not the original Story.
To add a Doc Relationship, use the Docs Tab and search for the Doc.
To end the relationship, select the three dots to the right of the relationship and select Remove Relationship.
Story Comments
Discussion about a Story can take place in the Comments section of the Story dialog. The comments field supports text, markdown, emoji, files, links, and code snippets. Clicking into the comment text area will provide you with numerous helpers.
The system will share a message informing you of this, and the Story card will have a pencil icon indicating that the Story has unsaved changes.
Mention a user in a comment
You can reference or call attention to a team member in a comment by typing "@" and then typing or selecting the person's username in the dropdown. They will receive an email notification (and Slack DM as well, if enabled).Add an image to a Story Comment
Upload File Limits
The web app has a 50MB file upload limit.
An image attachment is restricted in three ways:
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Images attached to a story are scaled down to at most 360 pixels wide and 240 pixels high.
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Clicking on an image to display it hi-res in a lightbox causes it to be scaled to the size of the browser window. (So very tall and skinny images can become difficult to see)
You can add images to the comments field in three ways:
1) Click the image icon to select a file to upload
2) Drag and drop the image from your computer into the comment area. Hold the Shift key to bring up the optional image cropper.
3) Copy/paste the image from your clipboard (NOTE: Copy/paste is currently only supported in Chrome. It will be added to other browsers when it becomes available in the spec).
Animated GIFs will become static GIFS when copy-pasted.
Link users to a Story comment
Emoji reaction to Story Comment
In addition to using emojis in the text of a comment, you can also react directly to a comment.
To react to a comment using an emoji:
- Open the Story containing the comment.
- Find the comment and move your mouse over the comment body.
- Click on the smiley face icon that appears below the comment text (on hover, the button will say Add Reaction).
- Scroll or search to find the emoji you want, and then click on the emoji to add it to the comment.
To remove your reaction from a comment, click the emoji again.
Note: Emoji reaction updates won't trigger notifications or be included in the Activity Feed.
Pinning Stories
You can pin Stories to the left sidebar of the UI, which allows for quick retrieval without needing to open multiple taps. Now you can multitask with ease!
Story Activity
The Story Activity is located at the bottom of the story card and shows a variety of changes made on and to the Story, as well as when and by whom the action was performed.
At the top of the Story Activity section, we show "Important Changes Only" by default. This setting will show important changes, such as pull requests opened or merge requests linked to this story, or when the story is moved from one state to another.
The second setting is called "Everything". As the term implies, this will show all metadata changes to the story, such as changes to the title or description; when Labels have been added/removed; Owners added/removed; Followers added/removed; due date changed, etc.
Lastly, you can also reorder the Story Activity by "Oldest First" or "Newest First" by toggling the action in the upper right of that Activity list.
Difference Checker
Shortcut records the text for the title and description. When changes are made to the Story, we show the text difference between the two versions. This can be seen by setting the Story Activity to "Everything" and checking for the Diff button next to a Title or Description change activity notification.
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