Changelog

We finally shipped a feature that was blocking many of you from adopting Productlane: Hiding Linear teams you don't need for your daily research work.

You find this new option by navigating to Settings > Teams in Productlane. 

Please note that for some older accounts, you need to "Sync Linear" with CMD + K in case no project is visible after turning on the setting for the first time. After that, everything will be synced constantly.

Changed "milestones" to "project status"

With Linear's new update, "milestones" will be deprecated, so we changed the grouping on the projects tab and your public roadmap to the "project status". We like the simplicity, but we might switch to their new "roadmaps" as a replacement. But we're unsure yet if it will become too complex, as you can now have one project in multiple roadmaps. Please let us know your feedback on what you'd prefer! 

People picker

When adding insights like user interview notes or feedback manually, so far, you always needed to type in the persons' email. We made this a lot easier by letting you create that person only once and then being able to select it from a dropdown. While creating a person, you can now also directly add their user segment.

Other improvements

• We redesigned the project details. They are now full-width, so you can better read the insights.

• We fixed a bug that insights didn't move back to the inbox after completing it in Linear for some accounts.

• Some weird font weights have sneaked into our Changelog headings. Fixed!

• Fixed a bug on the changelog and public roadmap page, where content was displayed twice. 

With our new Slack integration, we've been able to cover 3 major feature requests at once:

1. Zapier integration
2. Forwarding emails to Productlane
3. Inviting your team to add feedback

How this works:

Every new message creates an insight in Productlane: Every message sent into a selected channel will automatically create an insight in Productlane that you can then connect with Linear issues and projects later.

Slack bots like Typeform or Zapier can create insights: Slack bots can be connected to your #insights-hub channel and will also create Productlane insights automatically. This works for Typeform, Zapier, and many other bots. You can set up Zapier to enable email forwarding.

Involve customer success or sales: Let your team add interview notes, call summaries, lost deals, and any other insights that will help prioritize the roadmap. They can post everything into the Slack channel, and you can process it later in Productlane.

For public Slack communities: Never miss another feature request in public Slack communities. Badge-connect all feedback at once, without needing to deal with Slacks UI to create or link issues.

For Slack connect channels: If you communicate with your customers in Slack connect channels, you can click on the "More actions" of a specific message to push it quickly to Productlane. When the feature is shipped, you can automatically follow up with that customer in the Slack thread.

Notifications: Discuss new feedback with your team directly in the thread of a notification.

The more insights you store in Productlane, the better you'll be able to understand which users you can solve a problem for. Segment users by company size, whether they are paying customers, how active they are, and prioritize your roadmap accordingly.

Attach images to insights

We're also launching another major feature: You can now upload images to an insight. Your users can do this on the Public Roadmap and you can upload them when adding a new insight in Productlane.

Other improvements

• When you receive new feedback via email, the "Reply to" field now contains the feedback giver’s email address

• You can now search for multiple keywords in the projects search

• There is a new option on the projects page to temporarily sort  by importance

• Fixed a bug on the Changelog and Public Roadmap where some things were not shown correctly in dark mode

Have all your user feedback in Notion? Host your changelog in another tool? You can now upload your existing data into Productlane and enjoy its benefits without having to start all over: Connect feedback with feature ideas and see, which customer segment it helps the most, and let the feedback jump back into your inbox as soon as the feature is marked done in Linear.

Open the import settings to get started.

Public roadmap improvements

We also shipped some improvements to the public roadmap. If you hover over a project, you now see the Linear description without clicking on it. When you create new feedback on the left, you still see the description fully while the existing projects are searched through.

Other improvements

• You can now search projects and users with CMD + K

• The email subject line for new feedback now has the user email in it, to avoid emails being threaded

• You're awesome! The changelog draft email now celebrates you for finishing projects. 🎉

• Changed the wording from "Mark processed" to "Move to repository", to clarify that it doesn't mean that feedback has been solved.

• Fixed a bug where the changelog detail page couldn't be opened

• Fixed a bug that prevented syncing projects properly for some accounts

We had an intense launch last week and were overwhelmed by your feedback, thank you so much for signing up for Productlane! Our vision is to make managing feedback and sharing it with your team effortless. To help you build more user-centric and successful products. This was a great step towards that.

To let the feedback keep flowing in, we added another often requested feature: You can now connect a custom domain to your public roadmap and changelog. Just open the custom domain settings to get started.

Dark mode switch and better theming

To streamline your branding, you can now enable or disable dark mode for your users in the custom theme settings. We've also redesigned the settings page to better distinguish dark mode from light mode colors.

Pricing

Both features are available in the Plus plan, which we introduced last week. We designed our pricing to enable companies of all sizes to get value out of Productlane with a Free account. As soon as you scale up your teams, you can upgrade your workspace to connect more Linear teams and set a custom domain and change up your Public Roadmap's and Changelog's theme, starting at $40.00 per Linear team / month. View our pricing here.

Productlane is now available for all Linear users. You find it in Linear's new integrations directory.

After some intense work the last months to make the core functionality stable and valuable, you're now ready to complement your Linear workspace with a smart user feedback repository to close the feedback loop, a beautiful changelog that writes itself, and a customizable public roadmap. 

All you need to do is open our website, where you can simply log into Productlane with your Linear account and get started.

Keep the feedback looping: When you send out a new Changelog, your users can now leave feedback on it without leaving the page. A small input field underneath each post enables you to be even closer to your users and signal to them that you truly value their feedback.

Users can choose between three reactions to indicate how they feel about your newest updates. The icons have the same accent color that you can set in your settings. After leaving feedback, they are asked for their email so you can get back to them and stay in touch.

What do you think about this new feature? Leave your feedback below 👇

You can finally link feedback to existing issues! This is one of the most requested features and was a blocker for many of you, so we rethought our approach here.

We limited it to only projects initially because we see them as a better place for your feature requests. You want to keep a high-level overview of your projects and feature ideas and not have every bug in there. On the other side, you don't want ideas in your developer backlog where you're really not sure if you want to build them.

After we invited more users from the waitlist, we realized that you also want to track how often a certain bug or small issue comes up. We're happy to let you know, that you can now do so. Just click on the "+ Issue" button in the feedback details to open a dropdown with all your open issues.

We won't display any of them within Productlane, as we see the segmentation only important for larger features and you can view them directly within Linear anyway. Read here how you can view Productlane feedback directly in Linear.

Productlane guide

We worked on a new guide to help you get the most out of Productlane. You find it here.

Other improvements

• For some portals, the title and OG image weren't shown when posting on Twitter or other socials. Fixed!

• The new project backlog status is now implemented and visible on the roadmap

• The project status icons have been updated

• We removed project status and target date from the portal, as those are often changed by accident in Linear

• We gave all icons on the portal the accent color that you can set in your custom theme

• You can now change your organization's name and logo in the settings

• In the settings, you now find the option to disable and enable the feedback link within a Linear project

In the last weeks, we realized how powerful it was to publish our own Changelog. People on our waitlist got excited reading it and recommended us to more people, even before trying the tool themselves.

We didn’t expect potential users so urgently wanting a tool to write Changelogs – that’s why we decided to make the experience even better.

Issue importer and grouping by label

With a click of a button, you can now add all issues from the last cycle to the Changelog and they are automatically grouped by their label like “Bugs” or “Improvements”.

Additionally, we added a preview of each issue when you hover over it, to help you decide at a glance if the issue is worth putting in your Changelog.

Built-in image editor

Want to quickly update your team or users about a new release, but don't have time to design a nice title image? We got your back. When you upload a screenshot to your Changelog draft, you can now add a background gradient to it and customize the color, border-radius, and padding of the image.

Custom color themes

We understand how important it is to keep a consistent theme and branding for your company. When sending your Changelog to your users, investors, and teammates, you can now adjust the colors of your page to better fit your brand.

We designed it to be easy to customize and to work in both dark and light mode. You only need to set a few colors, such as the background, text and accent colors, which we then use to generate complementary shades for borders or hover effects.

Want to build a beautiful changelog fast? Sign up for our waitlist!

Other improvements

• We added a customizable "Home" link to the portal and Changelog, so people can now click on the logo to get to your website

• Changelog URLs now look a lot better

• In the reply e-mail of a feedback, we added the project in the subject line

• The project view count is now hidden when the portal is not published

Bug fixes

• Fixed a bug where marking the last feedback processed, users were directed to the “Processed” tab

• Portal updates were very slowing when adding large amounts of feedback

• The login page didn’t redirect to the admin area anymore when you were logged in

• Autosaving didn’t work anymore on Changelog

• We changed the issue deletion to just unlinking it

• Couldn’t select other teams on issue creation

• Changing default linear teams did not immediately reflect on the page

• After opening the project creation modal, the keyboard listener was still attached

• Next / Prev feedback navigation wasn't working smoothly

• Large strings and other content overflowed the changelog page

A new week has passed, and we have some exciting updates for major workflows. Thanks to every one of you who gave feedback or wrote us to get access earlier. We're super happy to see so many of you jumping on our waitlist every day – don't hesitate to drop us a message and get bumped up the waitlist!

We worked on one thing to help you really delight your users: A smart feedback inbox. It tackles a problem we had ourselves and saw with our first users: When you receive feedback, it's scattered in Linear tickets, Notion, Intercom, Front, Slack, and other tools. 

That makes it really hard to get back to your users and let them know that you acted upon their feedback. Currently, this is a lot of manual work, you need to go through all links on a Linear ticket, or search wherever a user requested a feature and contact them afterward.

That's why we built this process into Productlane. After adding a feedback, you can connect it to an issue or project. When those are marked done in Linear, the linked feedback in Productlane will now bump back in your inbox. That way you can get in touch with all your users who gave feedback, create that magic moment and make them really feel heard.

Create Linear issues from Productlane

So far, you were only able to connect a feedback with a project, now you can do the same with issues. The Linear issue status will be shown directly on the feedback list, so you know how things are progressing.

Review projects before publishing

A big blocker for a lot of you was that projects were public on your portal by default. This was of course not an ideal situation, and we understand that leaking upcoming features are the last thing you want to do. Now, every new project needs to be approved for publishing on your portal. So you can do your work in peace and communicate only the features your users need to see and give feedback on.

Changelog improvements

We can see how many of you are interested in writing your changelogs in Productlane. That's why we improved the experience of writing them. Importing issues from Linear is now easier and faster since we improved the UX all-around. Keep an eye out, we are listening to your feedback, and we are looking for ways to improve the experience even further.

Other improvements and bug fixes

There is also a slew of other fixes and minor improvements:

• The feedback input on your portal now grows when you type more text

• You can finally drag & drop Projects 👐

• “No milestone” is now selected per default when creating a new project

• Fixed a bug where a click on the changelog link led to the bottom of the changelog detail page

• Fixed a bug where, when logged out, the changelog page did not forward to the login page

• Fixed a bug where text on the changelog detail view was floating over the navigation

• Sometimes the linear API errored out and took down the whole app (fixed 😅)

• Fixed a bug that prevented scrolling on long feedbacks

• When you change the name of your Linear org, the name will now be synched in Productlane

• Fixed a bug, where the people search sometimes didn't work

• You can now delete people

As always, we are looking forward to hearing from you about feature ideas and more suggestions, so we can continually improve Productlane.

Best!

We launched on Producthunt two weeks ago and it was a blast! Thank you so much, we were busy since then keeping up with all the new feedback that came in. We try to send invites to around 10 users per week to make sure everything runs smoothly for you. If you have a more urgent need, please leave us a message and we're happy to prioritize you!

Simple upvotes

We got a few requests that the public portal is more useful when users can upvote directly, without leaving feedback. We see the problem, that an upvote is not as insightful as written feedback, but we now tried to combine the best of both worlds. Users can upvote by just leaving their email once and are prompted to leave more feedback after each upvote if they have an urge to do so. By leaving their e-mail, as a product manager, you can contact them directly to get more feedback from them. Let us know what you think!

E-Mail Notifications

Sometimes, users get feedback on the portal which is more urgent and requires a quick response. That's why we added a customizable e-mail notification for each new feedback that comes in through the portal. As well as when a new changelog draft is ready for you.

Fixes & Improvements

• You can now search through people when using "CMD+K" or just use the shortcut "U"

• You can now select the project in the new feedback modal

• Fixed a bug that made import Issues to a changelog not working

• The feedback on the people details view is now sorted by creation date

• When saving the feedback, it's now saved with breaks

• Fixed a bug where the changelog editor overflowed with long strings

• Fixed a bug where you needed to reload the page on the feedback details, when you created a project with CMD K, so it appears in the project dropdown

• Fixed that newly created projects are not in the CMD+K search, only after reload

• Improved the load time for saving projects due to the Linear integration

• Fixed a bug where a big black line appears on some screens

• Improved readability of the segments labels

• Reworked the options menu on feedback details and added shortcuts

• We removed the default "Public Portal" Link on the changelog

• Changed the sorting to show the newest feedback on the project details on top

• Fixed a bug where ticking the checklist didn't work sometimes

• Truncated the text in the milestone and team selector buttons

• Fixed a bug where changing the milestone to "No milestone" didn't work sometimes

• Fixed a bug on the portal where the link in the footer didn't work when clicking a bit outside

• We removed the "edit"-button in the project details and put it in the 3 dots-menu

• Fixed that the Esc shortcut navigated back to a deleted feedback

• Fixed a bug where the CMD Delete shortcut for feedback didn't work sometimes

• Improved the look of the initial loading screen 🎨

• Fixed a bug on the portal, that the feedback form got wider with an error message

• Fixed a bug where the tooltips did not disappear sometimes

• We disabled the tooltips mobile (Obviously you have no shortcuts there 😏)

• New items count in the sidebar now updates after creating or deleting feedbacks

• Fixed a bug that the "GR" shortcut to go back to the roadmap, sometimes opened the Email reply

• When you archive a changelog, you now don't need to reload anymore to make it disappear

• We removed the roadmap link on the changelog when the roadmap is private

Hello World. We are excited to announce Productlane with this first Changelog post!

After months of hard and fun work building the core of our product, including a deep Linear integration, custom public portals, project checklists, segmentation, and much more, we finally added support for changelogs and with them the final piece of our MVP.

From receiving feedback on your customer's problems all the way to sharing your current and past progress, Productlane is the easiest way to communicate with your user base.

Integrates with Linear

We are big fans of Linear and all the goodies it has, so we built Productlane from the beginning to perfectly integrate with it: A similar interface, CMD+K, shortcuts, dark mode, real-time sync, 100ms rule, you name it. We (and luckily also our first users) love it.

You can directly log into our tool with your Linear account and find everything there being synched in real time. The public roadmap in Productlane is the same as in Linear and as soon as you mark a project done in Linear, it appears as a changelog draft in Productlane.

With a Roadmap

Sharing your progress and future plans has never been easier, as a matter of fact, you already have all the info in Linear, it is only a problem of visibility. After you sign up, a public roadmap page is ready to be shared with your customers! Check ours out!

You will also see your users can submit feedback immediately. Internally you have the ability to segment this feedback by things like "High MRR Customer" or "Power User" so you can really focus on building the next feature that matters.

With a Changelog

Our changelog is a place for you to promote your product to users and we built it to live up to that. There are no distractions on the page, it's built to engage with your brand, sign up for your product, and maybe give you a follow on Twitter, but not more.

A new draft will be automatically created as soon as you complete a project in Linear. To save you even more time, you can add all issues that have been done since the last changelog within a single click.

We are already hard at work on the next features, including integrations with more systems and platforms like Slack, Hubspot, and others. We are super excited to hear from you! We are slowly letting users in, to make sure everything is working and tweaking things as necessary, so go and sign up for our waiting list!