Features & Items

IN THIS ARTICLE

Features are located within a Deal > Estimates > Features

On the Features page, you can

• Create, view or manage features
• Add items and estimates
• Set priority and risk/contingency levels
• Reorder features to reflect an underlying sequence or hierarchy.
• Import and export features to csv

Features

Create a feature

Create or insert a new feature, via the New feature button. This will open the feature window (see below)

You can also import existing features (see Import and export below)

Create a new feature from the feayires page

Edit a feature

To view or edit a feature, click on it’s name, or expand it

A newly created feature

Feature priority

Every feature has a priority that can be set to low, normal high, critical, or none (the default value).

Priority is used to track customer or internal value (like must/should/could) during estimation and presentation.

To set the feature priority, click the priority icon

During pricing, priority is used to help measure and control scope based on priority.

• users can track the overall size and value of each priority
• users can add or remove features by priority (such as removing all low priority features)
• users can adjust scope by gradually removing lower priority features

Feature risk & contingency

Every feature has a risk level that can be set to low, medium or high or none. Contingency is automatically applied to all estimates inside the feature.

• Normal risk uses the default contingency (default value)
• Low risk uses the min contingency
• High risk uses the max contingency
• None risk will ignore contingency

Risk is used to calculate contingency, and weight features during scoping.

• Risk is used to calculate the amount of contingency to apply to all estimates within a feature (the higher the risk, higher the level of contingency). See Estimation for more details on defining contingency**.**
• Risk is also used to weight features when adjusting scope. Higher risk items (with lower priority) will always be descoped first. See Scope for more information on descoping rules

To set the feature risk level, click the risk icon

Reorder features

Features can be reordered to reflect an underlying sequence or hierarchy to present to buyers.

You can also move features between phases via the action menu that appears on hover.

A list of estimated features

Items

Items contains a description and zero or more estimates that can be added and removed from scope. You can also add internal comments and assignees to an item.

Add an item

To add a new item, click on the New item button or expand an empty features. The feature will expand automatically and focus on the name field.

An expanded feature showing a new item

Item descriptions

To add a description, type Enter at the end of the item name.

Descriptions support rich-text formatting and layout options including headings, bold, italic and strikethrough, bulleted and numbered lists, redo/undo and copy/paste from clipboard.

Inline menu

You can access text and paragraph formatting options (as well as redo/undo) from the inline menu that appears when description text is selected/focused.

The inline formatting menu

Markdown

The editor supports markdown shortcuts make it easy to format the text while typing.

On a new line:

• Type # followed by space to add a heading
• Type - , + or * followed by space to add a bulleted list item
• Type 1. followed by space to add a numbered list item
• Type enter to clear an existing layout option

Within text

• Type **bold** or __bold__ to format bold text
• Type *italic* or _italic_ to format italic text
• Type ~~strikethrough~~ to format strikethrough text

Keyboard shortcuts

The editor also supports many standard keyboard shortcuts to make editing as easy as possible:

• Text formating (e.g. cmd/ctrl + b)
• Paragraph formatting (e.g. cmd/ctrl + alt + 1 for heading style)
• Text selection (e.g. shift + down to extend selection one line down)
• Copy and paste from clipboard (e.g. cmd/ctrl + v to paste content)
• Redo/undo (e.g. cmd/ctrl + z to undo)

Copy and paste

Estii makes it easy to copy and paste external requirements and maintain formatting

• When pasting into an empty item, the first line will automatically be converted to a heading
• Name + description can have a total of 1024 character (additional characters will be ignored when pasted)
• Pasting plain text, markdown or html. In the case of html, the editor will try to maintain as much external formatting as possible.
• Text is copied to the clipboard as plain text markdown (for maximum compatibility)

We've tested pasting content from numerous platforms and formats - but if you find something that is still problematic, please let us know!

Item estimates

An estimate is a calculated price based on a specific resource and value (for example Fixed Price x $1.5K or Project Manager x 10 days or Design team x 1 week).

To add an estimate, select a resource type and adjust the units/value

• Estimate in at any unit scale based on the unit type of the resource (currency, time, etc)
• Estii automatically calculates the total units and price in your space currency (and work units)

Choosing a resource to estimate

There are several types of resource available within a deal:

• Fixed price (default) is a value in your space currency. It can be used across features, services and expenses.
• Roles and Streams are time-based resources that can be used on features and overheads
• Products are unit-based resources that can be used on services and expenses

Resources are color-coded by their tag, making it easier to scan estimates. Streams containing roles from multiple tags display a gradient indicating their mixed composition.

Item breakdowns

You can click on any value in the units or total column to view a detailed breakdown of the calculations - this works across all the estimation categories, and is available for individual estimates, items totals, features totals and even page totals!

Items and Feature totals contain a breakdown of everything inside them

Recurring services breakdowns are grouped by month and year

Actions

Filters

You can filter features (and items) within a deal via the filter menu.

• Scope - Any, Included, Excluded
• Assignee - Any, Unassigned, Member
• Priority - Any, None, Critical, High, etc
• Risk - Any, None, High, Low, etc
• Tag - Any, None, available tags
• Role tags - Filter by role tag (applies to role and stream estimates)
• Product tags - Filter by product tag (applies to product estimates)
• Comments - Any, None, Open, Resolved, All
• Commenter - Filter by comment author and @mentions

Filtering estimates

Adjusting scope

You can manually scope / descope features and items. Descoped items are greyed out and their price is set to 0.

To toggle scope, click on the scope button that appears on hover.

A descoped feature

Deeplinks

You can generate a link to any item, comment or feature via the copy link menu action. Estii automatically expands, scrolls to, and highlights the linked feature/item on screen.

Copy link to the clipboard via the comment menu

Deep links automatically expand and highlight on screen

Tags

Tag features and items track and scope related estimates, and set colours to group related tags. Once tagged, additional breakdowns appear on the scope page, so you can easily add or remove entire tags from scope.

Tagging features and items

For consistency, tags are shared across all deals. You can add, rename, merge or delete them from the tag input on any feature or item. If other deals references a tag that no longer exists - it will remain local to that deal until it is remapped to another one.

Other tag usages

• Tag breakdowns per tag on the scope page
• Filter features by tag
• Included in deal export

Comments

You can add internal comments from via the item toolbar

• Add and reply to comments using formatted text and @mentions📝
• Resolve on completion ✅
• Filter by status (open, resolved) 👀
• Deep link to comment 🔗
• Navigate between comments ⬅️ ➡️

Adding a comment to an item

View and navigate between comments

Item owners

You can assign members to items to keep track of progress.

Assigning a user to an item

Advanced

Scheduling estimate

Estii calculates the total allocation of roles across all features and rounds it up to the nearest day, week, fortnight or month based on the schedule delivery cycle.

If rounding is required, it will appear as a separate scheduling row below the features.

Summary of schedule rounding under feature estimates

Import and export features

You can bulk import and export features via the ... menu. You can use this to duplicate features between different phases and deals, or to integrate with external platforms.

Importing features from the action menu

The feature import dialog

CSV format

Both import and export use the same format that supports multiple features and items in order.

CSV Example

Feature,Priority,Risk,Item,Description,Resource,Estimate,Unit
This is a sample feature,None,None,This is an item with a single estimate,,Developer,1,day
,,,This is an item with a description,"This is a description with **bold**, *italic* and ~~strikethrough~~ text
- This is a bullet
- This is a another bullet",Developer,1,day
,,,This is an item with multiple estimates and time periods,,Developer,4,hour
,,,,,Designer,1,week
,,,This is an item without estimates (aka an assumption),,,,
Users & Accounts,Low,Normal,Users can sign up with email and password,"- Assumes availability of SAML V2.0-compliant identity provider such as Active Directory
- No data migration of existing user credentials",Developer,2,day
,,,,,Designer,4,hour
,,,Users can sign up via social provider,"Included social providers:
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Google",Developer,2,day
,,,Implement invitation email,,Developer,2,day
,,,Support multi-tenant accounts,,Developer,3,day
,,,Allow users to add a custom domain,,Developer,4,day