Aha! Roadmaps | Notes
From meeting agendas to marketing guidelines, strategic planning often requires notes. Notes Notes in Aha! Roadmaps are flexible and collaborative. Use them to document processes, share research, train new team members, or any other use that comes to mind.
You can nest notes along with whiteboards into collapsible hierarchies, collaboratively edit them with your teammates, add saved views to them, and visualize them by date. Notes might look simple but they provide a powerful way to capture and share information. You can even create personal notes for private use.
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Access workspace notes
You can access the notes for your workspace by navigating to Info Notes. If you do not see that option, you may need to enable it by customizing your menu navigation. If you are an owner or administrator for your workspace, you can navigate to Settings ⚙️ Workspace Navigation or by clicking the pencil icon you see in your navigation bar when you hover over it.
From the Navigation page, check the box by Notes and click Update to enable notes for your workspace.
Create a note
From the notes page for your workspace, click + Create and select Note. The new note will appear.
Note: Selecting Whiteboard from the create menu will create a whiteboard instead of a text note. Whiteboards are organized in your nested hierarchy alongside your notes.
Use the text editor to create your note and format it with headings, lists, tables, and inline images. You can also embed whiteboards and assign to-dos and watchers and start a discussion in the note's comments. Add a Date to a note to add it to the My notes Calendar view for everyone watching that note.
Create a note template
Note templates bring consistent structure to your documentation. Aha! Roadmaps comes with nine prebuilt templates for you to choose from. If you are a workspace owner, you can also create custom note templates for your teams. Contributors can create notes from existing templates.
Shared note templates are customizable using the Aha! Roadmaps text editor, so you can add tables, images, and even Aha! Roadmaps views. They can be inherited from a workspace line in order to drive consistency across teams and establish a standard approach for documentation.
Create a note from a template
To create a note from a template, navigate to Info Notes and click Add note From a template or use the appropriate keyboard shortcut. The Add note modal will appear and you will see sections for Shared templates and Example templates. The Shared templates section includes note templates available in your particular workspace. The Example templates section includes the following prebuilt templates:
Brainstorming session
Customer interview
Customer research plan
Meeting agenda
Meeting notes
Portal guide
Process improvement
Product updates
Sprint retrospective
You can click on a template to see a preview of it. Select the template of your choice and click Add note. Use the text editor to adjust your note to your needs. You can also assign to-dos and watchers and start a discussion in the note's comments.
Use personal notes
Some notes may be just for your personal use. Maybe you have a great idea for a new strategic opportunity and want to jot down some unfiltered thoughts. You might be drafting a presentation and want to work on the outline before you share it with your team. Or maybe you just need to write down the minutes of a meeting.
You can find a notes section just for you on your My work page. To get to them, hover over your profile picture in the navigation bar and click on My work. On the left side, beneath the My work section, you will see a section called My notes. Aha! users with any permission level can use personal notes.
Personal notes are only visible to you. They use the Aha! text editor, just like workspace notes, and you can #mention other records if you need to. But of course, because personal notes are only visible to you, records you #mention will not link back to your personal note and you cannot @mention other users.
There are two different ways to view your personal notes from the My work page — the List view and the Calendar view. Use the toggle to navigate between views.
List view
The List view shows you all your personal notes and whiteboards, organized into a hierarchy that you customize. Click the + icon and select Note, then drag and drop it to its desired place in your My notes document hierarchy to stay organized. Add a Date to a note if you want it to appear in the Calendar view as well.
Calendar view
You can quickly find and create notes by date from the Calendar view. You will see a dot indicator on any date that has a note associated. Click the date to see the notes for that day. Personal notes as well as notes you are watching in a workspace will appear on your calendar. Only notes with Dates added will appear in this view.
Personal notes
You can easily prepare new notes for yourself from the Calendar view. Click the + button under the Personal notes section. A new blank note populated with the date selected on your calendar will open. You can rename it and change the Date field — changing the date will move it to the new date on your calendar. When you are ready to share a personal note with your teammates, click the More options button in the top-right corner of the note and select Move note.
All daily notes added from the calendar will be located in the Daily notes folder that appears in your List view. You can leave your notes in this folder or drag and drop the daily note anywhere in your My notes hierarchy.
Watched notes
Add a Date to any workspace note that you are watching to have it appear on your personal Calendar view. Any note or folder that you are watching that has a Date added will populate on your Calendar view regardless of its workspace location. You do not need to add yourself as a Watcher to every workspace note you want to see in your Calendar view. You can watch all the notes within a folder, such as a folder containing team meeting notes. Just add yourself as a Watcher to the parent note in that folder. Then you will automatically be added as a watcher to all child notes in the folder — and if any of those notes have Dates on them, they will appear in your Calendar view.
Share or move a personal note
If you have a personal note that you would like to share with others, you can either share it or move it:
Click the Share icon to Export your note to PNG image or PDF document.
Click the More options button in the upper-right corner of a note to Copy or Move it from your personal notes out to a workspace's Notes page. Once you move a note, other users with access to that workspace can see it and collaborate with you.
Note: Moving a parent note will move all child notes nested under it. Moving a personal note will change its URL from one with the designation PERSONAL, e.g. PERSONAL-N-150, to one with the designation of the workspace you are moving it to, e.g. FRED-N-110.From the More options button, you can also choose to Hide nested notes. If hidden, any nested notes will not appear in parent note previews of note collections and standalone notes.
If you use Aha! Roadmaps, you can click the Share icon in the upper-right corner of a note to Add it to an Aha! Roadmaps presentation. From a presentation, you can adjust your note's update frequency.
To move a workspace note to your personal notes, click the More options button, then click Move note. From there, click Move to personal notes.
Add Aha! Roadmaps views to notes
Notes are excellent tools for collaboration and ideation, so it often makes sense to add Aha! Roadmaps views directly to a note. With list reports, pivot tables, charts, or custom roadmaps, you can focus a discussion or highlight insights that inform the rest of the note.
To add views to a note, open it and click the Add Aha! Roadmaps view icon from the top of the text editor. The Add new view modal will appear and guide you through the process.
First, choose from Custom views — reports and custom roadmaps you have created earlier and saved — or from a selection of Example views. If you choose an example view, you can modify it later. Use the filters on the left to narrow in on a specific type of custom or example view to add, then click Add to note to add your selection.
When you add one of these views to a note, Aha! Roadmaps copies the view and your note view displays the copy. This way, changes you make to the configuration of the original view — the view's type, style, or filters — will not affect the information displayed in your note. Changes you make to your Aha! Roadmaps data will be reflected in either view.
Once you have added your view, click and drag a corner to Resize it. Or click its More options button to Open the report it is based on, Configure the view you have added to your note, or Remove the view altogether. When you Configure the view, you can change the view's Title or — for chart views — choose to show the chart's Legend.
Note: A chart's legend will appear on the side of your chart that you have selected in the chart's Customize view menu.
Embed a whiteboard in a note
You can embed a whiteboard directly into your note to add diagrams, sketches, and other visuals alongside text in your note. While editing a note, just click + on the text editor toolbar and select Whiteboard. A new whiteboard will be added below your cursor. Click the pencil icon to edit the whiteboard. When you are finished editing the whiteboard, click the X to exit and return to your note. To remove an embedded whiteboard from a note, click the trash icon and click to confirm that you would like to delete it.
Comment directly on notes
In addition to collaborative editing, notes in Aha! Roadmaps support inline text comments. Inline comments allow you to highlight the exact part of the note you want to discuss, then create conversation threads to focus on and resolve the issue.
To create a new inline comment, highlight the text you want to comment on and click the Add comment + icon that appears on the right side of the text editor. Your text will be highlighted and underlined in orange, the Comments sidebar will appear, and you can start creating your comment. Click Save comment once you are done.
Resolved comments will be highlighted and underlined in green and you can always reply to a resolved comment to reopen it.
Inline comments have access to the full text editor, so feel free to format your text, @ and #mention Aha! Roadmaps users and records, add and color tables, or insert images.
Organize your notes
Nested hierarchies
Once you have created a few notes and whiteboards, it makes sense to organize them. Bringing structure to these documents is as easy as clicking and dragging them in the left side panel of the notes page.
To reorder a note, click on it and drag it to your preferred order. If you drag a parent note, all nested child notes and whiteboards under it will come with it.
Note: You can drag parent notes to new locations whether they are expanded or collapsed, but it might be easier visually to do this while they are collapsed.To nest one note under another, click on it and drag it on top of another document.
To remove a note from a parent-child relationship, click on it and drag it to a new location.
When you drag a note or whiteboard to a new location, the blue bars in your Aha! Roadmaps account will show you where it will land in order.
A thin blue bar means your note will exist above or below another document in the order.
A thick blue bar means that your note will be nested under another document in the order.
Note collections and standalone notes
Organizing your notes into nested hierarchies is just the first step. As you build out the workspace and personal notes in your account, your notes hierarchy can become quite complex.
Instead of scrolling through a hierarchy expanding every parent note, click on a parent note to see a preview of all its child notes.
Note collections — child notes with sub-notes of their own — display here as tiles. Each collection includes the first three lines of the note's description, the top three child notes, and a total note count.
Standalone notes — child notes without sub-notes of their own — are listed at the bottom.
You can control what notes appear in these views by clicking on a parent note, then clicking More options Hide nested notes.
Customized title icons
Every note you create has a title icon. By default, this is a page icon for standalone notes, and a folder icon for parent notes. You can change these title icons to emojis to help your notes and note collections stand out.
To do this, open a note and click its title icon. Click or search for any replacement emoji you prefer, and the title icon will update.
Move notes to another workspace
Sometimes notes are created under one workspace but then you want to move them to another workspace. You can use the More options button on notes to move them. If you move the note at the top of a hierarchy tree, all child notes move as well.
Note: You can also move a workspace note to a personal note. Instead of choosing Move to workspace from the Move note menu, select Move to personal notes.
Reference notes across Aha! Roadmaps
You can use #mentions in any text field in Aha! Roadmaps to create a link to a note. On the record you want to link to the note, type the # key and then start typing the note's title. Select your note from the available options.
Link notes to other records across Aha! Roadmaps
Workspace notes can be added as related records to other data objects. To add a related record to a note, click on the More options button in the upper-right of the note and select Link to another record. Once linked, a new Record links section will display at the bottom of the note. This will reference the related data records, allowing you to quickly visualize the relationships.
View note history
Every note created automatically tracks the history of edits that have taken place. You can revert back to previous versions of a note by clicking the History icon in the text editor and then moving the slider to the time frame you want to revert to.
Share and export your notes
With your note completed, you can easily share it with your stakeholders by selecting one of the export options under the Share menu on the top right of the screen.
Note: Whiteboards cannot be shared as webpages or be shared in presentations. If you share a note that has a whiteboard embedded within it, the note will be shared as expected, but the embedded whiteboard will not render in the published webpage or presentation.
To fold your note into a presentation, select Add to presentation. In your presentation, you can select the note's update frequency.
To share your note as a webpage, select Share as webpage.
Note: Since personal notes are personal to you, you can only share workspace notes as webpages.To schedule recurring email delivery of your workspace notes, select Schedule email delivery.
For a static version of your note, export it to PNG image or PDF document.