Feedback Wanted: Project Templates

[azenMatt]

We have just released Project Templates and would love to get your thoughts and feedback to how these are helpful and how we can make them even better ✨

To create a project template, select New template from the "Templates" page, go to the project settings and toggle Make template, or making a copy of an existing project or project template. This sets the project as a template within your organization, and includes the project views, custom fields, draft issues, workflows, and insights by default. You can also copy the project into a new template if you don’t want to make any changes to the current project.

You will find your templates on the organization projects page under "Templates", or by the filter is:template to search.

To use the project template, you can either

• Click on the template from the project page, explore its contents, and click Use this template to get started
• Find all available templates in your organization when you create a new project

Check out the changelog announcement and documentation for more details ✨

[brennansingular]

Seems that my workflow is not being saved as part of template, a bit annoying to set it up every time

[rileybroughten]

Workflows in project copies and templates are coming soon! 👀

[rileybroughten]

Workflows are now included when you use a project template or make a copy of a project, along with insights and field values for draft items! Check out the changelog announcement here ✨

[duvandroid]

Hi @azenMatt !

I'm using Projects and after 4 weeks we reach the max number of Issues (1200). I was using one Project as our Sprints History.

Are you thinking on increase that limit in the future?

[azenMatt]

Hi - we are actively working on this at the moment to make it much much higher.

Do you have an auto-archive workflow set up to help clear out any of the completed issues while we work on that?

[duvandroid]

@azenMatt Yes, we activated it yesterday and it works, but I would like to keep those issues on the map, if we archive them, we can't have a full retrospective.

[brennansingular]

Will also say Save as Template is a confusing state because I had active issues in a project that I then saved as a template, and then it seems to me now I had these issues sitting in a limbo project that no longer functions as a normal project?

A little weird to me still, I expected to be able to choose the template from a list instead of having a project file exist solely as a template, food for thought

[azenMatt]

Yes - this use case is what we were thinking 'copy as template' would help for. When you have a 'live' project that is useful as a template, but you want to keep it as a 'living' project

[joethorley]

A really interesting feature would be the ability to switch an existing project from one template to another. I'm guessing the best way would be to delete any information related to fields or values within fields that don't exist in the new template but otherwise leave everything else unaltered but add the new fields and values. This would be a huge time saver as I gradually refine my existing template based on using it for specific projects.

[joethorley]

Also the fact that if a project is closed and then reopened all the workflow settings are lost is inconvenient. I'm assuming that if the workflows become part of the template the workflow information would be preserved if a project was closed and reopened?

[timoyates]

Workflows are disabled when a project is closed so that automation doesn't continue to run for unused projects and the resulting events don't clutter issue timelines. Data on which workflows were and weren't enabled is dismissed when a project is closed, so it will be difficult to restore to the previous state when re-opening a project. I don't think there's a plan to address that yet - whether the project in question was made based on a template or not.

[michakfromparis]

Great job overall! One thing that I find annoying is that view setup seems to be local to each user. When Setting up a view such as field / column selection or group by settings, it would be nice to be able to save the default view for new users.

[rileybroughten]

@michakfromparis could you explain how you tend to set up your templates a little more?

• Do you tend to add or include draft issues in your template?
• What layout types (table, board, roadmap) do you tend to include?
• If you create a new field (such as Priority) in your template and set it as the board column for example, it should maintain that view when you use the template. Is there a different scenario where you are seeing that it doesn't maintain the group by setting?

[noahehall]

interesting, when i edit & save a view and preview it in a private window i see the updated saved view

are you saving the view after your modifications?

[KingOfTac]

One point of feedback that would be extremely useful in orgs with many projects, is the ability for projects cloned from a template to update their views/custom fields when the template receives an update.

This would make updating projects from a common template a lot less time consuming instead of needing to manually update every project that uses a shared template.

It could even be something that is opt in by the cloned project so that updates to its template doesn't mess anything up that the project is currently relying on.

[noahehall]

we need a git rebase for project templates

[rileybroughten]

@KingOfTac @noahehall Are there other attributes of a template update that you would or would not want included to its downstream projects? You mentioned views and custom fields, but is there anything else? 🤔

[noahehall]

@rileybroughten IMO we should bring over all attributes by default

perhaps the template readme is the only thing i would consider 'informational' and not 'template data'

[KingOfTac]

@rileybroughten updates to configured workflows should also propagate to projects using the template. The big question (imo) is how to handle edge cases. For example, projects built off a template that have now deviated from the template. Should the template have the option to make all derived projects' attributes readonly? Should projects have the option to opt into receiving updates from the template after the initial creation? How would you go about reconciling conflicts with a project and the template it was created from if the project has since had more views and attributes added?

[lightningRalf]

Will this be also available for the open-source community? Or is this a github pro / enterprise thing only?

[timoyates]

If you go to the ... menu or settings for a given "user-owned" project you should be able to make a copy, which I'd say is pretty similar to having templates?

[lightningRalf]

Thanks a lot, didnt see that.

I imagine that in this way it is not possible to introduce to a new open source project that I want to join, but am not a contributor yet.
Correct?

[timoyates]

I'm not sure I'm following 😄 are we both talking about "projects" as in the projects management feature for tracking issues/PRs with table and board layouts?

[lightningRalf]

sorry for keeping you waiting, somehow this got not flagged.

I'm not sure I'm following 😄 are we both talking about "projects" as in the projects management feature for tracking issues/PRs with table and board layouts?

Yes, we are.
So when I come to a new project as a open source contributor (in the role of a product manager) I usually do a PR with ISSUE_TEMPLATES and PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATES first.
And if they get accepted, then I would like to be able to add my "projects" templates the same way, (if that would be possible)
And help in this way to get the existing issues sorted, and the newly created will be automatically sorted, due to the workflows / labels and such.

Does this make sense?

[lightningRalf]

@rileybroughten maybe you could chim in here? ;)

[LordMerc]

Not able to use in repo workflows yet? I want to be able to automate some replies to issues that get their status changed.

[zhiren1211]

It's awssome! Thanks.

[FYI]

• At /orgs/xxxx/projects, i couldn't create a new project with draft issues. (New Project)
• At the private template page, i could create a new project with draft issues. (Use this template)

[rileybroughten]

Happy to hear it! Could you share more details about your first point of not being able to create a new project with draft issues?

[dsanders11]

Is it intentional behavior, or a bug, that the 'Status' field value for draft issues is reset when the template is copied? We're trying to use a template with a dozen draft issues with specific status field values set, and when creating a new project from the template, the status field values are lost. All of the draft issues are on the new project, just without the correct status field value.

[timoyates]

This expanded functionality is being worked on 😄 thanks for the feedback!

[rileybroughten]

While this is the current behavior, we are actively working on changing that (in progress right now!) so that the status or any field values associated to your draft items are maintained when copying or using a template 👍

[rileybroughten]

Oops, forgot to refresh my page 😁

[takumi12311123]

In my project, when I set the base branch to something other than main, when I write close #number in the PR, it is no longer tied to an Issue in the project, nor is it automatically moved to Done. (It is possible that this is a bug, as sometimes it can be done.)

[rileybroughten]

Here are the docs for linking a PR to an issue, but the PR must be on the default branch otherwise the special keywords to close an issue once a PR is merged will not work.

If the PR is on the default branch, you'll just want to make sure that you have the Closed workflow enabled.

[JStiller]

@rileybroughten As you mentioned the docs for the workflow. How about the other way round? I do often times notice that developer just move the issue to done. But they do not close that issue. Which is kind of annoying because you have to clean it up later on.

[PaulRBerg]

I've just started using GitHub Projects, and this is very, very cool. Thank you for building this.

Feature request: let us pass issue URLs in the "+ Add item" button, and have them turned into items right away. Having to type the repo's name first and then wait for an issue to pop up is a tad time-consuming.

[rileybroughten]

@PaulRBerg are you not seeing the behavior below where you can paste issue URLs directly into the Add item bar? Let me know if you were referring to something else here 😁

Screen.Recording.2023-06-09.at.8.10.10.AM.mov

[chungquantin]

If there is a feature to batch create multiple issues in Github Project at once, that would make my life so much better. Maybe have an editor view or telling the AI to generate tasks based on the paragraph provided.

[rileybroughten]

When you open up the Create new issue dialog, there is an option to select Create more which will allow you to add issues back to back. We've also been exploring being able to convert multiple draft items into issues in one action, but we don't have an estimate on that quite yet

Screen.Recording.2023-06-09.at.8.16.16.AM.mov

[tzmanics]

Really loving project templates and using the heck out of them, so thanks for the great work!!

Upvoted the features that I would also like to see (like fields and their settings persisted in clones projects and cloned projects to reflect template changes).

• It would also be nice if you had the ability to have the info section persist to the cloned project. For instance, I have a template of my project DACI that i currently copy and paste then edit for each new project.

• Along the same lines it would be nice to have the option to have the readme or description as a view or be expanded at the top of the page. For my team's project I like to have a "point to" doc for stakeholders or other interested parties to be able to get an "above the fold" chunk of information about the project (e.g. who is lead, who is the em, the delivery dates, the list of repos, links to meeting notes, etc.).

• We could really use labels on projects so we could sort them by team, launch dates, etc. (our org has over 100 projects).

• Along the lines of above, it would be great if you could view Org projects in a roadmap view and then be able to also filter that view by those labels listed above.

This is the info I currently include:

WHO

Driver

• em: Tara Z. Manicsic (@tzmanics)

Approver

• domain lead: xxxx (@xxxx)

Contributors

• lead: xxxx (@xxxx)
• eng:
  • xxxx (@xxxx)
  • xxxx (@xxxx)
  • xxxx (@xxxx)

Informed:

• product: xxxx (@xxxx)
• design: xxxx (@xxxx)
• docs: xxxx (@xxxx)
• pmm: xxxx (@xxxx)
• support: xxxx (@xxxx)

---

WHAT: Taking project to the point where we can release to testers to gather feedback and data.

---

WHERE

• repos:
  • Repo Link
• slack channel(s):
  • #pod-integrations

---

WHEN

• estimated start date:
• target completion date:

---

RESOURCES

• Meeting Docs
  • Add Running meeting document

[rileybroughten]

Thank you for this feedback! Noting and bringing this back to the team 😁

Adding a note that you can link directly to a project with the info panel open, if you click on it in a project it will add a ?pane=info parameter to the URL if you would like to share that directly!

[tzmanics]

Thank you! Yes, I've been using that link!

[noahehall]

a few questions:

• any update on when the tasklist & tracks will be in public beta?
• potential for project labels with functionality similar to repository labels? a custom multi select field would work here

and just FYI:
RACExP project template is now in public beta, find the template here

[rileybroughten]

Keep an eye on the roadmap issue for the tasklists public beta here! 👍

Noted the feedback for a multi-select field type, it's on the top of our backlog for additional fields 😁

[Enech]

The new version is a huge improvement compared to the classic projects !
However, the ability to exchange comments in draft issues opened directly within the project would be fantastic.
Here is our layout for use case :

• Our company project is scattered in 3 distinct repos.
• We have people who are not devs (support teams, or marketing teams, etc.), who are in direct contact with either the final client or technical teams on location, and who need to tell us what's wrong or what could be made better.
• For a better view and tracking of everything related to this, we created a global project gathering the crucially needed information.
• These people not being devs, they have no idea which repo their demand is to be assigned to.
• All these drafts/potential tickets still need to be sorted out to know if they are relevant or not.
• As we do not have a Product Owner, this role has fallen upon each devs.
• But to do so properly, 99% of the time they need to be able to ask more details to the person who opened the draft.
• But today, they need a thrid-party tool in order to do so...

[venky-wandb]

A few pieces of feedback:

1. Would love to see more customizations available in workflows like if a PR is merged > update a custom field to xyz etc.
2. I'd like to use filters for filtering issues by creation date, last updated date, closed date etc.
   • I did not see an option where last updated date changes based on the most recent comment/activity on the issue
   • I did not see an option where you can filter based on issue closed date or creation date.
3. A way to directly create issues in the project board as opposed to going to the Issues page. Right now all new items are marked as drafts and there is no way to bulk change them from drafts to issues. So either a way to add issues on the project page or bulk change drafts to issues would be helpful with preference to former.

[venky-wandb]

Just to add some positive feedback, Projects overall looks like a great product and my team enjoys using it. The fact that it's integrated closely with the code base eliminates the need to jump between multiple tools which is always nice. Thank you for building this.

[rileybroughten]

A way to directly create issues in the project board as opposed to going to the Issues page. Right now all new items are marked as drafts and there is no way to bulk change them from drafts to issues. So either a way to add issues on the project page or bulk change drafts to issues would be helpful with preference to former.

You can utilize the + or type in the bar to create a new issue without needing to leave the project. I've attached a video below, let me know if this helps or any other feedback

Screen.Recording.2023-12-22.at.1.04.02.PM.mov

[venky-wandb]

Dang! I never saw that - this is helpful. Thank you very much!

[mlebeau303]

I'm using projects as a bus dev professional working with technical stakeholders. I don't need to create issues for everything I'm doing - and it's nice that projects allows for that.

What I've noticed is that my team does not receive notifications when I tag/assign them to items I create in projects. Is that because they have not been "promoted" to actual issues or could it be a bug? I would think the notifications should work, regardless. Thanks.

[brhoff720]

I don't think it sends notifications when it is a draft issue. Once converted to a normal issue, it does send a notification. This behavior is good as it allows for resource planning/balancing without spamming the eventual issue assignee until it is appropriate.

What is needed is a convert all draft issues to issues.

[JimmyMalark]

Please add RTL support for items.

[VSMC]

Would be great if custom fields had some more options
For example being able to link date fields to either when the issue was created or when it was closed.

For workflows it would be nice to be able to make conditional statements such as "if issue with x label is added give it y status, else give it z status"

[Interceptor2025]

For project boards, there should be an option to allow cards to display images. It's what made Trello popular.

[cparkinsonMYCM]

Have I misunderstood the point of a Project Template?
I have set up a Template with workflows that I assumed would not be run as this is a Template, and when I use the Template to make a new Project that the workflows would be copied over and then be active for the new Project.

But what seems to happen is the Template is running the work flows too.
If I disable the workflows in the Template, when using the template to make a new project I would have to enable them all again wouldn't I?

Is it possible to not have Template Project workflows run? And be auto-enabled on all Projects created from the Template?

[cparkinsonMYCM]

The Auto-add workflows don't even copy when using a Template to make a new Project, what's the point in having a Template if I have to set up each Project manually every time? @azenMatt @rileybroughten
Templates are completely redundant in their current state.

[Sanni-Damilola]

Am Interested

[GijsWeterings]

I've noticed that when I use a Project Template, the Short Description and README contents are not copied over to the new project.

For custom fields, I'd love to have a custom people selector. There's the issue assignee, but sometimes you have a secondary role you want to have somebody assigned to. Right now I'm solving this with a custom select box, but things like @me filters/facepiles aren't available that way.

[Crystal-Spider]

Speaking of organization default issue templates, currently the GitHub docs specifies that:

If a repository has any files in its own .github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE folder, including issue templates or a config.yml file, none of the contents of the default .github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE folder will be used.

This is a shame because it could be very useful to define organization-wide default issue templates, and then have some specific repositories add a couple of more specific issue templates for themselves only. It would be nice to, instead of replacing the organization-wide templates if any file is present in the same folder, to "merge" the content, overriding only the files with the same name,

[Viktor-Ivliev]

https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/125226

[mariaKatz]

Hello, I have a question regarding project template update:
if the project was created based on some template and i've made the changes in the template.
Are those changes could be applied/deployed to the projects which were created from that template? how can it be done?
Thanks

[samglover]

Project templates are awesome. I've run into a few things that seem to be bugs.

Creating a project from template reverses the order of cards in board layout

Our project template has a number of draft issues/cards that are ordered manually in a backlog column on the project board.

When creating a new project from the template the draft issues/cards end up in reverse order. I would expect them to copy in the same order so I don't have to manually reorder them.

Can't convert draft issues to issues on a repository

Our workflow involves creating the project before a repository exists. The first few draft issues contain checklists for tasks to be completed before the repository is created, including tasks related to adding the repository to GitHub and converting draft issues to issues on the new repository.

However, some of the draft issues can't be converted. I open the draft issue pane and click Convert to issue and select the repository. An error slides in with "Unable to transfer assets to new issue. Please try again." I've tried doing this with different views (like the table view) with the same result.

This seems to be random. I can't find a pattern in which issues can't be converted. Edit: Not random. The draft issue contained a broken image URL (that was not broken in the template). Removing that image URL did the trick.

Creating a new draft issue identical to the one that didn't work seems to work most of the time.

Cursor jumps to the end when editing the project short description

This one is a minor annoyance, but when editing the Short description field in the project settings, if I have already entered text and try to edit text in the middle of the description, the cursor will often jump to the end of the line instead of staying where I placed it.

[sainiManveer]

https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/129860#discussioncomment-9901691
Can anyone help me with this issue?
I am an admin of the various projects but am unable to even view the project and the boards. Even in the settings/access it says I am the admin, but regardless I am unable to access it after migrating my projects to new boards/versions.

[rynosek]

Project and Project Template enhancement requests:

1. Please enable the Project detail's Short description and README sections to come across in the Template. This was mentioned earlier by another commenter, I'd like to second that.
2. The default workflows are nice, especially the ability to Duplicate workflow for the "Auto-add to project". It would be great to see this Duplicate workflow option for the "Item added to project" default workflow, but with the additional capability to set a default value for any custom project field.