The best way to get feedback from your users is to integrate the public board into your app. But sometimes you just want to get a quick session started - or get feedback from a user who has no access to your app. Now you can create no-code access link right in the dashboard. Here's how it works:
Go to the user (any user) you want to give instant access to the public board
Click 'Access Link' in the top toolbar
Copy the created link and share it with the user (e.g. via email or messages). Or create a QR code for the user to scan directly, or share as an image.
Once the user visits that link, they are automatically logged in to the public board and can leave suggestions, or vote, or comment. And of course all feedback will be attributed directly to them.
Access Links are available to every FeatureCat admin on every plan.Β
Other fixes & improvements π
- A new onboarding flow. Now also with confetti! π - The sidebar was streamlined a bit and made a bit simpler
You'll find a brand new "Export" button on the top right of the Features, Artifacts, and Users list view. And that lets you export data right into a CSV.
Get exportin'. πΎ
Other fixes & improvements π
Quick add bar: click the (+) in the navbar to quickly add a new feature, artifact or user.
Linking artifacts to features has been revamped with an inline search and is now a lot quicker than before.
Banner notifications (or "toasts") now show up at the bottom in a dismissible widget instead of taking up space at the top.
The toolbar on the feature, artifact and user page has been cleaned up and some functionality has been moved to the overflow ellipsis on the right.
Creating e.g. a new feature now no longer opens a modal but a quicker inline form instead.
FeatureCat has always supported users voting directly on the public board. But sometimes a request may come in via email, in a call, in a chat session, or - if you're outgoing enough - meeting a user directly in person.Β
Now admins can vote on behalf of their users directly in the dashboard. (And you can now also delete votes).
A core differentiation for FeatureCat has always been the simple and straightforward integration of user authentication. With that, users are created, logged in, and tracked automatically, each time they visit the public board and leave feedback.
That however excluded other users who provide feedback and influence the product direction, but are not direct users of your product (just yet). Those might be prospects, internal stakeholders, or others.
FeatureCat now supports creating users directly in the dashboard to cover these cases. You can now also add an internal note to users to provide more context for you and team members.
Adding users directly in the dashboard is supported on all plans, but may be subject to user limits. Give it a try!
When you're capturing feedback from users, and create the first title and description of a feature for users to vote and comment on, inevitably you'll get to a critical point: you need more detail.
You'll have to start drafting the actual requirements, consider edge cases, and plan out how the feature works. Previously you would have had to jump out of FeatureCat - into Google Docs, Notion, or whatever document management tool you are using.
But now, you can do that right in FeatureCat. Add bullets, embed code, insert images. It's all right there, without jumping between apps. You can write pages and pages, and even flesh out a full PRD.
And there's a lot more coming. β¨ Give it a try today!
The brief is only available on paid plans of FeatureCat.
You can now capture a user's email address while they submit suggestions on the public board. Depending on whether you already have provided the email address during Authentication, you can choose to (optionally) require the email address. As always, you can find more in our docs.
The user list in the dashboard is now searchable. You can filter users by name, email, or the identifier you provided.
FeatureCat was always about the entire journey from artifact (requirement) to shipped feature. Now we're closing the loop with the Changelog, an easy way for you to share product updates with your users.
Every product has a public feed to which you can share what's new with your product, other updates, or really whatever you want. And just as with the public board, the changelog is super easy to embed in your app - but more on that coming soon.
You can already attach images, format them to your liking, just like you would with any other blog post.
We have lots of things planned, like integration with the public board, linking of released features to changelog posts, notifications of users, RSS/Atom feeds. Lots more to come!
FeatureCat's public board was always customisable, so you could make it fit right into your app. But now we've cranked to to 11.
Full control over the color scheme: The public board can either adapt to the device's color scheme (light or dark), or be locked to one theme specifically. This is super useful when using the public board in embedded mode, and your app is only supporting one mode.
Separate colors for the public board's header and background, for both light and dark mode.
Adaptive text display to match the background color.
Comments have been one of the most requested feature - and they're finally here!
Batteries included
Comments are core to lively discussions on the public board. Once enabled, signed in users can go to the comments right on every feature on the public board.
What's included?
Top-level comments and threads: users can add new comments, or reply to existing ones in comment threads (think Slack)
Comment likes: users can also like comments to decrease repetition and allow for concise discussions
The edit button: what took Twitter more than a decade is here right from the start. Users can edit their comments within the first hour after posting, or of course delete them at any time.
Team members are highlighted in the discussion, and can of course also reply to posts privately. See more below on moderation.
In moderation
Public boards are a public space on the internet, and as such require moderation. To make things easier for your team, FeatureCat has two core modes (which can be changed any time):
Auto-approved: New user comments get auto-approved immediately and are visible to everyone. Your team can still reject or delete them.
Moderation first: New user comments need to be explicitly approved by team members to be publicly visible. Until then, there are only visible to the user who posted them, along with a relevant notice.
Comments can of course also be disabled at any time.
User privacy
A discussion needs at least two people, and they need to recognise one another to at least see who said what. To keep user privacy front and center, FeatureCat supports multiple privacy settings for comments:
Full name: display the user's full name (if set)
Redacted: show only the first and last character
Anonymous: keep comments fully anonymous (default when no name is set)
To get started, go to your product's settings to enable comments and choose your moderation style. Please note that comments are only available in FeatureCat's paid plans.
One of the longest feature requests is now finally live: FeatureCat's public board can now be embedded into your website (via an iframe). All of that is supported with the new v2 FeatureCat.JS, which comes a few great new bells and whistles.
Specifically, FeatureCat now supports three authentication modes:
The brand newΒ Board Session, allowing you to create a configurable session object in your app or on your server, include all the user information, and get a unique board URL as the response. (This also powers the iframe integration for the public board embed).
A classicalΒ JWT Authentication, which allows you to create a JSON Web Token as an authentication token in your app or on your server, which you can then use to redirect the user.
TheΒ direct POST is still alive and kicking, allowing for one of the quickest and cleanest integrations - if your environment supports it.
You can invite your team members in the new team management section. FeatureCat of course supports different access levels and roles to tailor it to your teams needs. You can find more in our documentation.
