integration Archives | ProdPad Product Management Software Wed, 10 May 2023 15:15:16 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.7.1 https://www.prodpad.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/192x192-48x48.png integration Archives | ProdPad 32 32 Integrate, integrate, and integrate? Building Products for a Connected World https://www.prodpad.com/blog/integrate-integrate-and-integrate-building-products-for-a-connected-world/ Tue, 26 Aug 2014 13:30:00 +0000 https://www.prodpad.com?p=3022&preview_id=3022 One of the most hotly discussed topics for the future of products is the increasing connectivity of devices, also known as the ‘Internet of Things’. According to Accenture’s Technology Vision 2014…

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One of the most hotly discussed topics for the future of products is the increasing connectivity of devices, also known as the ‘Internet of Things’. According to Accenture’s Technology Vision 2014 report, by 2020 over 30 billion devices are predicted to be connected to the internet. By 2017, more than 50% of analytics implementations will make use of event data streams generated from instrumented machines, applications, and/or individuals. And global IP traffic is expected to nearly double between 2013 and 2016, while broadband is expected to speed up more than twofold.

But what does all of this mean for the products we’re building?

Well again, according to Accenture, “Consumers become better informed and better equipped to influence the ways they experience everything around them. And businesses get real-time connections to the physical world that allow machines as well as employees to act and react faster—and more intelligently”. 

When you collect a load of data, fire it back to your users, and allow them to take actions on that data, from anywhere, you can make their lives better.

At least that’s the possibility.

In fact building connected products presents us with much broader product challenges than the technicalities of software integrations. An astute product manager will probably think about integrations, an API or multiple device capability when making decisions about development infrastructures. But what about the people actually using your connected products? Have you considered how they should navigate data across different locations seamlessly? Do you have consistency and continuity in your design and data? What about how you communicate with users when something goes wrong and any one device loses connectivity? Building integrated products requires a 360 degree perspective of the user experience, which becomes much more intricate as you expand interactivity across systems and devices.

And perhaps most importantly, building more connected products should never come at the expense of good user experience. If people don’t have a need or desire to use your products, they just won’t work. In a recent ProductTank talk, focused on the Internet of Things, Alex Jones summarized the risks of the integration and connectivity trend quite succinctly; “Just because you can, doesn’t mean you have to.”

Whether building products for the workplace, where our focus is on integration between systems and streamlining business processes, or for consumers, where the focus is on connectivity wherever we happen to be, the ultimate goal is the same. Are your integrations and your mobile versions helping your users to make better, faster decisions? Whether you look at a business app like Salesforce, promising a full connected view of the customer; or consumer app like Waze, allowing drivers to share real-time information on traffic disruptions; when it’s done well better connectivity is about enabling users to make use of data to do things they couldn’t do before.

So although we’re facing a very different technical landscape moving forward, the ultimate message for product managers looking to build products in a connected world is not all that different to what we usually say. Yes, you should be conscious of changes in consumer and business relationships with technology to be sure you’re always innovating new solutions, but never build things your users don’t want just because it’s technically possible.

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Team Foundation Server Integration is Here. https://www.prodpad.com/blog/team-foundation-server-tfs-integration/ Fri, 18 Jul 2014 15:00:00 +0000 http://www.prodpad.com?p=2791&preview_id=2791 Today we’re happy to announce to all Team Foundation Server (TFS) users that a two-way integration with ProdPad is now available. This integration allows you push ideas and user stories…

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Today we’re happy to announce to all Team Foundation Server (TFS) users that a two-way integration with ProdPad is now available.

This integration allows you push ideas and user stories from your ProdPad account to a TFS server. You can even do so if this is located in an intranet, with a little bit of extra setup. The TFS integration is 2-way out of the box allowing you to map TFS workitem statuses to automatically update ProdPad statuses. This way your entire can track implementation progress right from ProdPad.The ProdPad/TFS integration is currently in beta so please contact feedback@prodpad.com to get more details and join the program.

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Why JIRA Alone Can’t Help You To Do Better Product Management https://www.prodpad.com/blog/jira-alone-cant-help-better-product-management/ Tue, 01 Jul 2014 09:30:00 +0000 http://www.prodpad.com?p=2866&preview_id=2866 One of the most common questions I explore with product managers is the difference between product management and project management. Your development team already uses JIRA, so where does a tool like ProdPad…

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One of the most common questions I explore with product managers is the difference between product management and project management. Your development team already uses JIRA, so where does a tool like ProdPad come in?

In fact not only can project and product management tools work together, but this partnership allows you use each system more effectively. ProdPad and JIRA are different in several fundamental ways that make them suited for their distinct product functions, while working together in perfect harmony.

Product Managers vs Developers

One way to understand the difference between ProdPad and JIRA is to look at who these tools are used by. Essentially, your developers will live in JIRA while everybody else in your company uses ProdPad. Product Managers require a tool that allows them to capture everything they could do from many different sources. However developers need visibility of every task that will be done, and to follow the operational progress of those tasks. Only tickets that are spec’ed and approved for development have a place in JIRA, the developer’s world. Integrations allow each team to benefit from the information held in each system without having to leave their own sphere of activity.
[bctt tweet= “Only tickets that are spec’ed and approved for development have a place in JIRA – #prodmgmt”]

Finite Tasks vs Fuzzy Backlog

So what qualifies JIRA for development tickets and ProdPad for product ideas? One advantage presents itself as soon as you separate finite, confirmed tasks and a fuzzy backlog. JIRA is designed for task management, and ProdPad for idea management – each of which has a very different working approach. There’s nothing more de-motivating for a developer than to find 500 tickets in their queue, knowing they can barely scratch the surface. JIRA is designed to see tasks through to completion; when you limit the number of tickets in JIRA to only these actionable tasks your development team can work confidently to clear them.

Nothing ‘fuzzy’ or undefined should make its way to JIRA, and anything that does should be sent right back to ProdPad. This is the holding place for everything you could do, that helps you decide whether your development team should build it. ProdPad has a low barrier to entry that allows you and your team to capture ideas at their earliest stage, and tools to help you easily review where details need to be fleshed out. There’s no harm in having 700 items in your ProdPad backlog, as with powerful search and filtering, nothing can ever be lost. Work in ProdPad is an ongoing process to surface the next viable ideas for your developers to build.

By keeping your undefined maybe’s in your ProdPad backlog, you’re keeping your development team happy and sane in their own day-to-day lives.

Tech-savvy vs open collaboration

The core design of ProdPad and JIRA makes them differently suited to different people in your team.

Evidently, developers work well with high-tech tools. And given that project management tasks should be ready for execution, there’s not a great need for collaborative features in JIRA itself. In fact, bringing a wider team (ie. your commercial or exec teams) into JIRA will likely only cause confusion and disruption for all parties. However, a product management tool needs to be much more open to company-wide communication. ProdPad has an accessible interface that’s easy for anyone on your team to understand, with collaborative tools throughout that allow you to spark up a conversation on just about anything. 

Systems Talking

A solid integration is of course key to ProdPad and JIRA working together seamlessly. Product Managers can control the synchronization of only ready-to-build ideas from ProdPad to JIRA with the click of a button. Links in each system allow developers to find out more detail when they wish to, without being inundated with unnecessary information. And status syncs between the two tools means that each team can find out everything they need to know from a single location. With the help of an effective technological relationship between ProdPad and JIRA, you can build an effective relationship between product and project management.

You can read more about the ProdPad and JIRA integration here

Or if you’d like to see for yourself how ProdPad is designed for better product management, sign up for a 14 day free trial here

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Product Planning with Product Marketing Teams https://www.prodpad.com/blog/product-planning-with-marketing-teams/ Fri, 27 Jun 2014 13:36:00 +0000 http://www.prodpad.com?p=2790&preview_id=2790 Product Management sits at the intersection of customer, technology and business. The product manager’s role is a continual balancing act between each of these areas, which means involving the right people,…

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Product Management sits at the intersection of customer, technology and business. The product manager’s role is a continual balancing act between each of these areas, which means involving the right people, in the right ways, at the right times. In this post, we take you through how to involve marketing in product planning from idea to launch, using good processes and ProdPad tools.

Share customer insight

Your marketing team holds important customer insight that can be invaluable in understanding both particular product needs and the big picture of your target users.  Alongside the specific prospect feedback you collect from your sales team, your marketers – specifically any colleagues focused on customer or product marketing – have additional information to share from competitive research to customer interviews.

There are a number of ways in which ProdPad allows them to do so easily – from adding customer feedback and new ideas, to commenting on existing suggestions and even directly on user persona pages. Product Managers can call in marketing opinion at any time using @mentions, and marketers can follow ideas of interest to stay involved in their development.

Support the business case 

Once you’ve found a promising idea, there’s still more work to do before you can start to prioritize. Every idea canvas should have a validated business case to help you evaluate whether the new product or change will merit the resources required.  For certain product developments, marketing will be able to help form commercial objectives, such as awareness or new registration numbers. Accessible collaboration tools are key at this stage where defining – and ultimately delivering on – success criteria is dependent on the involvement of team members company-wide. 

Plan coordinated product launches

Although we don’t believe in fixing specific dates to your roadmap, communication is still key to coordinating product and commercial strategies. As your new products move closer and closer to implementation, the marketing team will have plenty of work to do from press to sales materials. When roadmapping you may wish to attach broad timeframes to ‘current’ and ‘near-term’ products and features so that your marketing team can start to plan out launches for these new releases. As ideas make their way into development, make sure that your marketing team is following their progress. With the help of systems integrations and email notifications, there are no unexpected surprises.

Bring consistency to product messaging

Finally, new and updated products can be supported with marketing-approved resources, all centralized in a single location – your ProdPad product pages. Materials can be uploaded so they can be accessed by your entire team, helping product managers to keep product management in one place, and marketing teams to rest assured only on-message content is being shared externally.

If you’d like to find out more about how marketers and product managers can work together using ProdPad, get in touch with us here

Catch up on how to involve your executive team in product management decisions here, and stay tuned next week for how ProdPad can help you to keep compliance and legal happy. 

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ProdPad and Pivotal Tracker: Integrating Product Management for Even More Product Teams https://www.prodpad.com/blog/pivotal-tracker-integration-with-prodpad/ Mon, 23 Jun 2014 13:56:00 +0000 http://www.prodpad.com?p=2788&preview_id=2788 We’ve been making a lot of noise recently about how ProdPad works with your existing systems and processes, from custom two-way integrations to updates to our out-of-the box integrations list…

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We’ve been making a lot of noise recently about how ProdPad works with your existing systems and processes, from custom two-way integrations to updates to our out-of-the box integrations list with tools such as Trello and UserVoice.

ProdPad customers using JIRA have benefited from this two-way integration for some time, but we know that many of you use Pivotal Tracker to manage product development, and so we’re happy to say we’ve added it to the bill.

Pivotal Tracker Integration - Field mapping
Pivotal Tracker Integration – Field mapping

This integration means that when you change a story’s status in Pivotal Tracker, we’ll automatically update the related idea status in ProdPad. No more duplication of tasks or important updates lost in transmission.

Pivotal Tracker Integration - Status mapping
Pivotal Tracker Integration – Status mapping

It’s really easy to get set up and start benefiting from the new two-way integration. From the Integrations page, select mapping for Pivotal Tracker and choose which status fields you’d like to sync. These changes will be updated automatically for every other colleague who copied your original integration too.

If you’re a Pivotal Tracker user and would like to find out more about integrating with ProdPad, you can find out more here or get in touch directly with one of the team

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How ProdPad Fits In: Sharing Ideas https://www.prodpad.com/blog/how-prodpad-fits-in-sharing-ideas/ Wed, 18 Jun 2014 09:00:00 +0000 http://www.prodpad.com?p=2786&preview_id=2786 When done right, product management is probably the business function that integrates with more people and processes than any other. So it’s essential that a product management system fits into…

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When done right, product management is probably the business function that integrates with more people and processes than any other. So it’s essential that a product management system fits into this complex intersection between customers, colleagues and technology. And without too much disruption. This week, we take you through how ProdPad fits in when propagating potential product ideas to colleagues and customers.

Flag up relevant ideas

Your product backlog should be an open and transparent environment where ideas go to flourish, not to die. However, not every prospective product spec is relevant for your entire team. ProdPad helps you to flag up ideas to the attention specific colleagues using idea following and @mentions. Daily and weekly email digests mean that your team can remain in the loop on what’s happening with the backlog and follow up should anything pique their interest.

Collaboration on ProdPad
@Mention colleagues to get their attention on any idea

Quick ballot collaboration

At any stage in the idea management process, voting can be a direct and simple way to collect the opinions of your team on whether an idea should be prioritized for development. ‘Yea’s or ‘nay’s should always be qualified by a reason to help product managers make collaborative but informed decisions. ProdPad attaches an easy-to-use voting mechanism to every idea canvas to provide an easy way for your team to give feedback on the product backlog.

Voting Yea on an Idea in ProdPad
Get the entire team to weigh in on ideas by adding their vote.

Open, easy roadmapping

Once priorities have been set, it’s important that you can share your planned product direction with colleagues and customers alike. A roadmap should be reactive to change and continually up to date, but at the same time accessible to all. In ProdPad you can demonstrate the impact of changes to your roadmap with a drag and drop interface, and export the most recent version to PNG or PDF to send around. You can even embed private and public versions of your roadmaps into any live site. Giving users and team members an instant and dependable location to seek out the most up-to-date plans.

Public version of a ProdPad roadmap
Share your roadmap with your team members and others

A complete feedback loop

If businesses are ever to coordinate on product changes, it’s important to register who has staked interest in different product ideas.  Tracking the progress of an idea is important all the way through to implementation and ProdPad helps product managers to do this in a number of different ways. Communication with customers is made easier via traceable links from idea canvases to pieces of user feedback, with fields for contact details. The feedback loop can even be automated via two-way integrations between statuses in ProdPad and other systems. With colleagues and customers kept comfortably in the loop, product managers can finally reduce the number of daily requests for new information.

Catch up on how ProdPad fits into building product specs here, and next week read about how ProdPad supports the transition to implementation. 

If you’d like to hear more about how ProdPad can help product managers to better collaborate with team members and customers, get in touch or sign up for a 14 day free trial here

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ProdPad and Trello take it to the next level https://www.prodpad.com/blog/trello-integration-with-prodpad/ Mon, 09 Jun 2014 09:00:00 +0000 http://www.prodpad.com?p=2782&preview_id=2782 As one of the most popular choices of project management tool, we have a long-standing integration with Trello. This week, we’ve released updates to this integration that allow you to…

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As one of the most popular choices of project management tool, we have a long-standing integration with Trello. This week, we’ve released updates to this integration that allow you to bring product and project management even closer together.

Integrating ProdPad with Trello

First of all, it’s now possible to map ProdPad ideas to Trello cards, giving you more control and options about what information is sent to your Trello board.

Mapping fields from ProdPad ideas to Trello cards
Mapping fields from ProdPad ideas to Trello cards

And on top of that, we’ve developed a two-way integration with Trello that allows you to automatically update an idea’s status in ProdPad when a card moves on your Trello board.

Update ideas in ProdPad when they move on your Trello board
Update ideas in ProdPad when they move on your Trello board

It’s really easy to get set up and start benefiting from these new integration points. From the Integrations page, select mapping from your Trello integration and select which fields you’d like to sync. These changes will be updated automatically for every other colleague who copied your original integration too.

If you’re a Trello user and would like to find out more about integrating with ProdPad, you can find out more here or get in touch directly with one of the team.

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Custom Two-Way Integrations for Product Management, Your Way https://www.prodpad.com/blog/integrations-for-product-managers/ Wed, 04 Jun 2014 09:04:00 +0000 http://www.prodpad.com?p=2703&preview_id=2703 While we’ve got heaps of best practice to offer product managers, we know that it’s important for you to do things your way. That’s why have developed several tools for…

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While we’ve got heaps of best practice to offer product managers, we know that it’s important for you to do things your way. That’s why have developed several tools for you to customize ProdPad to work with your own platforms and processes.

Our open API and custom webhooks means that you can sync ProdPad with the other systems that you use, even if these aren’t included in our extensive list of ready-made integrations.

What are the advantages of syncing ProdPad with other systems?

ProdPad is a home for Product Managers to live and breathe new product ideas. Collaboration is a hugely important part of this process and so the involvement of other colleagues in idea management through ProdPad is key to success. But other teams use their own tools and processes to carry out their daily jobs, and different people need access to different levels of information.

A completely syndicated relationship between ProdPad and your development tools, CRM or support system means data is consistent no matter where you look without forcing changes to people’s workflows.

How do custom integrations work in ProdPad?

Creating custom webhooks allows you to push ideas from ProdPad into third party applications, while the API allows you to automate updates to ProdPad when the status of these ideas change in those third party applications.

Setting up these two components creates an effective two-way integration.

  1. Creating a custom webhook for the URL you’d like to share ideas with will provide you with a custom option under ‘Push idea to…’ on your idea page
  2. Using the statuses endpoint of the ProdPad API, you can create a mechanism to integrate with your 3rd party application
  3. Mapping statuses between ProdPad and your application directly from the ProdPad UI will complete your data sync

You can read more on this process in this How-To Guide.

To find out more about using ProdPad alongside your existing systems, you can get in touch with us here.

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Introducing a New and Improved API for Product Management, Your Way https://www.prodpad.com/blog/introducing-new-improved-api-product-management-way/ https://www.prodpad.com/blog/introducing-new-improved-api-product-management-way/#respond Wed, 28 May 2014 13:00:00 +0000 http://www.prodpad.com?p=2699&preview_id=2699 At ProdPad we’re all about making Product Managers’ lives easier – and that means fitting into your way of working. Today we’re launching a new and improved ProdPad API, designed…

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At ProdPad we’re all about making Product Managers’ lives easier – and that means fitting into your way of working. Today we’re launching a new and improved ProdPad API, designed for you to better integrate product management throughout your business.

Product Management is best conducted through dedicated tools, leaving other teams from Sales to Engineering to work with platforms and processes that best suit their own needs. The key to this is open communication, and effective integration.

In addition to existing integrations available in the original ProdPad API, our latest updates allow you to manage ideas, customer feedback and your roadmaps with even greater flexibility.

Whether posting an idea into ProdPad or fetching a list of feedback from customers, the new API for product management has endpoints (things that can be pushed to or from the app) that allow you to integrate ProdPad with just about any 3rd party applicationfor example, a CRM or support tool that we haven’t already built a ready-made integration for. It is also now possible to access idea voting via the API, truly opening up the capacity for Product Managers to crowdsource input on what should and shouldn’t be built.

Customization of how your roadmaps are displayed is now possible with new API endpoints for your roadmap data. Whether creating a public roadmap for your customers in a specific format, or displaying a live internal dashboard to keep your team up to date, ProdPad roadmaps can now be viewed just as you like.

If you’d like to find out more about working with the new ProdPad API, you can read our API documentation, or get in touch with us directly.

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