Categories in SharpCloud

 

Overview

Categories are a fundamental dimension of your story. They define how items are grouped, determine their colors, and control what content panels are displayed when an item in that category is opened.

Categories help separate items into distinct entities such as projects, people, trends, technologies, objectives, products, programs, value streams, or capabilities. While a story can function with a single category, most stories use multiple categories to better organize content.

Alongside Name, Category is a required field for all items. When creating a new item, a category must be assigned, or a default category will be applied.

There is no limit to the number of categories you can create. Once created, categories can be filtered in or out across different views in your story.

Creating New Categories

To create a new category, navigate to the Items tab within Story Setup in Create mode.

Select the Categories sub-tab, then click the option to create a new category.

Editing an Existing Category

You can easily modify category details to suit your needs.

To rename a category, double-click the Name field, update it, and select OK to save changes.

Category colors can be updated using the color selector or by entering a HEX code.

You can also change the order of categories. This affects both how categories appear visually and how relationships behave in certain views, such as when displaying up/down related items.

To reorder categories, select a category and use the Up or Down controls in the dialog.

Deleting Categories

Categories can only be deleted if they contain no items. If items are still assigned, the category cannot be removed.

At least one category must always exist in a story.

To delete a category, select it and choose the delete option.

Sub-categories

Sub-categories allow further grouping within a category. They are especially useful in roadmapping and can be displayed on axes in views such as grid, layer, and timeline views.

You can also create sub-categories automatically when importing data by using the format Category.Subcategory in the Category field.

Saving Your Changes

To save updates made in Story Setup, click OK. To discard changes, select Cancel.

You can also use the Undo button on the toolbar to reverse recent changes.