We have provided the ability for you to embed your team stories in your web site so you can integrate them more closely in the user experience for your target audience.

This is a first iteration of the embed functionality and we have made only small modifications to the way that public stories currently behave, to support their display and interaction within a custom environment.

We are looking to work with a few selected customers to refine the capability through a better understanding of how you would like to integrate sharpcloud stories within your overall offering. To that end we’d encourage you to contact us at hello@sharpcloud.com if you would like to be involved in helping us extend the capability.

The essentials
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The absolute pre-requisites for embedding stories are:

1. The story must be in a team
2. The story must be publicly available. This means it must either be published in the sharpcloud public directory (https://directory.sharpcloud.com) or through a public URL
3. There must not be ‘terms and conditions’ associated with the story
4. There must be a presentation created in the story

The story is embedded using an iframe and the structure of the iframe code is given below:

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<iframe width="400" height="250" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" style="position:relative; top:0px; left:0px" src=https://directory.sharpcloudteam.com//?embed#story/storyid></iframe>
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• Storyid is the unique guid for the story
• The height, width and offsets can be used to position your story within the webpage.

Note, the embed code can also be viewed and copied from the public directory (for any team story that has been published there). Contact sharpcloud support for more details.

Basic considerations when embedding stories
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sharpcloud stories are visual, interactive environments and are most effective when displayed on larger screen areas. Therefore as a general rule of thumb we recommend that the embedded story should be no smaller than 800 by 600 pixels in size. Whilst smaller sizes can be supported these require you to forego some of the interaction capabilities to ensure the user experience is as good as possible.

The key question to answer before embedding your story is:
what type of interaction do you want the user to have?.
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For example do you want them to watch a presentation or are you more interested in them exploring the content and interacting with the story?

A second question is whether you want the user to interact with a single story or multiple stories and presentations?

(a) Explore story / Single story
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The story should be the recommended 800 x 600 size. This allows for all functionality to be accessed comfortably within the window.

(b) Explore story / Multiple stories
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Consider having a single ‘headline’ story and other stories accessed through hyperlinks that open in separate windows.

(c) Watch a presentation / Single story
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The story can be less than the 800 by 600 size. However users will need to be guided to use the full screen option to maximise the presentation slides when viewing.

(d) Watch a presentation / Multiple stories
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Multiple stories can be laid out as panels but, default presentations should be single slides, with more in depth presentations then selected from the menu by the user.

Recommendations
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1. If the minimum height of the embedded window is < 800px the Resources button should be hidden. In this case it is recommended that you make resources available through an item’s resources panel
2. If the minimum height of the embedded window is < 500px the Filter and Layout buttons should be hidden.

Other consierations
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• Have just one presentation – unless the embed size is sufficient for people to read the drop down list.
• Perhaps have only one or a few views available (even if the presentation shows slides from hidden views); consider whether clicking into an item is sufficient interaction?
• Limit the number of items
• Use the view options to make sure the items are appropriate size for the view
• Do not filter your story –this way you do not need to have the legend nor the filter button shown
• The narrower the window, the shorter the captions that your slides can have
• If the width is < 600 the slide export option is not available
• WMV videos can play in small windows as well as in full screen; YouTube videos do not play in full screen

If you are dropping below the recommended size or outside the recommended aspect ratio, the following should also be considered: panel titles and contents can be hard to read, some slight truncation at bottom of annotation may occur, the quick filter should be hidden, the presentation toolbar can take up space that limits the ease of exploration, panel view works OK although the exploded panels are too small to see.

Providing help for the user
====================
In order to help users consume presentations or explore the stories you may want to consider adding helpful text to the webpage.

Consuming presentations
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Full screen works well for consuming presentations– i.e. Either auto or click thru. Therefore your web page should recommend that people:

(a) click to pause the presentation and access the presentation control
(b) click the full screen button and either play or click thru
(c) when finished, presentation ESC or click full screen to come out of it at end of presentation. In short, you want to steer users away from the Exit button unless you want them to explore the story.

Exploring stories
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The window must be big enough to suit exploring. You should recommend that users:

(a) wait until end of presentation when you see the presentation control then click Exit to come out of the presentation
(b) Use the Play presentation button if you want to return to the presentation and review the slides

In both cases you should consider getting the user to sign-up to sharpcloud or to request a share of the full story so they can contribute votes, comments and ideas.

There are a number of ways you can navigate around your roadmap in theatre view, giving you flexibility to explore the events and fly through time.

A general concept is that you can use the CTRL key to switch whether keyboard and mouse actions move your position up and down, or forwards and backwards through time. The left and right movement remains consistent across all combinations.

Mouse (and touch pad) movements

- Holding the left-mouse key down, you can use mouse movements to move all events UP and DOWN, left and right without altering your viewing position.

- By holding down the Ctrl key, you can use your mouse to move FORWARDS and BACKWARDS (rather than up and down) as well as left and right.

- Using the mouse wheel you can fly forwards and backwards in time through your roadmap.

Navigating using the keypad only

- The arrow keys move you move FORWARDS and BACKWARDS, left and right.

- By holding down the Ctrl key, you can use the arrow keys on your keypad to move UP and DOWN (rather than forwards and backwards) as well as left and right.

Resetting your position

- Wherever your navigation may have taken you, you can always reset your position back to the default by clicking on the roadmap background.

If you are the Owner of a roadmap or have Admin permissions to it, you can not only share the roadmap with other users, but also change the permissions that current sharees have. To change the permissions of an existing member of the roadmap community:

1. Click the Share button in the roadmap community panel
2. On the People with access tab, use the drop down list to update the permissions for a user
3. The permission will be updated and the user will be sent confirmation of the change

To revoke a user's access to a roadmap:

1. Select the x next to the user you wish to revoke access from
2. You will be prompted to confirm your action

NOTE:

- Team members always retain access to all team roadmaps. Therefore if the roadmap you have open is a team roadmap and you attempt to revoke a team members access, you will be informed that the

The permission levels are essentially hierarchical with View being the lowest level of permission and Owner being the highest level. The way it works is like this:

A user with View permissions for a roadmap can

• add/edit their own ‘staged’ (unpublished) events

A user with Edit permissions for a roadmap can also

• add/edit any events
A user with Admin permissions for a roadmap can also
• share the roadmap on with others (and edit their share permissions)
• edit the roadmap properties (ie. roadmap, categories, characteristics, outcomes)
• edit events and data in the data grid and organise screens

The roadmap Owner can also
• snapshot the roadmap
• transfer the roadmap ownership
• make the roadmap public
• delete the roadmap

Resources can be tagged and filtered to give you great way of managing and surfacing your existing knowledge-documents within sharpcloud.

You can assign tags to resources as you upload them and manage your resource tags through the story settings. And then when you want to find specific resources in your story, you can filter based on tags or resource name and description.

Who can add tags?
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Anyone with edit permissions or above can assign tags to resources.

To add a resource and assign tags
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Tags can be assigned to resources through the Resources screen or when uploading resources to an item.

1. Open the Resources screen from the toolbar and select the Add resources button
Or Open an item, select the Resource panel and click Add
2. Choose a file or URL and enter one or more tags to apply to the resource.
3. As you type the tag name, existing tags that start with the same text are listed and can be selected. Alternatively you can add a new tag that will then be available for assignment to any other resources.

To assign tags to existing resources
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In the resources panel use the drop down arrow adjacent to a resource to assign tags to the resource, create and assign new tags or remove tags from the resource.

To filter resources by tags
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In the resources panel use the tag panel at the top of the window to select one or more tags. The resources are filtered to show only those resources that have all these tags.

In addition you can use the text filter to select resources based on name or description.

To clear your tag filters simply click again on the tag and to clear the text filter use the clear button.

Managing resource tags
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If you have admin permission to the story you can manage the resource tags for the story through a dedicated panel in the story settings screen.

1. Select the setting menu and the setup option and choose the Resource tags panel.
2. To add resource tags just type the tag (or tags separated by commas) into the tag field and press Add to confirm them. These tags are then displayed in the tag lists when assigning tags to resources.
3. To remove a tag from the story, click the cross next to it and confirm the action. The tag will be removed from all resources to which it has been assigned and will no longer be shown on tag lists.

Ever wondered who has and who hasn’t viewed your story? And which items have been most viewed? Well now you can export the full activity history to Excel for analysis and reporting. In fact you can even use the information to look at trends and even the typical sequence of steps that people take through your story.

To view the latest activity for a story:
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1. Open the story and show the Activity panel
2. Click the Activity data button at the bottom of the panel to view the most recent activity
3. The activity data grid is shown. Note that the grid will only show data up to precise time when it was opened; it will not update to show subsequent activities that have happened whilst it has been open.
4. You can sort and search the data or copy it out to Excel (or another application) for further analysis

Copy the activity data
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1. To copy the data click the top left corner of the grid to highlight all rows and click Copy
2. The data is copied as CSV text and can be pasted into Excel or other applications for analysis

Change the date range for the activity data
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If you would like to look at activity data back to a specific date, you can edit the start date in the grid.

1. Click into the date field at the bottom of the screen and edit the date
2. Click the update button and the activity data is refreshed to show all data from the new date through to the time when the window was first opened

To show all activity data for a story
1. Click the Load all activities button.
2. This shows activity from the date the story was first created through to the current date.

Overview of pasting into the data grid
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The paste process will offer you the option to match the data based on item name. This means you can bulk update the basic data anytime you like whilst retaining the additional enhanced data that you have for the item (eg. rich text, videos, images, resources etc). And as comments, votes and activities related to the item are also retained you’ll always have the full social and audit history for each item.

Options for pasting items
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There are a total of 3 possible options for pasting item data into the grid. These are:

- Paste as cells - Contents of the clipboard will replace the cell contents
- Paste as new - Contents of the clipboard will be used to create new rows
- Paste over existing - Contents of the clipboard will be used to update existing rows. Match on item name or match on external ID.

Which of these options are available to you is dependent on the data that you have in the clipboard as sharpcloud checks first the structure and then the content of the clipboard data in order to present you with only the appropriate option(s) and to highlight issues.

- Data structure: Headers are detected by there being at least 25 columns, and the first column being called "External ID".
• If there are less than 25 columns of data in the clipboard the ‘Paste as cells’ option will be the only option available.
• If there are 25 columns or more the Paste as new and Paste over existing options will be available for you to select from.

- Data contents: Where you have chosen to Paste as new or Paste over existing, the incoming data (in the clipboard) is checked against the existing data in the grid and you are given a clear indication of the implication of your proposed action, and any violations of requirements are clearly flagged.

Rules - Column headings must still be in the correct order.

Clipboard preview
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When you press the paste button youll get a preview the contents of the clipboard. It will do different things depending on the grid. As a rule, if column headings have been identified in your data these will show as column headings in the clipboard preview window.

The window uses colour to guide you as to whether each row of data you are about to paste is appropriate:

- Green The incoming data row is suitable.
- Yellow The incoming data row is suitable. However there may be an implication eg.Duplicate. (ie. a duplicate row will be created in the database as a row with the same name already exists).
- Red The incoming data is not suitable and the identified issue will need to be resolved before the operation can be completed. eg. Blank name or Blank External ID. (ie. the incoming item does not have a value for the field being used to perform a match).

Paste as new
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To paste new items you must ensure that the clipboard contains full rows of item data. (An easy way to ensure that your data is in the right format is first to copy and paste out the data from the items grid and to use this as a template for the new data that you want to paste in).
The only check that is done is between the names of the items; the External ID is not considered.

The incoming file is not checked for internal duplicates.
• Duplicates: Where a row of data in the clipboard has the same name as an item that already exists in the data grid, the row is highlighted in yellow in the clipboard preview window and the message ‘duplicate’ is shown in the row header.
• Green means the name is unique.

Paste over existing
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The clipboard contents will be used to update the selected items. You must select how the contents are to be matched, either by Name or by external ID.
• For every item in the incoming data there must be a matching item in the data grid, otherwise the row will be highlighted in red and marked as not found.
• Rows that are blank on the match key (ie. name or external ID) will be marked as Red.
• If there are duplicates in the data grid only the first occurrence will be updated on paste.

Note that it does not make any difference which order your items are in the grid when using this option.

Paste as cells
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Pasting cell data is equivalent to typing into each cell. Clearly when pasting data into cells, the order of the items in the grid and data in the clipboard is important as this will determine what existing data value is overwritten with which new value.
Pasting cells is based on the current cell position, and the clipboard data is pasted over the existing cell data with the following behaviour:
• If your pasted selection is bigger than the space available the extra data will be lost.
• e.g. Assume you have 3 items in the data grid, and you were on the second row of the data grid when you clicked the Paste button. If the clipboard contains 5 rows of data and you confirm the ‘Paste as cells’ option only the first 2 rows of data will be pasted over the top of the data in the grid. The remaining 3 rows of data from the clipboard will not be applied.

Options for pasting relationships
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There are 2 possible options for pasting item data into the grid. These are:

- Paste as cells - Contents of the clipboard will replace the cell contents on the grid . This can only be used to paste into the comments field.
- Paste as new - Contents of the clipboard are used to create new rows

Which of these options are available to you is dependent on the data that you have in the clipboard as sharpcloud checks first the structure and then the content to the clipboard data in order to present you with only the appropriate option(s) and to highlight issues.

- Data structure - If there are 2 or more columns of data in the clipboard the ‘Paste as new’ option will be available. Where there is only one column, ‘Paste as cells’ option will be available as it is assumed that the column contains data for the relationships comment field.

- Data contents - Where you have chosen to Paste as new, the incoming data (in the clipboard) is checked against the existing data in the grid and you are given a clear indication of the implication of your proposed action, and any violations of requirements are clearly flagged.

The clipboard preview window uses colour to guide you as to whether each row of data you are about to paste is appropriate:

- Green - The incoming data row is suitable.
- Red - The incoming data is not suitable and the identified issue will need to be resolved before the operation can be completed. eg. Not found (item 1 or 2). ie. the incoming row does not have a value in the item1 or item2 field.

Pasting in URL Resources
====================
The incoming data must have 4 columns.
It will validate that the URL is valid.
If you supply an item name, there must be a matching item (by Name).
If there are any errors, you cannot paste.

The new data grid makes it easier to update and edit your sharpcloud data
The ability to import, export and update bulk data has been greatly improved in this release. By completely replacing the data grid with a new version you can now more fully exploit the value of sharpcloud as part of an integrated, repeatable process.

So using the new functionality of the data grid, you are now able to:
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• update the item data in your story in bulk, by pasting ‘over the top’ of existing items; this means that should, for example, cost and benefit data be updated outside sharpcloud, the source data can be repasted and enhanced data maintained…
• choose when to paste new cells, new items or replace data
• import tags as part of your item data
• export like/dislike counts and tags as part of your bulk data

Working in the data grid
====================
Specifically the new and improved functionality of the data grid includes:

1. Editing: The new grid control supports better in-line editing such as:
a. Start typing straight away - no need to double click on each cell first
b. Navigate using the arrow keys - even when you are in the middle of an edit.
2. Buttons: There are buttons to support copy, paste and delete, and these can also be achieved using keyboard shortcuts (Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V and Del).
3. Cell selection: New grid support cell selection (i.e. you don't have to highlight the whole row) – this is useful both for copying out specific
4. Delete: It is now easy to delete one/all items by simply highlighting and clicking delete (or pressing Del). (Delete all by pressing Ctrl-A (select all) and then Del).
5. Search: There is a new search box to help find specific text in the grid. The search is a ‘contains’ search.
6. Fill down: Highlight a range of cells and use Fill down to copy the values from the first row to all other highlighted rows.
7. Sort: you can still sort by column.
8. Copying: If you copy cells that do not span all the columns, the clipboard will only contain the cell data. If you copy rows the clipboard will contain the column headings - this make it much easier to copy to Excel.
9. Clipboard preview on pasting: when you paste data, a preview of the data in the clipboard shows you whether the data is fit for the selected operation.
10. Freeze columns: freezes up to and including the current cell selection.
11. Escape: Before you come out of a cell that you’ve edited this will cancel the cell edit

The following functionality is no longer supported:
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The Excel template, and "save to excel" functionality have been removed as this can be better achieved using copy and paste; the individual delete item and Clear All buttons; move columns; group by; column filter;

Changes to the data in the data grid
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Item data
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The range of item data that is displayed in the grid has been extended to include tags and like / dislike counts.

Tags
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Whether you are importing or exporting your item data, the ability to include tags in this process is now a great help. So for example if you have already assigned tags to items in an external system you can now retain those tags as part of your item data.

The tag field can be edited within the grid. So for example if you want to add tags for an item, you can simply enter the tags as a comma separated list. However please note the following behaviour regarding editing tags:
• There is no list of existing tags from which to select
• If you enter a tag that does not already exist it will be created for you
• Commas are used to separate tags so any tag text will be split at commas
• Tags cannot have leading or trailing spaces

Given these behaviours it is recommended that you use the item edit form (accessed through the button at the far-right of the row) when editing and assigning tags.

Like and dislike counts
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The ‘like’ count and ‘dislike’ count fields are read-only and represent the data that has been captured through the natural interaction process – ie. Whereby people viewing the story can click on the like or dislike buttons for any specific items to convey their opinion. These fields contain the total number of ‘votes’ cast.

Relationships
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You can still add relationships within this grid using the ‘new relationships’ button but you can no longer edit the relationship items once created. Note because the relationship items cannot be changed through the data grid it is also not possible to paste-update the relationship items.
The relationship comments can still be updated however. And you can also paste-update the relationship comments if you so wish. (To do so you will need to ensure that the comments are in the same order in the relationship grid and in the clipboard before you paste them).
Relationships can be deleted using the delete button.

Resources
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There are no substantive changes to the way resources are handled within the grid. As previously, the URL grid can be pasted into but cannot be edited or deleted from.
Known issue: Resource data does not get updated in the grid until OK is pressed.

You can choose both the roadmap horizon (or length) and the start year. The choices for the horizon are 3, 5, 30, 50 and the default, 10 years.

Whilst you can change the roadmap horizon after you have created the roadmap we would suggest where possible you decide the horizon up front and stick to it. Similarly with the start year.

Events that have dates that are before the start of your roadmap horizon are handled in the following way:

* Are out of view (front) in the theatre view but can be shown by zooming back in time. They do not have accompanying time axis label. Note however that your experience in this view is likely to be degraded if there are outlying earlier events as they will affect the ‘reset’ position for the view.

* Are shown as normal in the Panel view

* Are shown to the extreme left of the Timeline view

* Are shown as normal on the Compare view

Events that are outside the end of the roadmap horizon are treated slightly differently. They:

* Are shown in the distance on the Theatre view but do not have accompanying time axis label. You can zoom out to see them.

* Are shown as normal in the panel view

* Are shown off to the right edge of the Timeline view

* Are shown off to the right edge of the Compare view

Scenarios are a selection of events that may fall across categories). There are two routes at present for creating scenarios, either:

A - the more structured approach

1. Select the Roadmap Config button and select the Scenario tab

2. Add the scenario(s) you want and click OK to save the roadmap settings

3. Select the Organise button (from the design toolbar)

4. Select a scenario in the list on the left and then tick each event that you want to include in that scenario

5. Once you exit this view (edits are saved automatically) you can use the Filter button (on the filter toolbar) to filter what is displayed down based on the scenario

B - the less structured approach

1. In any of the visualisation views (eg. Timeline, Compare, Theatre) select the 'star' on the tooltip of an event cube. Repeat for other events as appropriate.

2. Select the Roadmap Config button and select the Scenario tab

3. Rename the 'starred events' scenario to something more appropriate and click OK to save the settings

4. Now you can either filter by the scenario or repeat the same 'starring' to select the events to go into a different scenario

The events in the theatre view are arranged randomly, the aim being that they look good when you use the theatre view to present a roadmap. However you can move the events around and reposition them (temporarily during the session).

To do so, click on the padlock icon on the toolbar to go into edit mode; now any events you have permission to move (either because you own the roadmap and can consequently edit all events, or you are the creator/owner of the event) can be repositioned within the screen space.

In the theatre view, you can only move events left-right, up-down within the same time plane so you are not actually editing any of the data values for the event. However if you drag events to move them in either the timeline or compare views, you actually update their values regarding the fields shown in the axes.

If you have invited people to join your team, there may be times when you want to issue reminders or fresh invites. To do this:

1/ Open the team admin module and select the Users & Invites tab
2/ Click the refresh buttons to ensure you are seeing the up-to-date list of users and invitees
3/ Any sharpcloud users who have not yet logged in to the team site will be clearly indicated in the Users list (where it is indicated that 'user has not yet logged in') and you can then 'nudge' them from their user image in the following places:

- the roadmap team on the team site dashboard
- the contacts list on the Users tab in the team admin module

4/ Any invitees who have not signed up to sharpcloud yet are clearly identifiable in the invitees list (where it is indicated that 'user has not yet accepted invitation'). And you can re-issue an invite to these people by re-entering their email in the 'Emails or users to add' field on the Users tab in the team admin module

The Home activity feed (‘recent activity’) on your team dashboard includes information about significant changes made to the team site (eg. addition of members, change of settings etc) as well as activity related to selected team roadmaps.
Whenever you are working in a roadmap in sharpcloud, the roadmap activity feed informs you of all significant operations performed on the roadmap by members of the roadmap community.
However you have a choice as to which roadmap-specific activity feeds are also displayed in the ‘home’ activity feed on the dashboard. This choice is exercised through your decision on whether to ‘subscribe’ to the roadmap feed.
Within a team site the default behaviour is as follows:
• Roadmaps you create (and therefore own)
You are automatically subscribed to these roadmaps and so their activity will be included in the Home activity feed
• Other team roadmaps
You are not automatically subscribed to these roadmaps so their activity is not included in the Home activity feed

Your stories may contain a mixture of entities such as people, projects, opportunities or technologies. For each category of item you can now choose which attributes to display (eg. cost, risk, time, value) and which to hide.

For example, some stories may not need to have time attributes (ie. start date and duration) displayed for each item.

1. To select which categories show the start date and duration fields
2. Select the settings menu and the setup option and choose the Characteristics panel
3. Below the start date or duration field click the caption that says ‘Active in all categories’ and deselect one or more categories in which you do not want to display the date/duration value.
4. Click OK to confirm the change
5. When you open an item, depending on which category it is in, its characteristic panel will either show or hide the date/duration values according to the settings you made above.

More generally:

To select which categories show each characteristics or outcome
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1. Select the settings menu and the setup option and choose the Characteristics / Outcome panel
2. Below the start date or duration field click the caption that says ‘Active in all catagories’ and deselect one or more categories in which you do not want to display the attribute value.
3. Click OK to confirm the change
4. When you open an item, depending on which category it is in, its characteristic/outcome panel will either show or hide the attribute values according to the settings you made above.

Note
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Even though you may suppress the characteristics and outcomes from display in the item panels, this does not affect the actual data stored for the items. So you will notice when you go to the data grid that each item (regardless of its category) has a value for each attribute even though these values may not be displayed to people in the item panels.