You can add boxes around the most important parts and/or blur the irrelevant parts of the page. A project’s version control logs are crucial to tracking and understanding its history. Overall, release notes are pretty standard and straightforward. Depending on the nature of your new release, you can borrow certain parts from each release note entry (which is what we did with Canny’s Changelog). Release notes are also an opportunity to link to additional help docs and remind users where they can find support resources. Whatever you call your product announcements, it’s important to have them.
It is equally essential for developers and product owners as it helps them understand why people are not using their products, allowing them to make improvements. They are used to summarize changes made in the latest release of a product. Release notes are documents that communicate to the users the changes in a product and the steps necessary to update it. Let your writers understand what’s new and suitably explain the change to your audience, just ensure your product launch team can proofread their work before launching. Although release notes are mainly targeted at product users, you can also write internal release notes. The technical details (if included) in release notes such as test automation results, build time, build failures and environment responsiveness help keep track of metrics.
The screenshot shows how the Markdown feature is used with an example and how the link on the word Markdown takes the user to an in-depth article on the feature. When composing release notes, the Markdown feature is helpful in pointing out where the user should be looking, eliminating aimless searching throughout the document. Use jargon-less notes as a way of connecting with the customer.
The importance of good release notes
Translation of release notes into multiple languages is also simpler with the help of these tools. By the time most SaaS product teams are at the end of a release cycle, they treat the release notes as an afterthought. They rush to put something—anything—together to check the “release notes” box of that particular development cycle. Appcues can help manage the weary chore of writing release notes. Their in-app user engagement platform can help take the most technical task and simplify it for your teams while skipping the part where you barrage your IT department with requests. Release notes are often distributed to users on a designated page within the app itself, which is often called a changelog.
However, if you take a user-centric approach to release notes, it provides an opportunity to drive awareness of new features and showcase the value of your product. A changelog is a file, an article, or a webpage that lists all notable changes to your app, site, etc. Changelogs focus on the technical aspects of the changes, such as new features, bug fixes, code refactoring, and API modifications. They often contain references to specific commits or code changes in the version control system. After installing an SDK, companies can use Appcues to easily deploy in-app messaging features that deliver release notes. For example, modal windows can be deployed when a user first opens the app or pulls up a new feature that gives an overview of the changes in store.
Promote your brand…carefully
Plus, release notes are an educational piece of material for your users. New feature releases in digital products can often be frustrating if not communicated clearly—especially when customers are used to things being a certain way. They are your business’s opportunity to show users that you care and that consumers have the latest version of your product. Today, rapid prototyping leads to early releases of products or at least MVPs, and data feedback drives many renditions, consumers are no longer buying software product for life. They’re expecting to buy a version of that product in its current state, knowing bug fixes and improvements will continue to evolve as they do.
Issue Summary – List of bugs/issues resolved with a short description of what was done, and a description of how to reproduce the bugs. Find out how Appcues can help you improve your activation rate, increase campaign opt-in, and reduce support burden through contextual, targeted in-app communication. Here’s one we created that can assist you in your release note writing. Forcing customers to journey through your app to find important release information can be disruptive to UX.
Release notes template (plus great release notes examples)
Manage your product announcements from a single place and easily distribute them across multiple channels. That’s why we’ve prepared some templates – check out the next section. Here’s what wasn’t working, how we fixed it, and how it works now. We love https://www.globalcloudteam.com/ how they show a screenshot of a feature request that led to the development of this feature. They find it easy to keep users up-to-date in one central location. That’s where you insert links to in-depth help articles and additional documentation.
Therefore, it should contain information about the new features, bug fixes, and any other changes that have been made to the product. Release notes, or changelogs, are crucial for the overall release process. Bit serves as a central hub where collaborators, content, and knowledge can be accessed in one all-inclusive document. Technical writers can use Bit to create release notes, collaborate with their team in real-time, and store all assets in one place for easy and fast access.
Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) is a key process in software engineering. It is an essential part of the software development process, providing organizations with the structure and framework for creating and delivering high-quality software applications. This article will provide a comprehensive overview of the SDLC, from initial planning to deployment and maintenance. We’ll explore each stage in detail, offering practical advice and tips for successful implementation.
While very important, security updates fall under the category of non-major updates. You can keep it simple when adding or fixing something less groundbreaking. Make sure to explain why you did it( we often show how many upvotes we got on our Canny board, for example). Bit allows your team members to collaborate in real-time and get work done. Go the home page of Bit.ai and click on Get Started for Free or Sign Up to get started.
Many companies like Loom, Linear, Neurosity, and Notion set up a dedicated page to distribute release notes and other updates to customers using release notes tools. This is an effective way to keep them updated on their product’s progress and give them a sense of ownership. Release notes, commonly known as product changelog, are crucial to understanding what has changed in a product. It is a channel to convey upcoming features, product changes, improvements, and bug fixes to enhance user experience and increase transparency. Product updates, app updates, status updates, or new features come into play here as well. A business can’t implement a new feature or changes to a software product without informing the user of the changes they’ve made.
You can automatically create release notes by connecting issues and pull requests to versions or milestones in your issue tracker. If you’ve never published release notes or want to improve your product documentation, follow along. A release note is a document that outlines the changes made to a product. Release notes update your users, teammates, and stakeholders on your product development progress.
- We were able to see from some of our earlier release notes examples of how humor can really add an interesting element to what may otherwise come off as boring text.
- Always publish the latest changes at the top – that’s the most relevant information for your users.
- List of specific actions needed by users or functionality impacted by the changes.
- The ease-of-use UiPath offers with its table of contents feature makes the navigation of the release notes even easier.
Make it short and catchy and try to name it something that conveys what the update is about. Try to target an array of customers, from those that have only been with you for a couple of months to those that were there from day one. Everyone will have interesting insights to share—if they have the time and incentive to share them. If you can, while still getting across everything you need to, then go for it. It is integral that the notes communicate the change, even if there is a reduction of some sort to the product as opposed to any additions. Resolution – List of changes or enhancements made to address the issues or requests.
Each entry should include the version number, a brief description of the change, and any relevant details. If you’re looking for more inspiration and ideas, BroadInstitute provides great sample changelogs. There are a few types of posts you’d add to your release notes. People love seeing the “behind the scenes” and “how it’s done” content. Release notes can shed light on your “backstage” software release processes. Especially if your product uses a subscription model, people want to see it updated.