Watchers

Aha! Roadmaps

A watcher is any Aha! Roadmaps user who follows a record to receive notifications whenever the record is updated. Users who create the record or complete to-dos are automatically watchers, but it can be useful to include watchers who do not need to contribute to a record's completion — but do need to receive updates on its progress.

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Watchers

Aha! Roadmaps users of any user permission level can be added to watch workspaces or records within a workspace. Look for the Watchers field.

Almost any change you make to a record will notify watchers on that record — but not all. For example, if you add a watcher to a feature, the other watchers on that feature will not get a notification. Also, you will not receive notifications for changes to a record you make yourself.

The notifications a watcher receives depends on the record type they are watching:

Record type

Watcher notifications

Workspace line

  • Notifications about changes to the workspace line itself and its Strategy section.

  • This is the only example where all child records are not automatically watched.

Workspace

  • Notifications about additions and changes across the entire workspace.

  • This means that any change on workspace, strategy, releases, ideas, or feature records will lead to a notification email being sent.

Vision

  • Notifications about additions and updates to the Vision page.

Model

  • Notifications about additions and updates to the Models page.

Persona

  • Notifications about almost any change to a specific persona.

Competitor

  • Notifications about almost any change to a specific competitor.

Goal

  • Notifications about changes to strategic goals — either the entire Goals page or individual goals.

Initiative

  • Notifications about changes to strategic initiatives — either the entire Initiatives page or individual initiatives.

Release

  • Notifications about changes to specific releases and the features assigned to that release.

Epic

  • Notifications about changes to the specific epic, including any requirements added to that epic.

Feature

  • Notifications about changes to the specific feature, including any requirements added to that feature.

Idea

  • Watchers of the Ideas → Overview page will receive notifications for almost any idea-related event.

  • Watchers of individual ideas will receive notifications about changes to those specific ideas.

Notes

  • Notifications about changes to that specific note.

  • Notifications about changes to child notes nested beneath a note you are watching.

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How you get added automatically

If you are the first owner of a workspace (meaning that you initially created it), you will automatically be a watcher at the workspace level. The same is true for the creator of releases, features, and notes — the creator automatically becomes a watcher. If you no longer want to watch an object that you created, you can simply click in the Watcher field on the appropriate record and remove yourself.

Features board with feature drawer and adding watchers

Depending on which notes you are watching in your workspace or team document hierarchy, you may automatically become a watcher of additional notes. When you are a watching a note, and a child note is added beneath it in the nested document hierarchy, you will automatically become a watcher for the child note. Each child note will indicate which parent note you are watching below the Watchers section. This will help you know why you are following specific notes.

When you are adding or editing text on the various record types in Aha! Roadmaps, you can decide when to allow the system to send the email notification. Choose to send it immediately, not at all, or wait and let the system send the notification automatically.

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Notifications for shipped releases

Email notifications for shipped releases can be sent to watchers of the release by leaving the Notify release watchers of the shipped release box checked. Notifications will then be sent to watchers of the workspace that contains the release and the user who updates the release to Shipped status.

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Notification for changes to dependent records

Dependencies can be set between records across your Aha! Roadmaps account. To receive notifications for a record that is a dependency of a record you are watching, enable dependency notifications. This is done through Settings ⚙️→ Personal → Notifications and enabling the Receive notifications for dependent records options.

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Manage your notifications

You can manage the records you are watching and the timing of notification emails in your notification preferences.

In some cases, you may just wish to stop watching a series of records. If you no longer need to be updated, simply go to Settings ⚙️→ Personal → Notifications preferences and select the Watching tab. You can expand each section of your workspace hierarchy to see what you are watching and delete the items you no longer want to receive notifications for.

The personal settings page in Aha! with notification preferences

Ideas can be promoted to other record types, and an idea's watchers will be added to the promoted record.

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