Configure whether to automatically assign release to issues without fix version

Problem Definition

Per Releases, teams and member assignments, Portfolio will automatically assign backlog items suggested releases and teams/members, as long as there are defined estimates, teams, and releases.

Once you have defined estimates, your teams and releases, you'll see that backlog items will automatically be assigned to suggested releases and teams/members.

Everything that is assigned automatically, is depicted by a blue highlighting in the table:

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The automatic assignment of releases is based on the priority ranking of the backlog and the available capacities. Items are only assigned dynamically into releases if a release has a fixed end date. In this case, the scheduling algorithm tries to fit in as many high-priority items as possible into the release, until the target release date is reached.

However, there is no option to disable the automatic assignment of suggested releases and team/members. Organizations with business/technical requirements who do not want this feature are unable to turn this off, and are forced to use the feature.

Suggested Solution

1. Allow for automatic assignment of releases and team/members to be a setting that may be toggled on and off, at the plan level.
2. Allow for automatically assigned issues in the Timeline to be visually identified (with alternative colors, highlighting, or general appearance), to make it clear which issues in the timeline were not originally part of that release.

Why this is important

There exist usage cases where the automatic assignment of releases and teams/members would be undesirable.

In one specific example, the users would prefer if the issues were not automatically assigned, so that they did not get placed on the Timeline. This would allow for visual identification of how much spare margin there is left for teams to finish their work on their given release. Otherwise, teams cannot easily tell whether issues on the Timeline were originally assigned to their release, or if Portfolio has assigned the release for them.

Workaround

For a board containing issues which are not assigned a release, create a shadow board identical in configuration, but filter for only issues assigned to a release. This shadow board will not contain issues which do not have a release.

Create your portfolio plan based on this shadow board rather than the original board. This plan will not see the problem issues and will not be able to assign them the suggested releases, which will prevent them from appearing on the Timeline.