Some updates might be worth communicating to customers directly. It’s mostly true for B2B products, especially if you deliver an update your key clients have been nagging you about for ages. Well-written titles can help users catch up on months of updates. One additional bullet point to otherwise standard release notes might make a big difference.

They push them out weekly and each of them is short, snappy, and shows specific benefits for customers. They also include links for readers who want to get more details. Typically, release notes are fairly brief lists of the most important product updates for the end-user. They are also typically distributed within the app (web or mobile) or within your website. Once customers go to your dedicated release notes page, they’ll see a chronological overview of your most recent updates.

Keep them short

The role in charge of writing and publishing release notes will vary based on the size and complexity of the company. At one and two-person startups, the lead developer will be in charge of writing release notes. While at large companies, release notes might be collaboratively handled by multiple product managers and https://www.globalcloudteam.com/ the head of product or chief product officer. In truth, we made a conscious decision to improve our release notes in recent weeks. Previously, our release notes were a simple list of new features, enhancements, and bug fixes often copied from our engineering team and then spruced up with some marketing language.

They’ll be able to see how your product is progressing in real-time. Readers must have a solid knowledge of the new features to be eager to download the latest release. Therefore, they simply publish articles on their blog to inform regular readers about the new version. Before marketing and support can create them, they may need a hand-off or a demo of the update.

Great Examples of Release Notes

If your audience isn’t technical, you should make sure that you describe the meaning and importance of any technical language included in your release note. Write your release notes like you are explaining them to a friend. Preferably one with a degree in history or anthropology, not in computer science. Release notes have become the product-update equivalent of Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy statements. They’re written so poorly, with such little regard for the actual human being who must read them, that we’ve all learned to ignore them. However, you can invite others to join you inside of a workspace and collaborate together with the knowledge, projects, documents, and content inside of the workspace.

• And also make sure that the software you choose allows users to upvote and comment on ideas.
• However, don’t let this affect the view your customers have of them.
• In the search box on the top left corner, you can search for the “release notes template”.
• Consider your distribution strategy and the amount of info you can provide on that channel before linking to more information, or even if you need to.

These serve as a launching pad for users to get back into the product and try out all the new things HubSpot offers. As Sami Linnanvuo suggests, release notes can represent a chance to create engaging content for your community of users and deepen your relationships with customers. Yes, release notes typically describe technical updates to the product. Release notes serve as the perfect way for companies to be honest about their development efforts and transparent with their customers. Also, release notes help you stand out from the competition by showcasing your latest releases intuitively and easily to the users.

And they didn’t forget to include the relevant links to necessary profiles, either. Your customers don’t know what a staging website is or what APIs are. Use the kind of language that you would use in an everyday conversation and don’t get too technical. This is one of the best ways to let your customers know that you launched a new feature or fixed a bug. Perhaps this is something that they requested and want to know about.

Slack takes a unique approach to its release notes, which is why many people consider it one of their favorite software release notes examples. The release notes must not just include the product additions but also the features that get pulled back from the product and the reason for doing so. Your company website may contain a link to your release notes. Or you may want to create a blog entry about your release and include a link back to your release notes. If you are looking for a changelog feature on top of your existing feedback tools, we have one in FeedBear! It looks great and it’s super easy to use if you already make use of other FeedBear features.

They’re typically kept in a feed, page, or blog category to make it easy for users to discover all of the new updates in one place. You should also link the relevant user idea submissions to that announcement. For example, you might write a line of text saying “And thanks to the user who submitted this idea, which you can view here,” and then link to that idea URL. Release notes are an essential way for product and engineering teams to keep in touch with users. When you use release notes software, you can publish these notes to your feed more quickly and distribute them with in-app widgets. It’s also smart to use social media and email for even more distribution.

Or it could be a feature that is massively useful but they don’t even know they need it just yet. Release notes let them know what you’ve been cooking up behind the scenes. This is a good way to let your customers know that you’re continuously working on your product and that you’re a company that cares about its customers. Ensure your release notes serve their purpose and keep them informative. If you can, while still getting across everything you need to, then go for it.

? People want to know if the crashes have been handled or the bug fixes have been handled. ? It acts as a knowledge base of what has changed since the previous release, what is up-to-date in the current release, and what is to come in the future releases. 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.

Release notes are frequently written in the present tense and provide information that is clear, correct, and complete. There is no standard format for release notes that is followed throughout different organizations. Organizations normally adopt their own formatting styles based on the requirement and type of the information to be circulated. The content of release notes also vary according to the release type.

It’s an organized way of showing what’s new, what’s been fixed, what improvements have been made, share additional resources, and help guides. Fixed issues — Here, describe all the issues that your new release fixes. 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. Read ProductPlan’s 5th annual Product Management report to discover today’s most significant product management trends. They want you, the user, to be able to view information about their latest update wherever you are.

In fact, most release notes are hastily cobbled-together lists that look like a robot wrote them in a few seconds. Although you can’t change the fact that most users won’t read release notes, you can make efforts to increase the number of people that actually read them. In this article, I’ll cover the topic of external release notes — specifically those shared publicly with users.

A scrum master’s responsibilities extend far beyond serving as a bridge between product management and development. Include any resource manuals, videos, etc. that can substantiate the new features. These resources can be “how-tos” for understanding how the new features work, especially if they are technical in nature. If used effectively, they carve out a unique engagement channel for your users that will keep them thrilled about what’s coming next.