---
title: Here's an Idea
teaser:
tags: news,trajectory
author: Chad Pytel
published_on: 2011-12-08
---

Today we've launched several major changes to the Discussions feature of
[Trajectory](https://www.apptrajectory.com). These changes lay the groundwork
for many more improvements we'd like to make to Trajectory in the future to make
your projects more successful.

Discussions are one of the things that make Trajectory different than other
story planning tools out there. Create a discussion instead of a vague story
somewhere in an icebox or far down in the backlog. Discuss it with the team, do
some wire frames and mock-ups. When the feature is understood, then create
stories from the discussion about the work that will actually be done.

## Ideas

First, we've renamed Discussions to Ideas. We wanted a more meaningful name that
communicated the intention of this section of Trajectory better. Ideas are the
communications that will spawn future development, which will then be
represented in stories.

Next, we've greatly improved the interaction between Stories and Ideas, making
it much easier to use the two together.

One of the first things we did to accomplish this was to rewrite the Ideas
functionality in Backbone.js, like stories is. This makes switching back and
forth between Stories and Ideas near instantaneous.

We've also added several tools that further integrate Ideas and Stories.

* It is now possible to see the idea that a story came from on the story
  listing. Click the idea to go right to it.
* You can mouse over an idea to highlight all the other stories that also came
  from that idea.

![''](http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lvus62MX8U1qz8j9i.png)

* We've changed the check box into a gear on the story listing page. Select all
  stories related to an idea in this menu. Once all stories relating to an idea
  are selected they can be moved as a group with drag and drop or by clicking
  the gear of any other story and selecting "Insert selected stories above".

![''](http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lvuse4mjzy1qz8j9i.png)

* It's also possible to select all stories from the page of an individual idea.
  Click "Select these stories in the backlog".

![''](http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lvusg07KMB1qz8j9i.png)

* Whether you're on Ideas or Stories is preserved when switching between
  projects or closing the browser.

Finally, we've included more information on the Ideas listing to give you a
better idea of their progress. We now show the number of accepted stories on an
idea in addition to the number of stories on the idea.

![''](http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lvusjv19tz1qz8j9i.png)

We also introduced two new sections to the Ideas listing: Finished and Old. An
idea will move to the Finished listing if all of its stories have been accepted
and haven't changed in a month, and the idea itself hasn't been commented on for
a month. An idea will move to the Old section if it never has any stories
created for it and isn't commented on for a month.

Unrelated to Ideas, but facilitated by these changes, we've also moved the
functionality to move a story above another, and to create a new story above an
existing story into the new gear menu. Many users had trouble finding these two
features, and we're hoping this will make it easier.

## URLs

With these changes we've also improved the URLs in Trajectory in a few ways.
Trajectory Ideas and Stories no longer use hashes in their URLs. The URLs are
real URLs, addressable by the server and the browser. This has allowed us to
introduce several performance improvements, and we'll be able to do more with
this in the future.

Finally, we've shortened a bunch of the URLs in Trajectory. It used to be that a
URL for a story might be
https://www.apptrajectory.com/accounts/thoughtbot/projects/trajectory/stories#106420.
That URL is now
https://www.apptrajectory.com/thoughtbot/trajectory/stories/106420.

We believe that using the URLs of stories to refer to stories is much more
valuable than merely referencing a non-informational ticket number (ie. 106420).
For example, by using the URL in commit messages you can now simply click the
link on GitHub in order to go from the commit message to the related story. This
is really powerful, and we wanted to make the URLs even shorter to make them
more conducive to including them in external systems.

We're working hard to make Trajectory a system that improves the software you're
building. We think providing structure and communication from concept to
creation with these new Ideas is a step in the right direction, and we're
looking forward to doing more.

If you’re already using Trajectory, it's live now. Go ahead and give it a try.
If you’re not using Trajectory yet, [sign up for a free trial and give it a
try](https://www.apptrajectory.com/#free-trial-sign-up).