Harvestr provides all the tools to build product roadmaps and share them with internal and external stakeholders.
From the roadmap section, you can:
build your roadmap with projects
create different views — Kanban, Swimlane, or Timeline — to display your roadmap with the level of detail and structure each audience needs
share those views with the right stakeholders (internal teams, customers, investors) and collect their reactions
link roadmap projects to your discoveries and track progress as the team ships work
export any view as CSV or Excel
Roadmap projects
In Harvestr, roadmaps are built with roadmap projects displayed as cards.
Projects are different from Discoveries, but the two complement each other:
Discoveries are customer problems or product opportunities you research and prioritize.
Roadmap projects represent high-level strategic initiatives. They can be created independently from your Discoveries, or you can group Discoveries into projects to tie customer problems to product strategy and business objectives.
To create a project, click the blue "+" button in the top-right corner of the roadmap builder.
Roadmap fields
Default fields
Each roadmap project has standard fields you can fill in and display based on your needs:
Thumbnail: minimum 568×260 (respect the ratio) for clean rendering.
Caption: a short summary of the project.
Public description: project description for external audiences (customers).
Private description: project description for internal audiences.
Assignees: who is responsible for the project.
Progress: tracks the cumulated progress of all the Discoveries linked to a project based on their state categories (Unstarted, Started, Completed).
Start date and End date: used by the Timeline view to position projects on a calendar. Setting them places the project on the timeline automatically. These fields are used only by the Timeline view — they don't appear in Kanban or Swimlane.
Custom fields
Roadmap projects are made of fully customizable fields to help you organize and visualize your roadmap.
When creating a custom field, choose one of three field types:
Drop-down single select: pick one value from a list of options. Best for fields like Milestone, State, or Goal where each project has exactly one value.
Drop-down multi-select: pick multiple values from a list. Best for fields like Tags or Themes where a project can belong to several categories at once.
Date: a calendar date. Useful for milestones, deadlines, or any time-bound attribute. Note that the Timeline view uses the dedicated Start date and End date fields, not generic custom date fields.
We ship a few sample fields to get you started:
Milestone: for quarterly planning
State: to track project progress
Goal: to show how roadmap projects contribute to company goals
Area: to map projects per product area
To create and edit project fields, click Manage fields in the bottom-left corner of the roadmap section or from your global settings.
Roadmap views
Once your fields and projects are set up, you can create different views of your roadmap. Each view can have its own filters, grouping, card display, and view type — and can be shared with different audiences (internal teams, the rest of your company, investors, customers, and so on).
Harvestr offers three view types:
Kanban: projects as cards in columns. The default layout, great for high-level roadmaps and stage-based planning.
Swimlane: a two-dimensional grid grouping projects both horizontally and vertically. Useful when you want to cross two dimensions, for example team across rows and quarter across columns.
Timeline: projects laid out on a real calendar. Ideal for time-based planning and customer-facing roadmaps with delivery windows.
The view type can be switched from the View type selector at the top of any view's settings.
Kanban view
Projects are arranged in columns (groups), optionally subdivided into rows (subgroups).
Group by: the field used as columns.
Subgroup by: the field used as rows inside each column.
Invert group and subgroup orders: flip the order in which groups and subgroups are listed without having to reconfigure their underlying fields.
Swimlane view
A grid that groups projects in two directions — horizontally and vertically — at the same time. Drag and drop projects between cells in both directions to move them across both groupings at once.
Horizontal group: the field used for columns.
Vertical group: the field used for rows.
Invert horizontal or vertical order: flip the order of either axis independently.
Timeline view
A real calendar timeline showing each project as a bar between its Start date and End date.
Putting projects on the timeline
Set the Start date and End date fields on a project, and it appears automatically at the right position.
You can also create projects directly from the timeline by clicking and dragging on the calendar — Harvestr sets the start and end dates from what you draw.
Resize or drag an existing bar to update the project's dates in place.
Vertical grouping
You can group Timeline projects vertically by any field — product area, goal, team, milestone, and so on — to add a second dimension on top of the time axis.
Navigating the timeline
A blue vertical line shows today's date so you can see what's in flight at a glance.
A Today button jumps back to the current date if you've scrolled away.
A Granularity switcher lets you toggle between yearly, quarterly, monthly, and weekly zoom levels.
Both the Today button and the granularity switcher are visible and usable in shared views, so the people you share the roadmap with can navigate the timeline the same way you do — even without a Harvestr account.
Configuring a view
For every view, you can configure:
Filters: choose which projects to show or hide in the view.
Group by: the field used to group projects (columns in Kanban, horizontal axis in Swimlane, vertical groups in Timeline).
Subgroup by (Kanban and Swimlane only): the field used to subgroup projects inside groups.
Show empty groups: whether to display groups with no projects.
Card display options vary by view type:
Kanban and Swimlane: choose which fields appear on the card header, on the card preview, and in the open card.
Timeline: choose which fields appear in the open card. The bar itself shows the project title and dates.
Roadmap folders
Create roadmap folders to group views by product or team.
After creating a folder, drag and drop the relevant views into the folder.
Sharing roadmap views
Once you have built custom views for your product roadmap, you can share them with the right audiences in just a few clicks. Views can be shared with Editors, Contributors, and publicly with people who don't have a Harvestr account.
To open sharing options, click the Share button on top of a roadmap view:
Share to the web: setting this to Yes makes the view publicly accessible to anyone with the URL.
Can vote: setting this to Yes lets people with access add a smiley reaction (😀, 😐, 🙁) to projects. Counts are visible to editors and contributors only.
Editors / Contributors of [your workspace]: choose whether to share with editors/contributors and what rights they get:
Full access (editors only): see and edit the view.
Read-only access to edit mode (contributors only): see the view and project details, add comments, but not edit projects or view options.
Can view and vote: see the view and add reactions.
Can view: see the view only.
No access.
Invite people by email: invite specific people with view-only or view-and-react rights.
To publish a customer-facing roadmap with branding and embed it on your website, see Share a public roadmap with customers.
Export a roadmap view
You can export the current roadmap view as CSV or Excel (XLSX) for offline analysis, reporting, or to share in a different format. The export captures the projects visible in the current view, respecting any active filters.
Click the download icon in the top toolbar of the roadmap section to start the export.
