Working with the ITONICS Roadmap

What is it?

The ITONICS Roadmap helps you to both master strategic planning as well as generate an overview across the innovation landscape. This could include (a) future markets you identified to be attractive, (b) products and services you are working on to address that future (or existing) markets, (c) technologies you need to order to bring those products and services to market by developing them in-house or (d) working with start-ups, universities, and corporate partners.

To watch an overview of the ITONICS Roadmap, check out the video below ⬇️

How does it work?

Learn more in the following article on how to (you can use the links to jump to the respective section easily):

• adding content to a roadmap,
• adding milestones and connections to a roadmap,
• filtering the roadmap and saving your custom roadmap views,
• changing content elements' positions and dates directly on a roadmap,
• updating roadmaps and creating different roadmap versions/scenarios,
• saving roadmaps as snapshots and for documentation
• exporting roadmap data into xls, and
• find more on how to create your own roadmaps in this article

Adding content to a roadmap

To add content to a roadmap, you will first need to navigate to the content element that you want to add to the roadmap. If your Application Owner has activated the roadmap feature, and you are allowed to add content to a roadmap, you will find a tab called roadmap.

Click the Add to Roadmap button, and a pop-up will appear.  Fill in the required information.

When ready, click Save on the pop-up. The Roadmap data will then be displayed on the Roadmap tab. Clicking the first icon next to the Roadmap name will open the actual roadmap in a new tab (1). Use the pen icon to edit the roadmap record (2). If you want to remove the element from the Roadmap, press the delete icon (3). 

You will notice that there are more details shown on the Roadmap record. You can add these additional details to your Roadmap element:

• Milestones (4)
• Connected Milestones (5)
• Connected content elements (6)

You are also able to add the same content element to another Roadmap as well by hitting the button Add to another Roadmap (7). 

Adding milestones and connections to a roadmap

Whenever you add an element to the Roadmap, you can add information about Milestones and Connections.

Milestones are specific events at which you want to control the achievement of a particular task related to your content element put on the roadmap. 

Connections are the visual display of how one element relates to another (please do not mistake this as relations between content elements).

Click Add milestone on the Roadmap record on the element detail page, and fill in the required fields on the pop-up. After saving it, the milestone will be displayed as a bracket and you will notice these icons on it:

• Add connections (1). You can add connections for the Milestone and for the Element as well. You can decide whether the connection is Incoming or Outgoing.
• Edit (2). By clicking the pen icon, the pop-up will appear where you can update already completed fields.
• Delete (3). You can remove the milestone.
• At the top right side of the Milestone bracket, you will see a number that indicates connections count (4).

There are Connected Milestones and Connected Elements below the milestone area. You can add them by clicking the Add Connection button and choosing between incoming or outgoing. Keep in mind that you are only able to add the elements and milestones that are already on the Roadmap. If you want to open a preview of an element or a milestone, press the title on the bracket. 

On the milestone bracket and preview, you will see the milestone type. It shows, for instance, "Approval". You need to select the type when creating a milestone. There are default options provided in the Milestone Type dropdown, however, your Application Owner might have also created his/her own milestone types.

Later, you can check how all the connections and milestones look on the Roadmap. Hover over the element and click the Connection icon. Now, you will see a couple of options for how to filter connections.  

Filtering the roadmap and saving your custom roadmap views

You can perform actions on your Roadmap to modify it according to your preferences or learn more about particular content elements.

• To open the filtering options click Filter. (1)
• You can save your Roadmap view by clicking on the save icon after you have applied your filters. (2)
• All the saved filters & views will be displayed in the Quick Filter/View section. (3) You can view these by clicking on the button.
• Use the timeline to adjust the time period according to your preferences. (4)
• Click the first icon next to the timeline to show the layer visibility list. (5)
• By activating the legend icon, the legend will be visible. This is where you can check entity and milestone types. (6)
• You can access all the existing scenarios by clicking the icon. (7)   
• By clicking the edit icon you can edit elements on the roadmap to create a new scenario. (8)
• All the active layers and sub-layers are listed below the timeline section. (9)

All the content elements - that are added to the roadmap - are placed horizontally into the layer area. The connections between the elements are always visible. If you want to view more details about an element,  open the preview by clicking on the element. You are able to do the following when hovering over an element:

• Highlight the element (1)
• Hide the element (2)
• Remove the element (3)
• Filter the connections (4)

When looking at different roadmaps, you can apply various filters and view options to narrow down the content that is shown on the roadmap. Depending on the perspective or question at hand you might want to apply the following options:

1. Data filtering to narrow down the content based on hard facts and filter criteria
2. Connection filtering to limit the content to only connected elements
3. Timeline filtering to focus on a dedicated time window
4. Hiding elements to reduce noise and distraction
5. Highlighting elements to put focus on very important topics

Once you have applied all the above options to narrow down the roadmap content you can save your roadmap view by clicking on the Save icon. For saving a roadmap view you can define the following settings:

1. Title to find your roadmap views later
2. Selected view settings to manually manipulate what is included in the roadmap view (if there are no selected view settings, the system stores your selection as Quick Filter only)
3. Selected filters to manually manipulate which filters are applied for this roadmap view
4. Visibility to define who has access to this roadmap view:
1. “Private” will make it only accessible for the user that saved this roadmap view
2. “All users” will make it available to every user that has access to view this roadmap
3. “Selected users” will make it available to only the selected users, user groups, and user roles
5. Option to send a notification to the selected users. Please, note that the notification will only be sent when selecting some specific users and checking the box.

Please note that every saved roadmap view is dedicated to a single roadmap and cannot be shared across different roadmaps.

You can find all roadmap views in the filter panel under Quick View (if you have not selected any view settings, the system stores your selection as Quick Filter). You can adjust your roadmap view settings by clicking the Edit icon or click Delete to remove the view completely. If you click on the name of the roadmap view you will apply the view and the content of the roadmap visualization will change accordingly.

Changing content elements' positions and dates directly on a roadmap

The visual Roadmap editor helps you to apply changes to your roadmap directly while viewing the roadmap. If you hover over an Element, handles on the left and right side of the Element appear. If you click and drag them (1), you can change the start and end date of the Element.

You can drag an Element to another layer by pressing and holding the left mouse button and moving the Element to another layer. Similarly, you can change the vertical order of the elements within a layer.

If you hover over an empty space in a Roadmap on which you have edit permissions, the cursor displays as a cross. If you click and drag, you create a Roadmap Element (1) that you can connect to a system Element afterward, by filling in the Create Roadmap Element section(2).

Once you are done with your changes, save them accordingly. Find out how to save your Roadmap in this article.

Updating roadmaps and creating different roadmap versions

Once you have applied a change to your roadmap, you will be asked whether the roadmap should be updated directly. By clicking update roadmap, your change will be applied directly to the Roadmap. 

If you do not want to change the roadmap directly, you also have the option to create different roadmap versions, also called scenarios. The scenarios allow you to react faster and more efficiently upon upcoming (market) events collaborating with all relevant and affected stakeholders.

You can also reset your changes by hitting the reset roadmap button.

Depending on the configured roadmap permissions the logged-in user is able to save new scenarios based on the applied changes to start dates, end dates, or milestone dates. For saving a roadmap scenario you can define the following settings:

1. Title to find your roadmap scenarios later
2. High-level description of why this roadmap scenario has been created
3. Visibility to define who has access to this roadmap view:
1. “Private” will make it only accessible for the user that saved this roadmap scenario
2. “Public” will make it available to every user that has access to view this roadmap
3. “Selected users” will make it available to only the selected users, user groups, and user roles
4. Option to send a notification to the selected users. Please, note that the notification will only be sent when selecting some specific users and checking the box.

Please note that every saved roadmap scenario is dedicated to a single roadmap and cannot be shared across different roadmaps.

If you want to manage your roadmap scenarios, navigate to the top right corner of your roadmap (next to the timeline). From here, you can explore and update existing scenarios by navigating to the roadmap action “Show Scenario list” and clicking the Open up Scenario icon.

From the pop-up, you can see all saved roadmap scenarios, you can open a specific scenario, merge it into the roadmap, edit the scenario, or delete a scenario.

Saving roadmaps as snapshots and for documentation

Roadmap snapshots allow you to save different states of your roadmap for later reference and backup purposes. Whenever there are major changes on your Roadmap you should take snapshots for proper documentation and later reference.

Depending on the configured Roadmap permissions the logged-in user is able to manually create a new Roadmap snapshot by navigating to the Roadmap Settings > Snapshot > Take Snapshot (next to the timeline). 

After hitting take snapshot, you can define a snapshot name before saving the snapshot.

To access all your snapshots, click on show all snapshots. You will see that a second timeline now opens at the end of the roadmap with a list of the snapshots and a time indication.

Hover over a dot and by clicking on it (or a name in case of multiple overlaying snapshots), the respective roadmap state from this time will be displayed.

Note: When merging a Roadmap Scenario, a snapshot is taken automatically to document the previous state of the Roadmap before merging the roadmap changes from that scenario. The automatically created snapshot names follow the following convention: [yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm>] Snapshot before merging scenario <scenario name>.

Exporting roadmap data into xls

Sometimes working on a roadmap on the platform is just not enough. The hard data needs to be available in a place that can be easily accessed and integrated by a variety of users and applications. To this end, the Roadmap offers an excel export functionality.

You are able to export any Roadmap in an excel format. Open the Roadmap that you would like to export and click the button with the excel logo in the right-hand corner.