Documentation

Everything you need to know to get started with Astra and maximize your team's productivity

Quick Start Guide

1. Sign Up & Create Your Account

Get started by creating your free Astra account. Navigate to the sign-up page, enter your details, and verify your email address. You'll be logged in and ready to create your first project in minutes.

2. Set Up Your First Project

Click the "Add New Project" button from your dashboard. Enter your project name, description, and invite team members. You can assign managers and business owners to help oversee the project.

3. Start Adding Activities

Navigate to the Manage page within your project to create activities. Each activity includes estimation, start and end dates, assignees, and progress tracking. Break down complex activities into sub-activities for better granularity.

4. Track Progress & Collaborate

Use the visual timeline to monitor progress across all activities. Update completion percentages, log work hours, and create issues to track bugs or tasks. Your team can collaborate in real-time with comments and attachments.

Creating Projects

Projects are the foundation of your work in Astra. Each project acts as a container for activities, issues, team members, and worklogs.

Project Settings

  • Project Name: Choose a clear, descriptive name for your project
  • Description: Provide context and goals for team members
  • Manager: Assign a project manager to oversee day-to-day operations
  • Business Owner: Designate the stakeholder responsible for business outcomes
  • Team Members: Invite collaborators who will work on project activities

Project Permissions

Astra implements role-based access control. Project creators, managers, and business owners have full access. Team members can view and edit activities they're assigned to. Administrators can manage all aspects of the system.

Activity Management

Activities represent work items within your project. Each activity tracks progress, timelines, and ownership.

Activity Fields

  • Name: Clear description of the work to be done
  • Estimation: Number of days required to complete
  • Start Date: When work begins on this activity
  • End Date: Target completion date
  • Assigned To: Team member responsible for execution
  • % Complete: Current progress (0-100%)

Sub-Activities

Break down complex activities into smaller sub-activities for better tracking. Sub-activity progress automatically rolls up to the parent activity. All fields are required to ensure consistent tracking across your project.

Visual Timeline

The timeline view provides a Gantt-style visualization of all activities. Purple bars show planned duration, green bars indicate completed portions. Drag the progress indicator to quickly update completion percentages.

Issue Tracking

Issues help you track bugs, feature requests, and tasks with a rich visual editor powered by Lexical.

Issue Canvas

Create issues with a visual canvas interface. Add text blocks with rich formatting, insert images, and organize content across multiple pages. The canvas provides an intuitive way to document complex issues with all relevant context.

Issue Metadata

  • Status: Backlog, In Progress, Testing, Released, or Deployed
  • Priority: Highest, High, Medium, Low, or Lowest
  • Issue Type: Bug, Feature, Task, or Improvement
  • Reporter: Who identified this issue
  • Assignee: Who will resolve it
  • Due Date: Target resolution date
  • Labels: Custom tags for organization

Activity Linking

Connect issues to project activities to track which work items relate to specific development tasks. This helps maintain traceability between planning and execution.

Team Collaboration

Astra makes it easy for teams to collaborate effectively on projects and issues.

Team Members

View all team members in the Members page. Each member has a unique color assigned for easy identification across the application. See workload distribution and current assignments at a glance.

Comments & Discussion

Add comments to issues to discuss solutions, provide updates, or ask questions. Comments support rich text formatting to clearly communicate complex information.

Attachments

Upload files and images to activities and issues. All file types are supported, making it easy to share documentation, screenshots, and design assets.

Worklog Tracking

Track time spent on activities to understand effort and improve future estimations.

Logging Work

Navigate to the Worklog page within any project to record time entries. Specify the activity, hours worked, date, and optional notes. Worklogs help track actual effort versus estimates.

Time Reports

View aggregated worklog data to understand how time is being spent across your project. Identify activities that are taking longer than expected and adjust future estimates accordingly.

Reporting & Analytics

Gain insights into project health and team performance with built-in reporting features.

Progress Overview

The Progress button provides a high-level view of project completion. See overall percentage complete, seat utilization, and key metrics at a glance.

Excel Export

Export your activity data to Excel for further analysis or reporting. The CSV export includes all activity details, dates, assignments, and progress information with proper UTF-8 encoding.

Details View

View detailed information for any activity including full descriptions, attachments, and historical changes. The details panel provides rich markdown rendering for well-formatted documentation.