Create and Manage Timeboxes
Note: The Timeboxes page contains iterations, releases, and milestones, which were once separate in CA Agile Central. You can view all three on a single page.
The Timeboxes page allows you to manage iterations, releases, and milestones by selecting the type from the drop-down menu at the top of the page. Iterations are selected by default in the drop-down.
Create and manage timeboxes contains the following topics:
Manage timeboxes
Common actions for iterations, releases, and milestones includes adding and editing items, filtering items on the page, selecting columns to display on the page, and export, import, and print options.
If you are using a story hierarchy, only child stories can be scheduled. If a parent story contains child stories, the parent story cannot be scheduled.
Add items
To add items from the top of the page:
- Click the +Add New button at the top of the page.
- Enter the name of the new timebox.
- Select a date. For iterations and releases, select both start and end dates. The date is optional for milestones.
- Click Add with Details to launch the full work item editable page. The Add button is disabled for timeboxes.
For milestones, select the project.
Important: If your teams work together in CA Agile Central through a project hierarchy, ensure you are scoped to the top of your hierarchy, and use the Add with Details button when creating new iterations or releases. This method provides access to the Create matching iterations/releases in all child projects option. Selecting the option ensures copies of your new timebox are present in all hierarchical projects, which provides the roll-up of data across teams and groups.
Edit fields
You can edit items inline by clicking an editable field. For example, Name, Date, Planned Velocity, and State are some of the fields that are inline editable for iterations. To view and edit additional fields, click the row action icon 
next to the item and select Show Details.
Note: When you change the state of an iteration or release to accepted, it will not display in certain drop-down menus by default. You can still find accepted timeboxes via search. You cannot add work items to an accepted iteration or release.
You can also bulk edit eligible fields for iterations, releases, and milestones by selecting multiple checkboxes, clicking the row action icon, and selecting Edit.
Important: You can accidentally disable the roll-ups of a hierarchical timebox when editing inline or bulk. Take care to ensure all related iterations or releases have matching Name, Start Date, and End Date fields after editing. When bulk editing these fields, select all copies of the hierarchical timebox in each project.
Print and export
Select the Export/Print 
icon to:
- Export CSV
- Export XML
Filter options
The advanced filtering option allows you to filter, set any field as a quick filter, search, and set up custom filter conditions.
To use advanced filtering, click the Add Filter next to the the filtering tray. Default quick filters are owner, schedule state, and type. To add another quick filter click Add Filter. You can also filter on a blank fields allowing you to filter on items that have fields that have no value or are blank.
By default, multiple filters use an and or condition so all results displayed. Advanced filters help you look for powerful, complex conditions, such as open high-priority defects. You can add an advanced filter by clicking Advanced Filters. To hide your advanced filters click Hide Advanced. You can see how many filters are applied as the filter icon will list active filters numerically. You can clear your filters by clicking Clear All. Your filters will remain active when you navigate away from the page.
Learn more about advanced filtering here.
Save and share views
You can use saved views to reuse the views you use most often. To save a view, click the Saved Views drop-down. From the drop-down you can save a new view or manage your saved views. By default, saved views are defect status, task status, and test status. You can share them at the project or workspace level.
Choose columns
Click the Show Columns 
icon to select or deselect the columns that display on the page. You can also search for a specific field to select as a column. Enter search criteria in the box to view auto-suggestions. Click Apply to save your changes.
Iterations
An iteration is a single, complete development timebox, usually 2–4 weeks in length. An iteration produces intermediate deployable code that has been discussed, designed, implemented, and tested. Teams work on a single iteration at a time. Iterations are also referred to as sprints.
More about iterations and iteration planning.
You can create your team's iterations prior to or after creating releases, but because multiple consecutive iterations roll-up to form a release, your team and organization should agree upon a development cadence first. Some smaller or independent teams may not use releases. In this situation, the team should still agree upon an iteration cadence. Use consistent lengths of time for each iteration, in order to gain insight to a team's progress over time.
The iteration artifact is unique for each CA Agile Central project. If your teams are aligned with each other in a project hierarchy, you can create the same iteration for all teams at once. Bulk create iterations to ensure your teams are on an aligned cadence, and to enable viewing of progress from multiple perspectives.
Note: You must do this in order to take advantage of CA Agile Central's roll-up charts and views. For an iteration to be aligned, a copy must be present in each hierarchical team's project. Each iteration copy must have matching Name, Start Date, and End Date fields.
View Velocity chart
When Iterations is selected from the drop-down menu, you can view iteration velocity. Click the Chart view in the toggle on the right side of the page to view the chart. The chart displays the number of accepted points per iteration.
Releases
A release is a mid-range unit of time for planning and tracking. Consecutive iterations build towards the larger goals or themes that have been planned in a release. Releases deliver incremental user functionality, and allow teams-of-teams to coordinate iteration work with each other.
Releases do not represent an actual release in the sense of a deployment or shipment. Use milestones to reflect these events, so that you execute on cadence and deliver on demand.
More about releases and release planning.
Because releases are larger timeboxes, they are created less frequently. Many organizations use a quarterly schedule of four releases per year, with six iterations making up each release.
The release artifact is unique for each CA Agile Central project. If your teams are aligned with each other in a project hierarchy, you can create the same release for all teams at once. Bulk create releases to ensure your teams are on an aligned cadence, and to enable viewing of progress from multiple perspectives.
Note: You must do this in order to take advantage of CA Agile Central's roll-up charts and views. For a release to be aligned, a copy must be present in each hierarchical team's project. Each release copy must have matching Name, Start Date, and Release Date fields.
Milestones
Milestones are target dates for events that are important to the business. Setting these dates in CA Agile Central is beneficial to program, product development, and project managers as well as product owners to track critical dates. A milestone could be a market event, a tradeshow, or even an important code deploy. The date field is optional.
When you click the project picker, you can select projects to add to the milestone:
Reparenting notes:
- When you reparent projects or related projects associated to a milestone, the milestone is unaffected and the work items continue to be associated with the milestone.
- If a work item is moved to a new project, the work item will keep existing milestones if they exist in the new project.
Learn more about creating and managing milestones.