2025 Announcements

Hi everyone! We’re excited to introduce Gradient’s new Remote Work Stipend Policy, beginning 1 January, 2026! 💻

The Remote Work Stipend Policy includes three types of budgets designed to support of a successful remote work setup. These budgets cover expenses around:

1. Setting up your home office upon hire,
2. Replacing your computer every five years, and
3. An annual stipend for ongoing improvements to your workspace, such as buying new headphones or using a coworking space.

To support the policy, we’ve built a personalized dashboard where you can track your available budgets and check your eligibility windows. This dashboard will be updated on a monthly basis starting in 2026.

Please take some time to familiarize yourself with the details of the policy and the dashboard, and reach out to Operations if you have any questions.

• Remote Work Stipend Policy
• Remote Work Budget Dashboard

With the wonderful help of Brendon, we have updated our instructions on how to bulk import roadmaps into Jira. To accompany the clarified instructions, we have templatized a configuration file to make field mapping more streamlined.

This feature is incredibly useful and time-saving so that you don’t need to manaully create each issue for your project.

Please reference the Roadmap Bulk Upload section of the handbook for instructions, a walk-through video, and link to the new configuration file template.

If you experience any errors during this process, please reach out to Operations.

Jira is rolling out new navigation in July. The new navigation will be more customizable so you can tailor your workspace to your preferences, but it also comes with some major changes to be aware of. Below are some highlights of the new navigation, and best practices from Jira. Please take a few moments to review this in preparation of the change activating in our account.

• Navigation will move to the left sidebar.
• The sidebar can be collapsed or resized.
  • 💡 Tip: Press ] to expand and [ to collapse the sidebar.
• You can show, reorder, and hide navigation items by going to More (⋅⋅⋅), then Customize sidebar. Customize your navigation to your preferences.
• Project navigation is now horizontal, and can be customized by the project lead.

• Customize the sidebar: Only show your most frequently-used navigation items and hide the rest. Start with a smaller side, and only add a navigation item if you find yourself using it often.
• Expand, collapse, or resize the sidebar: Choose the view that fits what you’re doing right now. There’s no single right way — you can switch it up based on the task at hand.
• Customize project navigation: Prioritize views your team uses most. If your team lives in the Board and Backlog, put those first. If you never use Calendar and Reports, hide them. A cleaner, focused tab layout helps reduce confusion and keeps everyone aligned.

As part of our existing Loom account, we have access to the Meetings feature. This functions essentially the same as Grain Recorder with the following features:

• Calendar integration
• Meeting video and audio recordings
• Auto-generated transcripts
• AI summaries
• Action items

In an effort to consolidate our platforms and streamline workflows, we will be closing our Grain account and begin using Loom for meeting recordings. Our goal is to be fully migrated to Loom by August 1st, 2025.

Everyone has a Jira issue to perform the steps below. Please contact Amy if you have any questions or need assistance!

1. Download Videos from Grain

• Look through your Grain recordings and identify the videos that you would like to keep. Be discerning, as this is a manual migration process — I (Amy) am not able to access private videos in your Grain library or upload videos to your Loom library on your behalf.
  • I have already migrated Kaizen meetings, post mortems, and team meetings that I have access to. Please take a look at the Shared Gradient Space to see if the videos you want to keep are already there.
  • I recommend narrowing to the below criteria, but please use your best judgement as I expect there may be outliers that you may want to keep.
    • Within the past 90 days
    • Project-related
    • Training-related
• Download the selected videos
  • Click the three dots to the right of the video, and select Download

2. Upload Videos to Loom

• Follow these steps to upload the videos to your Loom library. Note:
  • You can upload videos to your My Library (only visible to you), or to the shared Gradient Space (videos that should be shared with the wider team).
  • Uploaded videos will automatically be transcribed.
  • Loom-recorded meetings will also include a “Recap” that outlines action items and a summary, however that recap is not created when uploading videos—only transcription.
• Delete the downloads from your computer.

3. Integrate Calendar with Loom

• Follow these steps to integrate your calendar to Loom and adjust the settings for meeting recordings as desired.