I’m planning to use the branching feature a bit differently. I want to use them as a milestone tracker for specific reviews. So whenever we have a review, I’d create a branch with that specific date and maybe delete all pages / artboards that wouldn’t be relevant to that review topic.
Benefits:
This way we have a frozen version in place that we can later reference.
We are still connected with all components, but won’t get any live updates.
We don’t risk anything breaking when copy/pasting in another file.
It’s a lot less effort to create a fixed milestone rather than copy/pasting.
Disadvantages:
We won’t be able to use branching as a regular feature since mixing these metaphors doesn’t really work.
Having each review as a separate “file” might slow down the project? Not sure about that.
Are there any other drawbacks I might need to consider or what do you think about the idea in general?
My name is Avantika and I’m the Product Manager at Figma working on Branching & Merging. Interesting to hear about your use case! I think it’s a great way to use branching, and we have heard of other cases where branching is being used for snapshotting specific versions for stakeholder review. I don’t believe there are any other critical drawbacks for this use case.
Have you considered using version history for this functionality as an alternative? You can link to specific versions and these are snapshots. You can also annotate certain versions with the date of your review. Curious to hear your feedback on this!
thanks for your response. I’m glad I’m not completely misusing a feature that you worked on
I have considered it, but it somehow feels less “milestoney” and less “solid” in a weird sense. With a separate branch it’s also easier – as I mentioned in the OP – to just simply delete everything that is not relevant to the review. Makes it really easy to focus feedback and come back and see what was reviewed.
If you have any questions for me, just let me know!
