What is the Craft.io Data Model?
Craft.io uses a hierarchical data model to connect high-level strategy with day-to-day execution. The data model defines how work items relate to one another across the platform, ensuring that every idea, feature, and initiative has clear context, ownership, and visibility.
The Craft.io data model is structured across two main layers:
The Workspace
Workspaces are where teams manage their day-to-day work. This is where Products live, and where Epics, Features and Stories are created and refined. Workspaces are also where integrations with development tools such as Jira, Azure DevOps, GitLab, and GitHub take place.
The Portfolio
The Portfolio sits above the Workspace and is used to manage Initiatives and strategic planning. It aggregates roadmaps and backlog data from multiple Workspaces to provide cross-team and cross-product visibility in a single view.
Craft.io Workspace
A Workspace is a shared planning environment for product teams. It contains products, roadmaps, views, and integrations with delivery tools.
A single Workspace typically supports up to 20 product managers, and multiple Workspaces are useful when large product organizations have different structures, cadences, or terminology.
Workspace Hierarchy - Epics, Features and Stories
The Craft.io Workspace is structured as per below:
By default, each Workspace includes:
Products - high level containers that help you organize your work
Epics - groups/clusters of Features
Features - the building blocks that represent user needs or requirements
Stories - additional, optional layers to further break down tasks and to-dos.
💡Tip: If your team uses different words for these levels, you can rename item types in Workspace Settings. Most teams customize names to match their existing language, but you can also use Craft’s Guru terminology system
Craft.io Portfolio
The Craft.io Portfolio offers a bird’s-eye view across the entire product organization, aggregating and consolidating data from multiple Workspaces.
Each Workspace feeds its Products, Epics, OKRs and Progress signals upward into the Craft.io Portfolio, which contains a fourth working item, the Initiative. These are the highest-level planning items in Craft.io, representing strategic efforts, investment themes, or outcomes that the organization is working toward over a longer time horizon.
By default, the Craft.io Portfolio contains:
Initiatives - high-level working items sitting above Epics and Features
Products - the high level work containers, from multiple Workspaces
Epics - groups/clusters of Features, from multiple Workspaces
Portfolio Hierarchy - Initiatives
At the Portfolio level, Initiatives are used to:
Visualize strategic plans across time using portfolio roadmaps
Compare cross-functional work by priority, value, effort, or risk
Understand how work is distributed across workspaces, products and teams
Support investment and sequencing decisions
Because Initiatives are linked to live Workspace data, their status and progress update automatically as execution work moves forward. This gives leadership an accurate, up-to-date view of how strategy is translating into delivery, while enabling teams to manage multiple product lines, prioritize objectives and initiatives, and ensure plans remain aligned with overall business strategy.
💡 Tip: Use the Portfolio to enforce consistency in decision making, while allowing teams to maintain their own cadences, tooling, and delivery models inside Workspaces.
Objectives and Key Results
Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) in Craft.io provide an outcome-focused layer that sits alongside the data model. They do not replace the hierarchy, but connect goals to the work that delivers them.
OKRs can be defined at both the Workspace and Portfolio levels, enabling alignment between strategic objectives and team execution.
Workspace OKRs
Typically linked to Epics, Features, or Stories. This helps teams understand how their day-to-day work contributes to measurable outcomes.
Portfolio OKRs
Commonly linked to Initiatives and, through them, to Epics, Features and Stories across multiple Workspaces. These represent broader organizational or cross-functional objectives, creating a clear connection between strategy and execution.
💡Tip: Use Portfolio OKRs to define cross-functional outcomes and direction, and Workspace OKRs to show how teams contribute to them. Read more here!
Timeframes and Cadences
Alongside your hierarchy components, Craft.io offers time-bound containers to support your planning cadences. This includes default Quarter and Sprint values in the Workspace.
Time-bound containers help teams communicate intent and sequencing without forcing rigid delivery commitments, keeping planning flexible while maintaining shared visibility.
💡Tip: Your default Quarter container is a single-select field. If you'd like to use multi-select fields for Quarters (or other custom cadences), you can create a custom timeframe in either your Workspace or Portfolio.
How to customize your Terminology
To update the Terminology in your Workspace or Portfolio:
Click on the cogwheel button at the top right corner of your screen
Navigate to your Settings
Select Terminology in the left-hand navigation.
Use the pencil icon to rename your hierarchy levels
Note, this is only applicable and relevant provided your user permission level is Workspace/Portfolio Admin or Owner.
💡Tip: Use the Guru Terminology to quickly select a pre-defined hierarchy from our library of best practices.
What comes next
Now that you understand the Craft.io data model and how Workspaces, Portfolios, Initiatives, and OKRs fit together, you are ready to start putting the structure into action.
If a Portfolio is relevant for your organization, reach out to the Craft.io Customer Success team. They can help configure the Portfolio, connect the appropriate Workspaces, and ensure the setup supports your planning and governance needs.
Need more guidance? 🙋 Our LIVE support team (at the bottom right corner of your screen) replies to ANY question!