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Version 10.5 - What’s New This Month? (August, 2023)

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Businessmap Help
  • Updated

Content:

1. Automate Your OKRs with Calculated Outcome Value Rules [BETA]
2. Analyze Your Throughput with a New Management Dashboard
3. Create Roles to Add/Remove Card Attachments
4. New Security Controls & Improvements
5. Analyze Total Cycle Time in the Cycle Time Per Column Report
6. Other Improvements

1. Automate Your OKRs with Calculated Outcome Value Rules [BETA]

Over the past few months, we’ve been diligently working to open a new realm of automation in the product. With version 10.5, we’re getting one step closer to this goal through a new concept in the software called Calculated Outcome Value Rules which we’re releasing in an official BETA. Their purpose is to dynamically populate values in your outcomes, so you can create automated OKRs.

Let’s start with a brief overview of the feature.

1.1. Outcome Rules – Overview

Simply put, Outcome Rules represent custom calculations that dynamically populate values in your outcomes.

As these rules are a major addition to the platform, we’ve dedicated a central place for them in the platform. Just like the business rules, you can see all enabled/disabled outcome rules inside the “Administration Panel” under a new tab called “Outcome rules”.

Keep in mind that for the moment, only account owners can access and create new outcome rules.

1.2. How to Create an Outcome Rule?

You can create a new outcome rule from the “Outcome Rules” tab in the Administration panel or directly when defining the details of an outcome. When using the second option, you will notice that we’ve divided the main dropdown into the following sections:

  • Outcome Rules
    1. Create new outcome rule
  • Custom Fields
    1. Create new custom field
    2. Add existing custom field

Once you choose to create a new outcome rule, you will see different sections in a dedicated panel that constitute your configuration:

  1. Name – The rule’s name
  2. Description (optional)
  3. Source type – This section determines where to get data from for the construction of your custom calculation. Currently, only the “Internal” source type is available, meaning that data will be generated from within the system. In future releases, we’re planning to make the “External” source type available too. 
  4. Source configuration – Here, you can configure what set of data to use for your outcome rule based on the following:
    • Filter – What type of cards/work items to include in the configuration (e.g. cards from a specific workflow)?
    • Columns – Allows you to choose the card properties/fields whose values should be extracted when building the dynamic calculation.
    • Time Units – Days/hours/minutes/seconds.
    • Options:
      • Include Archived Cards
      • Include Discarded Cards
  5. Value extraction function – Here, you can use calculations based on the existing calculated number functions, including the new “EXTRACT_VALUE” function. As its name suggests, it helps you extract values from your work items/cards (based on the selected columns). Make sure you keep reading below for more details.

6. Name of the result – The name that the system will use to label your outcome.

1.3. How to Work with the EXTRACT_VALUE Function?

As mentioned, the EXTRACT_VALUE function takes the values from certain card properties/fields that you select through the “Columns” area in the search configuration. Once you choose to configure your function, you will see the following panel:

You should know that the function uses JMESPath, which is a query language for JSON. On top of the configuration panel, we’ve linked to several articles that can help you understand how to construct an expression. 

For your convenience, though, we’ve provided some of the most common predefined expressions. They represent formulas for:

  • Length - returns the number (count) of search results
  • Sum - returns the sum of a specific field
  • Avg - returns the average value of a specific field
  • Min - returns the minimum value of a specific field
  • Max - returns the maximum value of a specific field
  • Sum > X - returns the sum of a specific field if it's above a given number (X)

Notes:

  1. When using data input columns such as “custom fields” and properties for a card’s location (e.g. First date moved to, Times moved to, Last date moved to, Last date moved out of), the configuration panel will also include a Legend showing you which key is related to which card field/property.

  1. Once you apply a formula, there is a recalculation period of 24 hours. If you wish to update your data immediately, you can use the “Enforce Recalculation” option available from:

    - The outcome’s dropdown settings menu inside your initiative’s details 
    - Inside the “Edit Outcome” window from the option next to the current value field 

The Calculated Outcome Value Rules is a major update on the platform with many specifications that you can read more about in our dedicated article. As the feature is still in BETA, we invite you to test different use cases for yourself and give us feedback at support@businessmap.io. We will be happy to give you more clarity and provide assistance with implementations.

2. Visualize Your Throughput on Dashboards

The next major update in version 10.5 is the Throughput widget which is available as a management dashboard. With its help, you can analyze your throughput rate in a bar chart format, allowing you to gain valuable insights into the delivery rate of a given process. 

Let’s have an overview of its main settings and what data you can display.

  1. Period – Select the period for which you’d like to analyze your throughput
  2. Filter – Extract data for a set of cards/work items based on specific criteria
  3. Group by – It allows you to group your data on the X-axis by:
    • Period
    • Card field
  4. Group by configuration:
    • If you choose “Period”, the system will display your throughput data based on a specific day/week/month within the given period.
    • If you choose “Card field”, the system will display your throughput data based on a specific default (e.g. color, owner, priority, etc.) or custom card field. 
  5. Stack by – This option allows you to further slice the data across the bars on the chart by given criteria such as default and custom card fields. 
  6. Y-axis Data – Choose whether to display the card/work item count or their size on the Y-axis.

You can learn more in our dedicated article.

3. Create Roles to Add/Remove Card Attachments

Moving on, we’re also releasing a brand-new “Card attachments” user permission. With its help, you can create specific user roles that allow or restrict a given user to add attachments to or remove them from cards.

To put this in practice, the “Card Attachment” permission contains 2 sub-permissions:

  1. Add attachment
  2. Remove attachment

Note: Keep in mind that the role doesn’t apply to inline images on cards and is related to adding/removing attachments across the following places:

  • Card’s details
  • Card’s subtasks
  • Card’s comments
  • Custom fields from type “File”

4. New Security Controls & Improvements

To further increase the security of the product, our latest release brings you several improvements in that area too. Let’s take a look at them below. 

4.1. Enable/Disable Power BI Queries in Advanced Search Filters

First, we’re giving you the option to enable or disable the creation of Power BI queries once you save an advanced search as a filter.

From now on, once the security control is turned on, you will be able to specify who can create Power BI queries.

The possible options are:

  • Everyone
  • Owners
  • Specific users

Please note that once the option is turned off, all existing Power BI advanced search reports will be revoked, and users won’t be able to create new ones. 

4.2. Manage API Access

Second, we are releasing the capability to manage API access for the entire account. When enabled, you can choose who can have access to the API. On the other hand, when disabled, no one in the account will be able to access the API.

4.3 Improvement in Owner Notification When a User is Promoted as or Becomes an Owner

Finally, in our previous release, we introduced the ability to send notifications to owners whenever a user is promoted or becomes an owner of the account. To give you more flexibility, we’re releasing the option to choose specific users who should receive such notifications. 

5. Analyze Total Cycle Time in the Cycle Time Per Column Report

To improve your data analysis in the Cycle time per column report from our Reporting facility, we’re introducing a new column called Total Cycle Time. With its help, you can see how much time a card spent in each column, regardless of the date range configuration on the report. This allows you to compare the time a card spent in a column for a given period versus the entire period since it was moved there.

6. Other Improvements

As usual, our release brings several smaller but equally valuable improvements. Let’s quickly summarize them below.

  • Quickly Edit Card Templates

First, you can now easily edit a given card template directly from the card’s details. This is especially useful when you have a lot of templates in your account. 

  • Display Cumulative Size in Advanced Search

Moving on, we’ve made it possible to visualize the cumulative size of initiatives in the Advanced Search through a dedicated “Cumulative Size” search property when configuring your results.

  • Planned End/Start Date in Subquery Parameters

Other than that, to enable even more flexibility in the platform, the Planned End/Start Date properties are now available in the subquery parameters of search filters that define what criteria parent/child/relative cards should match.

  • Boards Flow Metrics Widget Improvement

Lastly, we’re adding a small improvement to our Boards Flow Metrics widget where you can now select “Include returned to Backlog cards”. Turning it on will give you data for cards that accumulated time in the Requested/In Progress areas, even if, after that, they moved backward to the Backlog area. We advise against this practice, but sometimes cards can be moved by mistake, hence the improvement.

Happy Kanbanizing with version 10.5!

 

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