Content:
1. A New Way to Plan and Visualize Portfolio Initiatives
1.1 What Is the Planning View
1.2 How to Use It
2. Improvements in Widgets and Management Dashboards
2.1 Cumulative Size Improvement in Timeline Report
2.2 Cumulative Size Improvement in Initiatives and Outcomes Management Dashboard
2.3 UI Improvement in Initiatives and Outcomes Management Dashboard
3. More Card Insights with the New Standard Custom Field
4. Disable Custom Field Values on a Board Level
5. Better Dashboards Management
5.1 Board IDs
5.2 Dashboard IDs
Welcome to Kanbanize 10.6! We are excited to share what’s coming to the product this month, starting with a quick update on our Outcome rules — they are no longer in BETA.
Here’s what else is new:
1. A New Way to Plan and Visualize Portfolio Initiatives
1.1 What Is the Planning View
Inspired by project roadmaps, version 10.6 brings a brand new planning view for portfolio initiatives, now available in an official BETA. This essentially gives you a quick and easy overview of your initiatives displayed on an interactive timeline where you can adjust their duration, create predecessor and successor links, and plan future work based on your capacity.
1.2 How to Use It
The planning view is available for every portfolio initiative workflow, and you can access it from the “Switch to planning view” icon.
Once there, you will see five default columns to the left (1) (Title, Owner, Start Date, End Date, and Duration) and a timeline similar to our timeline workflows to the right (2). You can easily customize and configure your view from the Settings menu (3).
The planning view lets you visualize what you have done, what you are currently doing, and what initiatives you have planned ahead. Think of it as switching your Initiatives Workflow into a timeline. Based on your plans, the left part visualizes initiatives that you’ve completed, while the right – those that you’ve planned for later.
With the new planning view, you can create “finish-to-start” dependencies by linking initiatives as successors or predecessors. You can do this by dragging the handles on either side of an initiative and connecting it to another initiative. You can also create new child cards and initiatives directly from the left-side menu.
Furthermore, you will notice that in the upper right corner of the planning view, there is a “Settings” tab where you can apply the following configurations:
1. Show hierarchy - allows you to order the position of your work inside the planning view of the “Initiatives Workflow” by:
- Initiative
- Column
- Swimlane
2. Critical Path - with this option, you can display the critical path within a sequence of activities (the arrows visualizing the dependencies will turn red to indicate it). If you’re not familiar with the critical path concept, you should know that it displays a sequence of activities that cannot be delayed. We consider the longest path (the initiative on the chart with the latest end date) in a sequence as critical where there is no slack time between the connected work activities.
You can learn more about this exciting new feature and how it works in the dedicated article in our Knowledge Base.
2. Improvements in Widgets and Management Dashboards
The next major update in version 10.6 brings several improvements in our widgets and management dashboards. Here’s a brief rundown of what’s new:
2.1 Cumulative Size Improvement in Timeline Report
We have added a new column to our Timeline Report widget that shows the cumulative size of each initiative in your dataset. With this new “Cumulative size” column, you can easily track the scope of each initiative along with its progress status.
The column will be added by default to all new Timeline Report widgets.
2.2 Cumulative Size Improvement in Initiatives and Outcomes Management Dashboard
Similar to the Timeline Report widget, we have made it possible to display the amount of work associated with each initiative through an additional table column called “Cumulative size” in our Initiatives and Outcomes management dashboard. You can add the column from the widget settings menu, and filter your initiatives based on their cumulative size.
2.3 UI Improvement in Initiatives and Outcomes Management Dashboard
We are introducing one more improvement to the Initiatives and Outcomes management dashboard. You will now see the avatar of each initiative’s Owner next to the initiative’s name in the Results Table. This will give you a quick overview of all initiatives’ owners without having to scroll back and forth to the Owner column.
Notes:
- The Owner column and avatars will be visible only if you select the Owner field from the settings menu, while configuring the widget.
- Hovering over the avatar will display the Owner’s Full name, Email, and Time zone.
3. More Card Insights with the New Standard Custom Field
We have added a new standard custom field to help you get more insights about your cards at a quick glance. The new “Last moved” field will show the exact time (date/hour) when a card was last moved to the current column.
You can add the “Last moved” field to your board(s) the same way you would add the other standard custom fields — “Reporter,” “Created at,” and “Last modified.” You can also use the “Last moved” field as a card ordering criterion.
4. Disable Custom Field Values on a Board Level
Moving on, we have added the option to enable or disable values for custom fields of type “dropdown” directly from the board. A common use case is when you want to stop using a certain value on a particular board, but you don’t want to lose data from the cards where it has already been used.
You can disable a value on a board level by navigating to the “Custom fields” tab from the Board Sidebar. Once there, click on the three-dot menu next to each value to disable or enable it. To learn more about this feature, please refer to our dedicated article on custom fields.
5. Better Dashboards Management
Last but not least, we have also added two UI improvements to help you better manage your boards and dashboards. You will now be able to see the unique ID of every board and dashboard you have access to in the account from the Administration panel. This can be particularly useful for automation and integration purposes, and it makes referring to boards/dashboards easier.
5.1 Board IDs
You can access board IDs from Administration → User Management → Teams → Manage Boards.
5.2 Dashboard IDs
To find your Dashboard IDs, go to Administration → User Management → Dashboards.
Happy Kanbanizing with version 10.6!