In this product update:
1. Introducing the New Worklog Configurations Panel
2. Worklog Entries Report Update
3. New Admin Privilege to Manage Worklogs
4. New Administration Navigation
5. Additional View Settings for Initiatives and Cards
6. Milestones in the Board Filter
7. Board Role Extension — New Permission for Custom Fields
8. Other Improvements
Important update about business rules:
- Following the next release (Version 10.12), updating a card's Planned Start or Planned End dates (regardless of the type of Initiative - Timeline or Portfolio) will trigger business rules of type 'update' (e.g., 'Card is updated,' 'Relative card is updated') if you have selected “Any change” in the WHEN configuration of the rule. Until then, such changes will not trigger these rules.
- For now, updating the Planned Start or End dates only of timeline initiatives will trigger the ‘Card is moved’ rule. With the next release, however, changing these dates will not trigger the rule.
Welcome to Businessmap 10.11! We are excited to share what’s coming to the product this month, starting with a brand new feature to help manage how you and your team log time in the system.
Let’s dive in!
1. Introducing the New Worklog Configurations Panel
The new Worklog Configurations panel is a natural extension of the time logging feature as it offers a central location for Account Owners and admins* to control and adjust how users log time in the account.
*To help you delegate responsibility within the organization, we’ve created a new admin privilege — Manage Worklog Configurations (check pt. 3).
Here’s a breakdown of the new Worklog Configurations feature and its capabilities:
1.1. Worklog Categories
Until now, users could log time for a card or a subtask without specifying the type of work they have completed or the project it was done for. The new worklog categories aim to improve that. If you want to structure worklogs based on the nature of the work (e.g. research, planning) or attribute time to certain projects, day/night shifts, normal working hours vs. overtime hours, etc., you can achieve that with categories.
How to Create a Worklog Category?
To create a new worklog category, navigate to Account Administration → Worklog Configurations → Categories and click the plus icon in the upper right corner. All created categories will be stored in the Categories tab, where you can edit, clone, disable, or delete them.
How to Log Time for a Category?
Just open the Log Time menu of the work item you want to log time for and select the category from the dropdown. You can also add the card’s parent in your log (check pt. 1.2 to learn more).
Your new time log will be preserved in the system. The category, parent, and comments you have added will be displayed in the Details column. You can also edit and delete your logs.
Note: When cloning a board or a workspace, you can also choose to copy the worklog categories that have been added to them.
You can learn more about the new worklog categories in Businessmap here.
1.2. Add a Parent Card in Your Time Logs
Building on our new Worklog Configurations, we’ve also added the option to include the parent card in your time logs. This can help you relate your logged time to a particular project (e.g. initiative) by literally “capturing” that card and associating it with the time log. Once saved, the captured parent cannot be edited. So even if the parent-child link is deleted, the log will remain.
This feature can be particularly useful for regulated workflows where the actual relationship between parent and child must persist at the time of logging time. The feature's value is to guarantee that time X was logged against card Y with parent Z, regardless of whether the parent/child relationship continues to exist or not.
To add a parent card, open the Log Time menu of the card you want to log time for, and select the parent card from the “Capture parent card” dropdown. Keep in mind that the dropdown will only show first-level parent cards.
1.3. Worklog Settings
In addition to more flexible reporting with the new categories, we’re also giving you greater control over how and when users can log time in the system (Account Administration → Worklog Configurations → Settings). Here’s a brief overview of the available settings:
General Settings
- Manage time logging allowed sections — If disabled, users can log time in all sections. For example, if you want to limit users to only log time for cards that are In Progress, you need to enable the setting and include only the “In Progress” option.
- Require category — If enabled, users will be required to select a category before logging time.
- Require parent card — If enabled, users will be required to select a parent card before logging time.
- Restrict Workspace Managers from managing other users’ logged time — If enabled, only Account Owners and users with the “Manage Logged Time” admin privilege can modify or delete time logged by other users.
Log Period Settings
From here, you can define how far in the past and future users can log time in the system:
- No limit
- By week
- By month
- By year
- For the past X day(s)
In addition to that, you can set a specific time zone in which the log period limits will be evaluated.
You can also disallow logging time in the future and limit the amount of time that users can log at once (the limit is 1,000 hours).
For a more in-depth guide on how to use the Worklog Settings and practical examples, please refer to our dedicated guide.
2. Worklog Entries Report Update
To offer greater reporting capabilities, we’ve updated our Worklog Entries report to include “logged time category” and “captured parent” data. The new options are available in the Configure results menu. You can also add “Logged time category” as a filter in the report.
3. New Admin Privilege to Manage Worklogs
As we already mentioned, to help delegate the ability to manage worklog categories and settings in the account, we’ve created a new admin privilege — Manage Worklog Configurations.
Users with this privilege can access the Worklog Configurations panel, create, modify, and delete worklog categories, and configure their settings.
4. New Administration Navigation
4.1. UI Improvement
The Administration panel has a new look. We have listened to your feedback and improved the UI of the Administration panel to provide a seamless experience on different screen sizes. The panel tabs have been moved to the left, where you can expand or collapse sections for easier navigation.
4.2. “Board Members” Is Now Split in Two Tabs
Another detail you will notice is that the Board Members tab in User Management has been split into two separate tabs — Board Users and Board Teams. This makes it easier to assign/unassign boards and teams from two separate locations. The process of assigning or unassigning remains the same.
5. Additional View Settings for Initiatives and Cards
To help you further customize how your initiatives appear in the closed view, you now have two additional options in the view settings:
- Initiative Width
- Initiative Title
5.1. Initiative Width
You can choose between 3 width sizes:
- Small — corresponds to cards with Normal size.
- Normal — corresponds to cards with 2 * Normal size.
- Auto — corresponds to the standard initiative width (which depends on the column width).
Note: It applies to portfolio initiatives only.
5.2. Initiative Title
With Version 10.11, you can choose to display the initiative’s full title! All title options are:
- 1 line
- 2 lines
- 4 lines
- Full
Note that there is a correlation between the initiative height and title settings. You can learn more about them in our view settings guide.
5.3. Auto Card Size
Following your feedback, we’ve added one more Card size in the view settings — Auto. It corresponds to the auto width for initiatives where cards are as wide as the column they are in.
6. Milestones in the Board Filter
You can now filter your cards and initiatives by milestones directly from the board filter. You have the following options:
- contains — filter by milestones with the OR operator. You will get all cards/initiatives that are associated with at least one of the selected milestones.
- contains all — filter by milestones with the AND operator. You will get all cards/initiatives associated with all of the selected milestones.
- does not contain — filter cards and initiatives that are not associated with certain milestones. The operator here is also AND.
Note: Since milestones are now part of the board filter, we have removed the filter option that was previously available in the planning view mode.
7. Board Role Extension — New Permission for Custom Fields
To help you further fine-tune the user roles in your account, we have added a new setting for adding and removing custom fields to cards. The “Card custom fields” permission is available under the Allowed Actions in the role configuration menu. It contains two separate actions:
- Add custom field
- Remove custom field
You can learn more about user roles and permissions here.
8. Other Improvements
Last but not least, Version 10.11 brings you a few more important improvements:
8.1. Boards Flow Metrics Widget Improvement
You can now visualize the data from your Boards Flow Metrics widget on a bi-weekly basis. This allows for more flexible data tracking, which can be particularly beneficial for teams that operate in two-week sprints. Just select “two weeks” in the Group by dropdown from the widget settings to configure it.
8.2. Custom Card ID in the Link Tooltip
To make card data easily available on hover, we have added the custom card ID in the link tooltip. From now on, whenever you hover over your cards’ and initiatives’ linked items, you will see their custom card ID (if available) in the card summary tooltip. The card’s internal ID will be displayed in brackets.
8.3. A New Subtasks Tab in Search Export
Similar to comments and links, each time you export data from a search report containing subtask details, you will get an additional tab in your Excel file called “Subtasks.” That way you can see key details about your subtasks at a glance.
Note: This tab will appear in your export if you have selected the “Finished subtasks count,” “Unfinished subtasks count,” or "Total subtasks count" options from the Configure results panel.
8.4. Filter Your Dashboards by Board IDs
We’ve made it easier to quickly search for boards by their ID from your dashboards. Just type in the board ID in the Filter. To look for multiple boards, separate the IDs with a comma.
Make the most of your experience with Version 10.11, and feel free to reach out if you have any questions!