Version 7.1 - What's New This Month? (May, 2020)

In Product Release 7.1 we are introducing some impactful changes that will make your user experience with the platform much better. 

1. Full Hierarchy Visualization

One of the exciting new features is the ability to see the entire hierarchy of the currently opened card, even if it spans multiple levels in the organization. This allows team members to see how their tasks contribute to the bigger picture, while managers can easily get an overview of entire projects.

The "LINKS OVERVIEW" section is reworked to show two sub-sections:

1. Hierarchy - shows parent and child cards at different levels
2. Relatives & Dependencies - shows relative, predecessor and successor cards

All levels of children and their children are displayed below the currently opened card, which is marked with a yellow background. The "Children (Level 1)" section visualizes the direct children of the current card. Level 2 visualizes all grand children of the currently opened card, and so on. 

The same logic goes for all levels of parent cards. Parents at level 1 represent the direct parents of the current card. Parents at Level 2 represent the grandparents and so on.

2. Card Types Global Management   

This release brings improvements in Card Types global management in our continuous effort to apply consistency across the user interface.  
Creating card types is now performed from the dedicated "Card Management" screen in the Administration panel, similar to blockers, stickers, and tags. All existing card types get stored under the "Types" tab. To learn more about the type creation process, please check the dedicated article.
Note: You can no longer create types from Workspace and Boards Settings.  



In addition, the card type property has been added to the "Card Controls" section under Security Controls. These controls define who in the account will be able to create, edit, and delete types.  


    

3. New Additions in Board filter 

• The new option "Last Moved" helps users to filter their boards based on the last cards' movement through their workflow in the desired time period. Users can filter by date using any of the following commands: 
  
  Before: The “before: YYYY-MM-DD” criteria yields result for cards that have been moved before
  and within the dates specified.
  After: The “after: YYYY-MM-DD” criteria yields result for cards that have been moved after and within the dates specified.
  Is between: displays cards that have been moved during a specified date range. This helps users to verify if tasks are progressing forward as expected in terms of time.  
  More than: Fill in the number of days in the dedicated box (for example 7 days). This setup instantly displays cards that have spent more than 7 days without being moved. It acts as an indicator when a card remains stuck for too long at a certain stage of your process flow.  
  
  
  
  
• Improved "Assignee" option that includes subtasks in search results 
  Previously when a user selected the name of an Assignee in the dedicated button, the system filtered out the board and displayed only cards assigned to the selected user.
  With Product Update 7.1, the filter takes into consideration not only cards but also subtasks that are assigned to the specified user. This improves visualization for teams that work with subtasks and provides a better overview of work distribution across team members.   
  

4. Create Blockers and Stickers with initial letters icons 

The card stickers and blockers are used to additionally mark your tasks with a label or to block them for a specific reason. A team may have multiple blockers and stickers, but very often their dedicated icons duplicate. This creates confusion and it makes it hard to quickly recognize the blocker/sticker you need right away.  To avoid uncertainties, the system allows users to create blockers and stickers that visualize the first character of their names instead of dedicated icons. Select the "A" icon during the creation process and when you save the blocker/sticker you will see the first letters instead of an icon.   
If the name consists of two words (for example Nota Bene), then the blocker/sticker displays the corresponding acronym "NB".    

 

5. View User details in the Assignee list 

Every time when you assign a card to a team member, you get a list of all users who collaborate on the current board. When there are too many team members, you might have trouble determining quickly who is who. For that reason, we added the Information button, which appears on the mouse hover over each user name. When you click the "i" button a box pops up containing detailed information about the user.  

 

6. Change block reason from the card Details 

The card block feature freezes the card until the problem with it is resolved.
There are situations in which you need to change the block reason without unblocking the card, especially if the problem is multi-layered. In this release, we have added the ability to quickly perform this action directly from the Card Details. Open the card and right-click on the blocker icon at the top left card corner. This opens a new box and you can either edit the block reason from there or unblock the card. 
 

7. Logged time of a deleted subtask persists in the total card logged time 

Users log time to track how much pure time they spend working on a certain task and subtasks. 
This release brings improvements in more precise time tracking on subtasks and respectively better reporting, so you can manage time better.
If a user logs time against a subtask and at a later point in time delete it, then the logged time still persists in the total card logged time. The logged time metric gets reflected in the card Metrics tab, Timesheet report, and My Worklog panel. 

8. Highlight Deleted and Disabled users in the Administration

The more users you have, the more administrative efforts are required to manage them. 
Here's another enhancement meant to improve user management experience in Kanbanize Administration.  With this product update, all deleted and disabled users will be highlighted in red in the "Board Assignees" and "Workspace Managers" panels. When you have to assign Kanbanize users to boards or when you promote users as "Workspace Managers", you will quickly distinguish users that have no longer access to the system. 

9. Other Product Improvements 

• Improved keyword filter in the "Refine search criteria" panel 
  The Refine Search functionality, which is part of the Advanced search panel helps you to select certain properties in order to narrow down your search and get a smaller portion of data.
  Previously the keyword filter on the top of the Refine search panel showed only those pills that fit your entry. With this product update, you can enter the Board name to quickly find custom fields, which belong to the specified board and include them in your reporting. Practically, this is very useful when you have too many boards in your account. 
  
  
  
  
• New in-product brand colors 
  As part of the company's new rebranding, the colors of the Kanbanize product are updated to match those of the Kanbaize website. 

10. Mobile Improvements  

The new update of our Android app allows users to manually drag & drop Initiatives in the custom columns of the Initiatives Workflow main stages ("Requested", "In Progress", "Done").
The mobile application allows users to manually move Initiatives from the "Backlog" stage to the "Requested" stage as well as within the "In progress" custom columns that reflect more complex scenarios.
Similarly to the web application, the Initiatives' progress from "Requested" to "In progress" is automated.