1. New Rich Text Widget
Product Release 8.1 comes with a brand new rich text widget that you can create straight from your Dashboard area.
It allows you to add a custom block of text that you can ping directly to your dashboard pages. This functionality comes in handy when you want to display documentation, best practices, or any other important notes about your project or process in a visible place.
As a result, you will be able to clearly communicate critical information with your team or other stakeholders, so everybody is aligned on the project.
Furthermore, using the new text widget, you can embed videos straight into your dashboard area through the “insert media function”. In case you have videos, showing how to follow specific procedural steps or explaining a given tool, this is a great way to visually describe your processes and set your team up for success.
Note: Currently, you can only embed videos from YouTube.
2. Workspace Templates Can Now Include Widgets
With the 8.1 release, you will be now able to add widgets to your workspace templates.
Previously, when creating a new template, the system allowed you to add specific workspaces and boards including custom fields, card types, and templates. Now, as an additional step, the software also allows you to add widgets to your workspace template.
It’s important to mention that the system will only display the widgets that are existent across various dashboard pages and the user has access to them. In case there are no such widgets, this step will not be displayed.
Moreover, once a new template (containing widgets) is created, if you decide to apply it to a “New workspace”, a new dashboard page will be automatically created. However, if you apply it to an “Existing Workspace”, the widgets will not be copied there.
Through this functionality, you will be able to store a highly customized template that includes graphs, charts, and any other important information that is part of a given workspace.
3. Business Rules Changes
In this release, there are also improvements regarding both the “Child card is moved” and “All children are moved” business rules. You can now automatically move the parent of a child card if it matches certain criteria.
For example, a common issue occurs when a “child” card has multiple “parents” that live on separate boards. Previously, whenever a “child” card was moved, their “parents” were also automatically moved but to the same place (ex. to “In Progress”) on a given board.
With this new functionality, however, you can create a filter that specifies where to move each “parent” card separately. So, to define where multiple “parent” cards should be moved to, all you have to do is add a new action and then create a specific filter for it.
Other than that, you will see an improvement in the “Parent cards” filter, used to refine certain criteria. First of all, you will notice that it was renamed from the singular “Parent card” to the plural “Parent cards”.
This was done with the intention to more easily refine multiple “parent” cards based on certain criteria.
A common use case is to use this functionality with the “Card is moved” business rule. There, you can specify what should happen whenever a card is moved and its “parent” cards have either one of the following parameters:
- “All match”
- “Some match”
- “Some do not match”
- “None match”
- “None match or none are present”
Even though this filter comes in handy in some specific cases, you will find it available across all of the business rules in your account.
4. Import Historical Data from Excel
In our newest release, we also have exciting news about importing data from Excel! Up until now, it was not possible for users to import cards with historical metrics data directly from Excel.
In version 8.1, however, this functionality is now available.
To enable it within Kanbanize, all you have to do is create designated columns in your Excel file so you can specify the exact dates when a card was created, processed through the workflow, and finally archived.
Those columns are the following:
- Creation date - the date when the card was created on the board
- Start date - the date when active work was started on the card (i.e. it was moved to “In Progress”)
- Completion date - the date when work finished on the card (i.e. it was moved to “Done”).
- Archivation date - the date when the card has been archived
The supported formats for the dates and times can be found here.
The image above shows a simplified case where you are migrating 4 cards and their historical workflow data. Once you import all of this (through the Import/Export tool), the software will display a similar window based on the data above:
You will now be able to use those card’s data as part of your board system in Kanbanize. A common use case here is when you are migrating from another tool and you want to keep the existing data metrics of your workflows.
With this new functionality, you can do that and start measuring your process from the get-go because your historical data will be automatically fed into our Analytics module. This will allow you to look for process improvement and create forecasts of your projects without starting from the ground-up.
5. UI Improvements - Links Overview
With this release, you also receive some UI improvements regarding hierarchical levels of cards and links.
- Collapse “Parents” and “Children” levels in cards
First of all, you will now be able to collapse both “Parents” and “Children” levels in cards that have an extensive hierarchical structure. This will help you get a better overview of them without having to scroll up and down all the time.
- Use a filter to see the hierarchy of a specific card
Another improvement is the addition of a special filter next to the linked cards in a hierarchical structure. Using it comes in handy when you want to filter out the structure for a specific card only.
For example, let’s say that you want to see the cards linked as “parent” or “children” only to “Initiative 1”. All you have to do is click the filter icon and the system will display the unique structure of that particular card.
- Copy and paste permalink of cards
The next UI improvement is the ability to quickly create links between two cards. Previously, when using the “Link to existing card” functionality, you had to manually add a card ID or title.
From now on, you will be able to simply copy the permalink of a given card and paste it into the dedicated field inside the “Link To Existing Card” feature.
- Count cards in a given column
Finally, you will be able to quickly count cards in a given column. Simply select some of the cards in a column and a dynamic sign will pop up, showing you the number of selected cards.
