What's in this release:
- Org Chart app
- Realtime cursors in Whiteboards
- Countdown timer in Whiteboards
- Form Builder v2 — public forms, card picker fields
- Export elements from the AI Canvas / Whiteboards
- MCP and AI improvements
- "Docs" improvements
- Per-board visibility for locked dropdown values
- Other
Overview
Welcome to Businessmap V13.04! This release is all about giving you a clearer picture of your organization, more powerful ways to collaborate, and finer control over how you and your AI assistants work with your data. Headlining the release is the brand-new Org Chart app that turns your account's people into a living, interactive reporting chart, along with a major Form Builder upgrade that brings public forms, card-picker fields, and field validation. On top of that you get real-time collaboration on Whiteboards with live cursors and a shared countdown timer, a whole suite of smarter and more configurable MCP tools for your AI clients, and a set of thoughtful refinements across docs, business rules, custom fields, and card navigation. Read on to see everything that's new.
Org Chart Application
With the new release you are able to see and manage exactly who reports to whom, right inside Businessmap. The brand-new Org Chart app turns the people in your account into a living, interactive organizational chart built from data you already have — no spreadsheets, no side tools, and no manual redrawing that drifts out of date.
Explore the whole organization visually with smooth pan and zoom, a bird's-eye minimap for navigating large charts, and deep branches that auto-collapse on first load so you're never overwhelmed.
Find anyone instantly by name, username, or email — the chart flies straight to them, automatically opening any collapsed branch they're hidden under and highlighting their card.
See a person in detail by clicking their card to open a side panel with their managers, their direct reports, and their attributes.
Reshape the org structure right on the chart by dragging a card onto a new manager or editing reporting lines from the detail panel, with changes writing straight back to the platform; a person can have a primary manager that shapes the tree plus additional managers shown as dotted links.
Manage people data in context by viewing and editing custom attributes like role, department, or location directly on the card, and apply the same change to many people at once with multi-select.
Include people who aren't in Businessmap yet by adding "external" persons, marked as "Not in Businessmap," with a one-click Invite to account that turns them into real users while keeping their place in the hierarchy.
Realtime cursors and Countdown timer in Whiteboards
Collaboration on Whiteboards is now truly live, and with the new release you are able to work alongside your teammates as if you were all standing at the same board.
See who's currently in a whiteboard from the menu in the top-right corner, which opens a list of everyone who has it open.
Watch their cursors move in real time, including what they are typing, what they are selecting, and what they are moving around the canvas.
Follow any collaborator's view with a single click on "Click to follow," or invite everyone to follow you by choosing "Spotlight me," which sends a notification to the rest of the team — and you can even ask a specific collaborator to spotlight themselves.
Chat with the room through the "/" shortcut for quick conversations without leaving the board.
Prefer a calmer canvas? Collaborator cursors can be switched off any time from the context menu under Preferences.
Countdown timer in Whiteboards
Keep your Whiteboards sessions focused and on schedule with the new shared countdown timer, and with the new release you are able to timebox brainstorming rounds, retrospectives, and any facilitated exercise with ease.
Start a timer from the menu in the top-right corner of a whiteboard, and every collaborator sees the same countdown live.
Set it for up to 99 minutes and 59 seconds, and while it's running you can pause it, stop it, or quickly add another minute on the fly with a single click.
Audio cues let everyone know when the timer starts, when time is running out, and when it finishes, so the whole team stays in sync without watching the clock.
Form Builder v2 — public forms, card picker fields
Businessmap Forms just took a huge leap forward, and with the new release you are able to collect the right information from anyone, anywhere.
Public links let you publish a form that people can open and submit without a Businessmap account — perfect for external requests — with the ability to re-publish or unpublish at any time, and clear safeguards that automatically take the live link down if the form is deactivated or deleted.
Card picker fields let forms include a searchable dropdown of matching cards (single- or multi-select), and the cards a submitter chooses are linked to the created card automatically.
Field validation lets every field carry rules that are enforced on submission: pattern checks for text and link fields (email, URL, digits, letters, phone, or your own custom rule), minimum and maximum values for numbers, and earliest or latest limits for dates set either as fixed or relative to today.
Company branding now shows your account's logo in submitter-facing and public views instead of the generic Form Builder branding, and clearer error messages name the exact app that needs its API access reconfigured.
Export elements from the AI Canvas / Whiteboards
Sharing your Whiteboards work outside Businessmap is now effortless, and with the new release you are able to turn any part of your canvas into a polished image in seconds.
Select any objects and choose the new "Export selection" option from the object's context menu under More to open the export dialog.
Choose your file type, background and the export area — then press Export and the magic happens.
MCP and AI improvements
Your AI assistants get a lot of love in V13.04. With the new release you are able to give Claude, ChatGPT, and other AI clients more flexible, more reliable, and more capable access to your Businessmap data — with more control in your hands.
Configure MCP views
MCP interactive widgets are no longer all-or-nothing, and with the new release you are able to decide exactly when your AI assistant shows a visual view.
Choose between three modes: "Off" for plain data every time, "Always on" for interactive tables and charts on every result, and a brand-new "Let the AI decide" mode where the assistant renders a widget only when it genuinely helps and returns plain text when it doesn't.
Control it on two levels: admins set the account-wide default, and every user can override it under My Account → AI, with personal settings following the account default automatically until they're changed.
In "Let the AI decide" mode the intent maps cleanly to what you ask — "show me the cards" renders an interactive widget, "just give me the data as text" returns plain text, and the assistant can ask when a request is ambiguous.
It works consistently across Claude and ChatGPT, always re-fetches fresh data, and respects your existing tool permissions, so you get the flexibility you asked for without giving up any control.
MCP cards improvements
We've made your AI assistants noticeably smarter and more reliable when working with Businessmap cards, and with the new release you are able to trust that they act on exactly the right thing.
Every card tool now accepts and returns IDs alongside names, so when two boards are both called "Sales" or two columns both called "Waiting," the assistant can target the exact one by its ID and get it right the first time.
Instead of silently guessing, searches now flag when a name matches more than one thing and return all the matches, while create and move actions pause and ask which one you mean.
MCP — update card with actual initiative dates
Your AI workflows can now read, reason about, and update initiatives using their true dates, and with the new release you are able to close a gap in how the MCP handles initiative cards.
Reading a card through the MCP now returns actual_start_time and actual_end_time for initiatives — always reflecting a manual override when one exists — plus two new flags that tell you whether each date was set manually or automatically, so it's always clear which is which.
Writing is covered too: creating and updating cards, individually or in batches, can now set those actual dates in standard ISO 8601 format, exactly the way the UI and REST API already do.
"Docs" improvements
Working with documents straight from your cards is now much more intuitive, and with the new release you are able to create, attach, and open docs with sharing and permissions that now behave the way you'd expect.
When you create a new doc from a card, it is shared with the board's people as Viewers by default, with a clear confirmation (and a "don't show again" option) so there are no surprises.
When you attach an existing doc, you're explicitly asked how you'd like to share it, so board members never end up unable to see something you meant to share.
Opening a doc from a card now respects your real permissions rather than dropping you into a read-only view when you're actually the owner.
And when you genuinely don't have access, a new "Request access" button emails the doc's owner — just like requesting access to a board — so you can quickly ask for the exact level of access you need.
Per-board visibility for locked dropdown values
Locked dropdown fields keep your data consistent across the company, but their value lists tend to grow long while each board only really uses a handful of them. With the new release you are able to let board owners choose which of a locked dropdown field's values appear on their board — without unlocking the global list.
From board settings, simply enable or disable individual values with the same checkboxes unlocked fields already offer, and the card dropdown then shows only the values relevant to that board, with every board deciding for itself in full isolation from the others.
Note: this option will only be present if the global settings of the field have selected "Lock allowed values". If the options "Lock properties" or "Enable unlimited allowed values" are selected, this option will not be present.
Other
Appending multi-select values to a custom field
Business rules just gained a much-requested capability for multi-select dropdown fields. With the new release you are able to build a rule that adds one or more values to a multi-select custom field without wiping out the values already there — behaving much like tags do, rather than replacing everything with a single value as before. This makes it far easier to automate scenarios where a card should accumulate classifications over time.
Open linked cards without scrolling to them first
Navigating between linked cards is now faster and less disorienting. With the new release you are able to open a linked card directly in a modal by using Ctrl+Shift+click (Cmd+Shift+click on Mac) on a linked row or square, across the Initiative rows and squares views as well as regular cards shown with "Show links as rows."
Your existing shortcuts stay exactly as they were: a plain Ctrl/Cmd+click still opens the card in a new tab scrolled and highlighted, so you keep both behaviors and simply choose the one that fits the moment.
Blocked cards UX improvement
Working with blocked cards just got noticeably friendlier. With the new release you are able to move or discard a card that involves a blocked card — or its blocked parent initiative — and have Businessmap offer to unblock it and continue in a single step, instead of stopping you with an error. Disabling a blocked card now simply works, and when the blocked parent lives on another board, you get a clear heads-up that it needs to be unblocked there first.
Business Rule ID visible in the rule editor
Finding a business rule's ID no longer means digging through Administration. With the new release you are able to see a rule's ID right inside its edit window, and click the ID badge in the modal header to copy it to your clipboard instantly — exactly the way you already can with card IDs.
New business rule condition: Last Comment Date
Keep your milestones honest and get alerted the moment a card goes quiet. With the new release you are able to build business rules around the date of a card's most recent comment — completely independent of any other activity on the card, unlike "Last modified," which fires on any change such as a move, a field edit, or a tag.
Use it as a time-based trigger to automatically flag cards whose last comment is older than a set number of days — for example, add a "No recent update" sticker and notify the owner after five days of silence — or combine it with operators like "was more than," "in last," "before," "after," "is between," "is," and "is not." It's exactly the visibility teams tracking milestones through comments have been asking for, available now in the business rule builder.