February 2020 Newsletter: Improved Performance

We've rewritten the Projects module from the ground up to enable us to process more data more quickly and flexibly.  Read on for details on enhancements that can help your team be more productive.

Recent Enhancements

• Showing more data more quickly. Up to now, sites with hundreds of active projects couldn't expand projects in the All Workspaces view of the Projects module (they had to go to an individual workspace first).  Now they can.  High-volume sites should also see dramatically improved performance on the Project To-Do List. [Note: for sites with huge numbers of active tasks, working in All Workspaces will likely be very slow.  If so, work within a single workspace or contact help@workzone.com if you'd like us to restore your automatic filters.]
• Lead/Lag. You can now offset dependencies to start ahead of the completion date of a predecessor ("lead") or to be delayed after the completion date of the predecessor ("lag"). Lead and lag are specified by clicking the double arrow (↔) for an existing dependency at the top of the dependency overlay page (accessed by clicking a dependency cell). A positive number ("+3") indicates a lag, and a negative number ("-2") indicates a lead. Learn more
• Milestones. Unlike typical tasks in a project, which have a distinct amount of time scheduled for completion, milestones are a new type of task with the same start and end date, but zero duration. Milestones are meant to track significant tasks within a project plan, like the completion of a phase of a project, the delivery of an asset, or a key juncture for evaluation. To establish a milestone, edit the duration of an existing task and enter "0" as the duration. That task will then display as a milestone with a distinctive duration symbol (◆). Learn more
• More info on predecessors/successors on hover.  Mouse over the dependency symbol for a task (↳), and you now get additional information:
  • Predecessors and successors are now hyperlinked to let you quickly jump to them
  • Lead/lag information is now shown 
  • Successor rows are now highlighted in yellow while mousing over a dependency symbol
• Edit multiple items on the dependencies page. Now, when you add or delete an existing dependency from the dependencies page, the page remains open, so that you can continue adding/editing dependencies.  Changes are updated immediately in the background. 
• Search across project states in Custom Reports (Enterprise license required). Previously you could only search within a single project state (Active, Completed, Archived).
• We've also pulled out some of the excess vertical space at the top of the Projects module (above/below the button row) to allow more room for the main content.

What We're Working On

• Enhancements to Image Markup. We're making it easier to work with markup comments so that new versions can be created more quickly.  Among the improvements coming is the ability to mark off comments as resolved, easier scrolling of comments, better printing, and the ability to @mention a colleague.
• Inter-project dependencies (Enterprise license required). Link a task from one project to a task in another project.  Great for those working on campaigns with interdependent projects. 
• Navigation improvements, such as freezing the top section across all pages, and letting you collapse the left panel on Reports, Calendar, and Settings modules.
• Reporting enhancements.  We're exploring alternative ways to present information -- flat tables without groupings for time or projects, activity counts over time, etc.