TeamworkPM’s Engine Room

Have you ever been out and about and received an email notification on your mobile device that a task or milestone has been assigned to you or a comment on a task has been added and you want to mark it complete quickly? 

Now you can simply reply to the email with a simple directive and the task will be marked complete. You can even re-open tasks via email if another person marks the task as done and you feel it's not.

We've allowed a few variations on the directives:

• #Complete
• #Completed
• #Done
• #Uncomplete
• #Reopen
• #Open
• #NotDone
• #Reopened

It's really easy to do and will work on any email notification relating to a task or milestone such as the assignment emails, edited emails, comments on task/milestone notification and the complete/reopened emails. Simply reply to the email with #Complete or #Uncomplete.

We went one step further and merged the Complete/Uncomplete directives with adding a comment. If you only reply with a directive, we'll mark the task or milestone complete/reopened; but if you use a directive and add more text underneath the directive we'll mark the task or milestone complete/reopened and also add the extra text as a comment.

We hope you'll enjoy this small but useful enhancement to the reply-by-email functionality. We plan to extend this to the Milestone notification emails in the next few days.

Update: (15th November 2012)

Milestones can now be marked complete/reopened by replying to Milestone related emails

We’re always looking at ways to speed up your daily use of TeamworkPM and take some of the pain points out of common actions. This month we’ve added a very handy shortcut for attaching files to a task that has already been created.

Top of our Roadmap was a feature that we've had many many requests for - Start Dates on tasks.  

• Tasks with a due date only
• Tasks with a start date only
• Tasks with both a due date and a start date

The Today tab will now list any task that has a due date of “Today” or any task that was due to start on or before today.

There are other areas where Start Dates greatly enhance Teamwork. We added the export to MS Project and GanttProject a while back so people could visualize their tasks on a printable Gantt Chart. The problem was that the Gantt was generated using a Due Date only so it didn’t represent a true Gantt chart.

We’ve updated both these exports to include the Start Date so the Gantt chart export is now much more useful.

Having answered a huge amount of feedback over the years, the release of this update fills me with great joy - I know from now on I will no longer have to tell people that you can't make a task private to just one user!

So from today you can make tasks private to individual users regardless of the company they are in. Gone is the "only private to the owner company" option. Now you are free to pick and choose who can see what within a project.

Working with multiple departments or even outsourced companies?  No problem. You can keep tasks private between you and one, or indeed, a handful, of them.

These screenshot show the new Lockdown feature. You can find it in the privacy tab when creating tasks. This gives you the power and freedom to specify exactly who can see the task.

It really is a thing of beauty!

Once you are in a project on Teamwork it's really easy to add tasks to the project. Sometimes though a phone call comes in from a client or you think of a task that needs to be added before you forget. This means browsing to the Project you want, clicking the tasks tab and finding the task list you want to add the task to.

By the time you've done that you may have forgotten what the task was!

One of the areas we really wanted to improve on this month was making it easier and faster to add tasks to your Teamwork account. Not just from within a project, but from any part of the app.

From today, you'll notice a new feature in the top right called Quick Add

The most useful is the Quick add tasks. Over the last few months we've received countless emails and feedback messages from people who want a faster way of getting tasks in to Teamwork. The majority of people wanted to dump tasks in and deal with them later when they get time.

Our second idea was to simply allow tasks to be entered one by one. As you add a task, the box clears and you can add another one. It worked but it was still not 100% of what we were trying to achieve.

Then we got it right. We thought of how easy it is to create multiple tasks by email. It's simple. Each task you want to create just goes on a new line in the email. We also had added the ability to assign the tasks to people, set a due date, set the priority and of course the privacy and notification options. This is what we wanted from the Quick Add feature.

When you open the Quick Add Tasks feature, there is a box where you type your tasks and a select tool to pick your project.

You can create 1 task or you can create 100 tasks. Each task just goes on a new line of the text box.

You can assign people to each task, set a due date and a priority - We added a quick help tooltip so you'll never forget how to do it.

Lets look at some examples:

• @dan [today] Write a blog post on the new Quick Add Feature
  • This will create a task called "Write a blog post on the new Quick Add Feature"
  • It will be due today
  • It will be assigned to Dan
• [tomorrow] @sam @peter @dan Add an FAQ on the website about quick add items !!!
  • This will create a task called "Add an FAQ on the website about quick add items"
  • It will be due tomorrow
  • It will be assigned to Peter, Sam and Dan
  • It will be of High Priority
• [25/12/2011] Answer any Christmas Day feedback
  • This will create a task called "Answer any Christmas Day feedback"
  • It will be assigned to "anyone"
  • It will be due on the 25th December 2011

The order of the items doesn't matter. We'll figure out the people, dates and priority no matter where in the task it appears

The @person is worked out by joining the firstname and the lastname of the user together and figuring it out

For example, my name in Teamwork is Daniel Mackey so any of the following would pick me out:

• @dan
• @daniel
• @danielmac
• @danielmackey

The dates just need to be in square brackets and you can use a real date such as [25/12/2011] (or [12/25/2011] if your date format is set to that) or you can use Today, Tomorrow, Next Week, Next Monday etc

So that's it. It's live now and we're really happy with it. Let us know what you think!

As someone who was always responsible for quoting for new work back when we had a consultancy business, having a feature like our new Task Estimates would have really helped me gauge if I was quoting realistically for jobs and more importantly if we were making money on these projects.

There can sometimes be a massive gap between the time you quote for and the time you actually end up working....and it’s very rare that it’s in your favor.

We have been planning this new feature for quite a while and over the last 2 months in particular the amount of requests we received for this just grew and grew. This added to the motivation to push this feature up the Roadmap and to get it rolled out.

After many requests we have now added in the ability to drag a task from one list across into another.

Simpliy move your mouse curser over the task you wish to move. Click and hold on the up and down arrow at the front of the task and then drag this task across to the new task list you want it to be a part of. When you are happy with where the task is just release the mouse button.

You can also watch this short video to show you how it works.

You also have the option as well to drag tasks from a list and drop them directly onto a task list name on the left hand side as well. This works really well if you have a lot of task lists as it saves you scrolling up and down the page.

Today is finally the day we release a feature that we have had on our roadmap for quite some time now, and boy is it a great feeling.

I have lost count of the amount of times people have requested this feature in the past and it was always hard to just say to them all, "it's on our roadmap, so we will be adding this in down the line." That's why it fills me with great joy to finally announce the full release of the new feature — "Task Dependences".

(pause for loud thunderous applause)

We have spent a large, huge incredibly massive amount of time working on making Dependencies powerful but incredibly easy-to-use and understand. One of the major issues we faced was deciding how to go about adding in this type of feature in — if it wasn't done correctly TeamworkPM would start to move us away from our vision: Project Management Made easy!

To make sure we stayed true to this statement we spent a a lot of time and drank large amounts of coffee debating, designing and re-designing every part of this new feature. We really hope you all enjoy the outcome...

So, how do you use task dependencies?

Well now when you click into the add a task section you will see for the first time a lightly greyed out link called more.  We did this to keep the interface as clean as possible and to avoid adding too much confusion to new users and well as users who don’t wish to use dependencies.

Once you click on the more link it will reveal the new Dependencies tab. To hide this tab again just click on "less" on the right hand side.
When you go ahead and add a task you will now have the option to make the task linked/dependent on other tasks within the task lists in the project.

In these screen shots I have my first task added in called "Design the new look".

The second task on the list is, "Sign off on design", which I assigned to Dan.
I set up the task so Dan can’t start his task until my first task of "Design the new look" is completed.  A red stop sign appears in-front of his task to let him know that there is another task on the project holding him up.

These stop sign type icons allow you to quickly see what tasks can’t be completed because they are waiting on other tasks within the project to be completed first.

You will notice the last task on the list has a green stop sign in front of it. What this means is that the task can be started but can’t be completed until certain tasks are completed first.

Below is a short video I have made to show you just how task dependencies actually works when you are using them; sometimes it’s a lot easier to see a feature in operation.

We are delighted to finally cross this one off the roadmap and we are really looking forward to hearing all your views on this new feature and hope you all enjoy using it!

The Task Editor

I was going to write a long post describing the new Task Editor.  But I figured a picture, or maybe two and a half thousand brief pictures, would make it all a whole lot easier.  So, I put together some screencasts instead.

Screencast 1 : Editing a Task

We'll the start the 'casts by looking at tasks, and in particular, editing. With the new layout, our goal was that after getting to the task screen, you shouldn't be forced to leave task screen.  So you get all of the information that you might need, but when you want to change something you simply do it right there, in place, and not on a separate edit screen.  

We didn't want to have a lot of clutter either.  So when you hit 'Edit', the things that should be edited get bigger and things that shouldn't be edited, disappear.  Just as it should be really.

We followed that up by allowing attributes of the task such as dates, priority and assignment, to be set not just with the normal tap, but also by swiping left or right. Now, a gesture like swipe is one of those things that you're better off seeing rather than reading - so take a look at the screencast to better understand just how quick it is to move the due date on a few days, or assign the task to yourself. Try it a few times and you'll soon find the new gestures becoming second nature. 

Screencast 2 : Creating a Task

All of the goodies from the Task Editor screen have been brought over to the Task Creator screen as well. So when you're hit by inspiration and you want to give yourself a task to complete today it becomes as simple as:

1. Enter the title, 
2. Swipe once on "Assigned To" 
3. Swipe once on "Due Date" 
4. … and 4? there is no Step 4! :)

Also in the second screencast you'll notice that the new layout displays any comments attached to the task.  New comments can be added and individuals in the company notified.  Judging by the feedback we've had, this alone is something that will make quite a few of you happy!

That's it, hope you like it, and as usual let us know what you think about the changes.

      Mike.