Release Notes - 2021. 02. 01.
In the past couple of weeks, our focus has been on adding a validity window to resource capabilities, more user filtering options on Admin view, and on showing confirmation dialogs whenever a destructive operation is about to take place.
Major new features
Resource-capability validity window
It often occurs in project planning that resources must have valid certificates at a given time window in order to be assignable to certain tasks. Horizon Planner tackles this problem by making it possible to set optional start and end dates for each capability of a resource. Together we call these dates the resource-capability’s validity window.
The validity window of a resource capability can be defined when the capability is added to a resource on their Capabilities card on Resources view. It can later be edited at the same place, using the Edit action from the “…” menu of capabilities in the resource capability list. Alternatively, you can also edit resource capability validity windows by selecting a capability on Resources view and activating the Edit action from the “…” menu of a resource.
Inactive and expiring resource capabilities are highlighted throughout the application with warning and error icons and semantic coloring.
During resource assignment, the application automatically validates whether the resource has the required capability for the whole duration of the assignment, making it hard to accidentally create invalid assignments.
User filtering on Admin view
We’ve started designing and implementing the filtering and search system and its user experience prior to this iteration. The initial filter and search panels were text only, as that is a basic, must-have feature in every component that shows non-trivial amount of data. As more and more features are added to Horizon Planner, more complex filter components become possible (and, in fact, required). We plan to offer extensive, yet simple and easy to use filter and search capabilities to users. The first step towards this goal was adding a user filter to Admin view, that allows administrators to filter users not only by name, but also by their permission level, thus providing a way for administrators to get an overview of existing users of certain types.
Confirmation dialogs
Confirmation dialogs can be annoying, they can disrupt the user’s flow and lead to “dialog blindness”. Our aim is to not show them unless it is necessary, to avoid such issues as much as possible. In our experience, necessary means destructive operations that are hard or time consuming to recover from when executed by mistake.
We set - and implemented - the policy that users should confirm every delete operation, and nothing else. We will review this policy based on user feedback, but as a general rule, we will enforce consistency as much as possible - “Special cases aren’t special enough to break the rules”.