Release Notes - 2021. 04. 01.
It has been a relatively short development sprint, nevertheless we have implemented several major features, such as advanced filtering, archiving, a new report, and the option to select multiple capabilities for a single role.
Major new features
Advanced filtering
Up until this release, most of the application only supported text-based filtering in list and chart components, the only exception being Admin view’s user filter.
In the previous release, we have delivered the tags feature, making it possible to create tags and add them to activities, projects, and resources. This was a prerequisite for our next goal, namely this advanced filtering feature. Starting with this release it is possible to not only filter activities, projects, and resources by their name, but also by their tags in every part of the application.
In addition to the name filter, a tag filter component is also present now in every filter panel where it is applicable. In tag filters, users can select any number of tags and whether matching entities must have any or all of them.
In the Gantt sub-view of Timeline view, the name filter only applied to projects in previous versions of Horizon Planner. Now, not only is it possible to also filter by tags, the combined filter is applied to both projects and activities. Filtering logic is as follows: projects that match the filter or have at least one activity that matches the filter will be visible. As for activities, only matching ones will be shown.
In the Timetables sub-view of Timeline view, the combined name and tag filter works in combination with the capability filter to allow as many filtering options as possible.
Filtering in Assignment Planner
Resource filtering in Assignment Planner offers a slightly different user experience to the rest of the application. There are several reasons for this, the prime ones are that space is very limited here and we didn’t want to open further dialogs, since Assignment Planner is already a dialog.
Each column - except CO2 - of the resources table has some filtering options that can be accessed by right-clicking in the corresponding column header. It is possible to set filters on multiple table columns - filters will be combined in this case and only those resources will be visible that match all filter criteria.
The Name column simply offers text filtering.
Right-clicking on the Capabilities column header brings up a list of filtering actions. The Relevant Capabilities Only action, when checked (the default), hides all capabilities that are not relevant to any of the roles from the chart above. Furthermore, there are actions for each role shown in the chart and an Any option (which is selected by default), for narrowing down the list of resources to those who have all the capabilities required by the checked role.
The Tags column shows a callout with a tag filter that works as described in the previous section.
Right-clicking on the Airport column header shows an airport selector field. When an airport is selected, only those resources will be shown who have the given airport.
Archiving
Deleting data from the system can have far-reaching consequences - when keeping historical data intact is important, it is simply not feasible to do. Our solution to this problem is archiving.
Without going into the reasons, we have decided to make resources, capabilities, projects, and activities archivable. In each case, entities can be archived and activated from their “…” menus in Resources and Timeline views, using the corresponding actions.
Archived entities are hidden by default. If you need to change the visibility of archived data, you can do so using the “Show/Hide Archived Data” action of the user menu in the top right corner.
When visible, archived entities are shown with a crossed-out name.
Multiple capabilities for roles
In previous versions of Horizon Planner, Roles could only have a single required capability. We knew from experience that this would not be enough over the long term for our customers, so we designed the application from the start to be flexible in this regard.
In the past couple of weeks we have finally updated every part of the application to be able to handle multiple required capabilities for roles, so we can finally bring this feature to our customers.
Users can now select multiple capabilities when creating a new role. Editors will allow assignment only for those resources who have all the required capabilities of the role for the whole duration of the assignment. Assignment Planner will similarly enforce this criteria.
Note that once a role is created, changing its required capability list is not allowed, ensuring that valid assignments remain valid.
Assignment Table report
Maybe the most essential report in a project planning application is to get an overview of all assignments for a week. It is as useful for showing future plans as summerizing past activities for review.
The Assignment Table report is now available on Report view. Clicking it will show a dialog where the user may adjust the organization and time window for the report. By default the currently logged in organization is selected, but just like in other reports, it is possible to generate a report for a different organization without switching to that organization first. The time window can also be changed freely, from a single day to even multiple months.
Each row of the report shows the details of a single assignment, namely the Activity it belongs to, the assigned Resource, the start and end times of the assignment and the estimated CO2 emission. The Resource column may be empty, meaning this is a requirement that is not fulfilled yet; or it may show “N/A” if the assigned resource is not available in the selected organization.
Minor features, bug fixes, ongoing issues
In addition to the previously described major features, we have fixed several minor UI bugs, continued our effort to improve application styling and prepare future dark theme support, and also implemented the following minor features:
- Added Clone and Duplicate actions to assignments in Timeline view’s Gantt chart as well as to Assignment Planner. This should make assignment creation much more convenient.
- Added tooltips to our list items. This is especially important for tags, because their category is often hidden and their value may not always fit in the allocated space.
- Updated our Competence Table report to have a separate column for each requested capability. This way the report does not have to show a separate line for every relevant capability of a resource, making it more concise and clear.
- Improved Timeline view’s performance by optimising server communication.
- Removed a large chunk of code duplication and made our various types of lists more flexible. This should improve development speed and reduce maintenance needs in the future.