Release Notes - 2021. 05. 10.
Last month we were really focusing on improving user experience and workflow based on the feedback of our customers. Today’s release brings a lot of major features in this spirit.
Major new features
Next of kin data for resources
During the operation of any company it may be necessary to quickly reach out to the closest relative of any employee. Horizon Planner now supports this by storing next of kin information for every Resource. On the Resources view there is a separate Next of Kin card where any number of phone numbers, email addresses and physical addresses may be added. It is just like the Contacts card for the resource’s own contacts. Each contact item may have an optional label. It might be a good idea to use that as a hint for the relationship, for example labeling a phone number as “Spouse”, or maybe even adding a full name there.
New time window picker
When an Assignment is being planned, the planner needs to select a start date and an end date for it. Previously it had to be done in two separate date inputs, but it just got a lot easier with the new time window picker. The user just needs to click on the start date and the end date (in any order) and the appropriate time window is selected. This new way of selecting a time window is used when creating/editing Assignments or Holidays, or when a time window is specified for a Report. Notably it is not used for setting the validity of a Capability, as this UI wouldn’t work well there - in that case either the start date or the end date may be left empty and that option can’t be incorporated without adding confusion.
Improved filtering on Gantt view
Filtering on the Gantt view is more complex than one would expect. There we apply a single filter to every level of a Project-Activity-Role hierarchy, and there are some unusual corner cases that we needed to cover. The goal is to make it behave in the most natural way from the user’s point of view. The current behavior is as follows.
- Don’t filter Roles at all - if their Activity is in the list and is open, all its Roles will be there whatever their names are.
- Show all Projects that match the filter.
- Show all Projects that have at least one Activity that matches the filter, even if the Project itself does not.
- Show all Activities that match the filter.
- Show all Activities that have a Project that matches the filter, even if the Activity itself does not.
- Adjust the filter on Project or Activity creation to make sure the created entity is immediately visible.
- Open the created Project or Activity to make it easier to immediately start adding more data.
Arrow key navigation in search results
In auto-complete fields the user can now start navigating the results by pressing the up or down arrow keys - no need to use the mouse. You can see it in action for example in the Tag filters, or when selecting an Airport or Capability for a Resource.
It is now possible to hide any of the charts in Timeline view from the top action bar.
The Timeline view shows two charts (the Gantt chart and the Timetable) that are usually used together. But there are cases when the planner needs to focus only on one of them, and a little more screen real estate would be welcome. Now it is possible to hide any of the charts using the toggle buttons on top, gaining more space for the other. The color of the buttons indicate which chart is visible currently.
Assignment editor update
The user can now select the Role in the dialog when creating an Assignment. Previously it was set to the row corresponding the clicked Role on the chart and couldn’t be changed in the dialog. Now it can be changed - but the Role of the clicked row is still preselected for convenience. This provides some protection against misclicks, but our intention with this feature is way more significant than that: this makes it possible to copy existing Assignments to the other Roles of the same Activity. You just need to use it in combination with the Clone & Edit action of the Assignment. So right click the Assignment, select Clone & Edit and change only the Role in the shown dialog. This will create a copy of that Assignment for the other Role.
Persist application state
A planner often has to set various filters, scroll charts to the appropriate time and in general set up the UI to be able to effectively do their job. This can be time consuming. Horizon Planner now helps here by saving the UI state: when a user logs out and logs back in later, the UI will be in exactly the same state as they left it last time. So the day doesn’t have to be started with setting filters anymore, you can just pick up where you left. The selected Organization, the current view, the chart position, filters, etc. will all be the same.
The UI state itself is saved to the user’s local machine, so users accessing the application from multiple devices will have a separate saved state for each. This can be good or bad, based on the exact use-case. Let us know what you think - feedback, as always, is well appreciated!
Minor features
- Added a “None of” option to Tag filters. This filters for entities that don’t have any of the selected Tags.
- Holidays can now have a color.
- The Assignment editor shows a warning message if the selected resource is not available for the whole duration of the Assignment.
- Show required Capabilities in Role tooltips. This makes this information readily available on the Gantt chart itself. Previously it was only shown in the Inspector.
- Removed the Info tab of Role inspector, as it became irrelevant. The primary data here was the required Capability list, which is now shown in the tooltip.
- Renamed “Duplicate” and “Clone” actions to “Clone” and “Clone & Edit” respectively. The new names represent their function more clearly.
- Moved the Inspector button to the top right corner to get it closer to the Inspector for less mouse movement.
Bug fixes, ongoing issues
- Added missing back button to the Activity creator wizard.
- Made sure that all relevant data is refreshed when the user switches to a different Organization.
- Limited the zoom level on charts and disabled page zooming when the zoom limit is reached.
- Styling fixes and improvements: getting closer to custom theming and dark theme support.