This is a mayor update on the Gantt chart containing the much requested dependency planning and usability updates. Also this help center is introduced and extended card logging in the backend is enabled as a first step to improve the dashboards and reports.
Gantt chart improvements
Seperate articles and youtube videos will be created to show you exactly how this functionality works, this is in progress.
Gantt dependency planning
Adding dependencies between cards now also automatically re-plan tasks when dependencies are violated. This has been a highly requested feature and is now live.
You can create a dependency by clicking on the circle on a task and drag to another tasks. Clicking on the dependency allows you to set a dependency lead time or delete the dependency.
The four key dependencies are supported:
Finish to start, where one task should be finished for the other task to start;
Finish to finish, where one task should be finished for the other taks to finish;
Start to start, where one task should be started for the other task to start;
Start to finish, where one task should be started for the other task to finish;
Gantt usability updates
The drawback of having a flexible gantt chart is that the settings can become complex. Some of the initial default settings did not make sense to first time users. This is why the following is updated:
Date selector from the menu. You can now set the date you want to show in the Gantt from the top menu, and show a date to compare against.
Showing plan dates by default. Originally 'smart' dates where shown by default.
Hiding checklists by default. You can show checklist by selecting this setting from the left panel.
Performance improvements. We changed the logic or redrawing the Gantt chart on updates to make it smarter.
Export to png/pdf improvements. Now also the compare dates (if shown) will be exported to png/pdf.
The following dates are available to show (and compare):
Plan dates, showing the task based on the set plan dates.
Actual dates, showing the taks based on the set actual dates.
Smart dates, showing the actual dates if they are set or otherwise the plan dates. (for example if a task is started, it will show the actual start date and the planned end date).
Introducing the Help Center
I started using this help center to better streamline your questions and create a knowledge base. Articles will be added based on your questions, so please make sure use the chat to contact me if you cannot find what you are looking for!
Card/List logging
In order to improve the reporting of your process and the timing of the cards in each of your list, extended logging has been created and is now switched on in Placker.
Basically the card movements (and timing) is logged to give you insight in how your cards flow in your board, this information will be translated into graphs in the upcoming week. For example to visualize your sales funnel and development flow and understand exactly where the bottlenecks are in your process.
UI Improvements
This week the right detail panel has been updated to show only assigned card attributes by default. You can click on 'show empty attributes' to show all attributes and set empty attributes as you like.
The UI is constantly updated to gradually move to a more intuitive and user friendly UI. The key challenge of the UI is that Placker is created to be an extremely flexible tool, but this flexibility comes with complexity that needs to be hidden where possible.