Jan Schulz-Hofen on March 03, 2014 The all new Planio has arrived!
I am happy to announce that we have rolled out a major new version of Planio today. We have been working long and hard behind the scenes for this release. As it also encompasses some major technical framework upgrades and switches, we should see a positive impact on Planio's overall robustness and performance. Above all, it will allow us to further accelerate our development process and bring you new features faster.
What has changed?
A few areas in Planio have changed and improve overall usability. First and foremost, we made the creation of new content (issues, milestones, wiki pages, blog articles, etc.) more consistent. Within all sections of a project, you will always find the New something button within the contextual menu area as you'd expect. Additionally, there's a new + button at the top left of the menu bar that gives you access to create any content you'd like from a handy drop down menu.
We have also completely revamped the help system in Planio and will continue to add more help content during the coming weeks. Gone are the big blue info boxes. Help popups will now be much more subtle and more context specific to guide you to what you need to know more quickly and effectively.
A few other changes came with the update to the latest underlying Redmine version which is now at 2.3. It's still a point release behind the current latest Redmine, but it's thoroughly tested and rock solid. As usually, we'll upgrade to the next Redmine versions once we have secured the same status for the new 2.4 and 2.5 versions.
Here's the run down of the new features from Redmine:
Issues: Planio's issue system is already very robust, but it's now even more powerful. You can now choose which fields, the built-in fields included, are required, writeable or read-only on a per-tracker and role basis, additionally, you can choose which built-in fields you want to use on a per-tracker basis. With this feature, you can for example prevent your reporters from changing the assignee of an issue while still being able to comment on it and change its status.
Comments can now be marked private, allowing users that have the permission to read private comments to discuss confidential details of an issue without having to create a different project or a different private issue.
Copying issues has been improved as well: you can now choose to copy the subtasks alongside the main issue. Furthermore, a relation will be created between the original and the copied issue to keep track of that relation.
Speaking of issue relations, the "follows" relation can now take working and non-working days into account, alongside a few other improvements.
Issue list: Planio's issue list has also seen some minute improvements. Now you can for example show the issue descriptions on the issue list, and issue relations can now be added as a column or filtered by in the list. The availability of filters has also been improved. You can now filter by non-global custom fields in the global issue list, or filter for a milestone even if you're not in the issue list of the project it is defined in. Last but not least: You can now bulk watch or unwatch issues from the bulk edit context menu on the issue list.
Projects: In addition to archiving or deleting projects, you can now also close projects. Closed projects are read-only, meaning everyone can still read what is in the project, but not add anything new. Subprojects can now optionally inherit the users of their parent project. Finally, subtasks are not limited to the same project anymore, you can now choose in which project scope subtasks can be created.
Time Reports: time reports can now be filtered according to the issues they have been logged against.
Gantt Charts: issue relations will now be shown in the the gantt charts, as well as a always up to date progress line.
File uploads: the way files are uploaded got finally rid of Flash and now uses the HTML5 built-in upload functionality.
API: The REST API is now significantly more complete with the addition of wiki pages and enumerations as well as "User impersonation" which means your Planio apps can act as any user within your Planio account - provided they have admin privileges. We look forward to new great use cases and integrations you may come up with!
We hope you like your shiny new Planio. If you have any questions, feel free to get in touch. As always, we will happy to help you via e-mail, chat and on the phone.
