What defines the ideal project management solution? For us, it’s a place where everyone can come together and focus on the things that really matter. Over the years we’ve created several tools that can take you part way towards this goal, however none so far have solely been focused on project management…

Until now. Zenkit Projects is built to facilitate project management, whether you use classical or Agile methodologies. It’s powerful and flexible enough to enable real progress in your team – no matter how many projects you have, no matter how big your challenges are.

Over the 5 years since we first launched Zenkit, we’ve had a lot of feedback from you about using Zenkit for project management, so we implemented our 5 key learnings: It is super easy-to-use, has a 360-degree dashboard, a global kanban, resource management, and dedicated reporting.

Now onto the good stuff. What exactly does Zenkit Projects have to offer?

Dashboard

One of our most highly requested features over the years has been a project dashboard. Zenkit Projects goes above and beyond, with a dashboard that shows you your tasks, your team’s tasks, and progress across all projects all in one place. Best of all, you can work on any task without even leaving the dashboard! Let’s dig in…

Your Tasks’ Progress

The top of the screen is reserved for tasks assigned to you from across all projects. These rings show the completeness of all your tasks across projects. “My Day” shows everything due today (or overdue!), “My Week” shows all tasks for this week, and “My Tasks” shows all tasks assigned to you, including those without a due date, and those that aren’t due today or this week.

To view the tasks that match any of these, simply click the circle icon to open a filtered Tasks panel on the right-hand side:

Click on a task to open it and view or work on the task details.

All Tasks’ Progress

The next row of circles shows the completeness of all tasks across all projects, whether they’re assigned to you, to someone else, or just not assigned to anyone. They function the same way as your tasks, just click on one to open the filtered task panel to the right and access the tasks.

From the task panel on the right, you can also add tasks to any project. Tasks added here will match the filter that was set (e.g. if you’ve clicked “Today” it will add today’s due date to the new task, if you’ve clicked “This week”, it will add a due date at the end of the week).

Project Progress

The rest of the dashboard gives you a really clear overview of the progress of all of your projects. It displays each project as a bar, divided into sections that show how many tasks are in each stage of the project. Click on any of these sections to open the task panel to show tasks related to that section.

For example, in this screenshot, it’s showing all tasks in the “To Do” stage in the project “Product Launch”.

As with each of the previous sections, you can click on any task here to open and work on it or add new tasks to the project.

Global Smart Views

The next major feature is the smart views. For a multi-project solution, global task views are like magic: You don’t need to switch between projects anymore! These are global views that you can use to keep an eye on all tasks from across all projects, and they include:

• Global Kanban board
• Global calendar
• Global task list
• All done tasks
• All assigned tasks
• Today
• Week

It can be overwhelming to see everything all at once, so you can use a range of grouping, sorting, and filter functions to quickly find the information you need. Once you set up the grouping, sorting, and filtering settings, those will stay that way until you change them.

This means that if you close the app, change to a different view, or open a project, you’ll always go back to the settings you had. This also means that you can create multiple of the same type of smart view (e.g. a global task list) to perform different functions, simply by using different group, sort, and filter settings.

For example, a global task list grouped by project, sorted by date, and filtered not to include completed tasks will float the most urgent tasks in each project to the top of each section. Meanwhile, a global task list grouped by assigned to, sorted by workload, and filtered to exclude completed tasks can show a list of everyone’s most time-intensive tasks.

Both of these views serve an important, but still completely different function, which is why you can have as many smart views as you like!

Resource Management

A truly powerful project management app is meaningless without a way to quickly assess how well tasks are distributed amongst your team. That’s why Projects also has integrated resource management, shown under any Gantt chart and available as a global view, too!

With resource management you can easily find the optimal schedule for all team members across all your projects and thus improve the efficiency of your organization. This feature enables you to see at a glance which team members may be overbooked, and who you can transfer tasks in order to alleviate the strain.

Put plainly: The global resource planning view enables you to see the workload of each member, shown as a red or green bar with the number of hours they’re scheduled to work on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly basis.

The bar is shown as green if the person is scheduled to do 8 or fewer hours of work per day, and will go red when that number is exceeded. This max “load” can be adjusted, depending on your typical schedule, but is set to 8 by default due to the 40h work week that most companies adhere to.

Clicking on someone’s name will open a menu showing all their tasks, grouped by project, and of course, clicking on a task will open it to the right-hand side.

Reports

Another very highly requested feature is reporting. Now, this is of course partially covered by the smart views, however, you can also create 2 specific reports: Bar or Sunburst. These reports visualize the workload of each team member and can be modified to display the information you need.

These two reports, combined with all the different report settings, enable you to create no fewer than 720 custom reports to gain important insights. Risks, opportunities, and challenges can be easily recognized and used to optimize your projects.

Projects

Last but not least, it would be a bit silly to write all this without mentioning the projects themselves! I’ll try to keep it brief.

When you create a project, it’ll automatically create a Kanban board, however, just like in Base, you have the option to choose from multiple views: Kanban, Gantt, List, Calendar, Hierarchy, Table, and Mindmap. The Gantt chart also supports all the important instruments of classical project management: all 4 dependency types, lead & lag, critical paths, resource management, and subtasks.

This means that whether you use Agile, Hyper Agile, Kanban, Waterfall, or whatever other methodology you prefer, you will always have the right tool at hand, and be able to switch between them at any time to get the best of every approach.

Other Updates Throughout the Suite

You may also have noticed some changes to all your other apps…

The biggest change is that there is now a sidebar to the left of your screen, which is where you can access your app and account settings and easily switch between apps. You now access your Zenkit profile and app settings from the same dialogue, too. Navigation within each app is also still accessible from the panel, as it always has been.

The panel means that things like settings, notifications, folders, and activities are kept separate from where you actually work. It’s a cleaner, more structured design that gives you more space for you to be productive without distraction. A nice added bonus is that this new side panel is much faster and more performant than the old one!

Other improvements throughout the Zenkit Suite include:

• The resource planning function we built for Projects has also been added to the Gantt view in Base.
• You can now use filters in Base’s three global views: Calendar, Favorites & Team
• You can also use filters in all lists, including smart lists, in To Do
• You can sort tasks in To Do’s “Week” and “All” smart lists
• You can group tasks in the “All” smart list
• Last but not least, the Markdown rendering library in Hypernotes is now twice as fast!

Change can be hard, I know! It may take a little while to get used to the new layout (I still head to the top right corner to access settings!) but after a couple of days, it’ll feel like it was always that way. I’m particularly a huge fan of the new app switching area, and the combined profile & app settings!

What Does This Mean for Base?

Many of you likely already use Base for all your project management needs, and over the years we’ve received many requests for features and improvements to the app that would push it further in the direction of project management.

In the end, it made a lot more sense to create a specialized app that will be 100% focused on project management, rather than to add all the necessary components to Base. Adding all that extra stuff to Base would simply make it too cluttered, too confusing, and ultimately not as helpful or easy to use as it should be. Projects alone is able to provide nearly every PM feature that’s been requested over the years, packaged in a fun-to-use, clear & simple app.

We’re confident that the new Projects app will meet the needs of the majority of our users, as most of you already use Zenkit for project management. This will leave Base open for a radical evolution into an app-builder with automation, actions & triggers, and a way to manage processes as well as projects.

Want to Transfer from Base to Projects?

If you use Base and want to make the switch over to Projects, all you need to do is connect it with Projects via the Suite. Additionally, if you already have a subscription to Base, we are happy to transfer your subscription to Projects, free of charge! If you’d like us to do this, please get in touch with our team (billing@zenkit.com).

What do you think? We’re so proud of Projects and we’re sure you’re going to love it, too! We’d love to hear your feedback about Projects, the new layout, and the added features in Base and To Do… what’s your favourite feature? Is one of your own requests now fulfilled?

Cheers,
Siobhan and the Zenkit Team

The post World, Meet Zenkit Projects appeared first on Zenkit.

2021 has been a productive year so far. Not only did our team release our new app, Hypernotes, but improvements and additional features have been added across all of our products. We published them with little fanfare, and barely a mention, but that’s not to say that they’re not worthy of celebration!

Here’s a short list of our favourite little updates over the past few months:

Undo/Redo

Since January this year, it’s possible to undo or redo certain activities in all Zenkit products using the Cmd/Ctrl+Z and Cmd/Ctrl+Y shortcuts on your keyboard! This includes reverting information added to fields in Base and To Do, like labels, dates, members, etc, or changing the text in chats, comments, or description fields. You can undo as many times as you like, and if you’ve already closed an item, the undo function will still work and even re-open the item for editing! You can also undo larger actions the creation or archiving of an item in Base. You cannot undo the deletion of an item, as this is a permanent change (which is also why you’re asked to confirm deletion!)

Printing Single Items and Tasks

Whether you’re working on a complex item in Base, or viewing simple tasks in Zenchat or Hypernotes, you can now print an individual item or task. To do so, simply open it, click the … button, and choose “Print” from the drop-down menu.

You’ll then generate a PDF, which shows all the fields available on the task, including all labels in their assigned colours, info about attachments, and comments (if you’ve chosen to include them). You can print or save the PDF to your device by clicking “Print” and then choosing a printer or the save to PDF option in the print settings.

Drawings

Okay, yes, we did write a whole article introducing the new drawing tool, but it’s worth mentioning again just for the sheer fun of it!

Logout on All Devices

The logout on all devices feature was introduced in version 4.5.2 to add an additional layer of security, just in case you’d forgotten to log out of a shared device or a device was stolen. The remote log-out function, when used, will log you out of all Zenkit products on all other devices and browsers except the one you’re currently using.

To use it, open your Zenkit profile, then open the “Authentication” section. Click on “Log out on all other devices”. That’s it! No need to confirm or do anything else.

Improved Recurring Items and Reminders

It’s not quite as flashy as some of the other updates, but we made huge improvements to the way reminders act with recurring items. It used to be that you’d need to set a reminder on each of the recurrent items, however now if a reminder already exists on the last item in the series, then it will be added to all future recurrences of that item.

New Knowledge Bases

With the progression from a single “does-everything” product to multiple products, we needed a way to consolidate and better manage our knowledge bases, which were previously all hosted in separate published Zenkit collections. We moved on to publishing using the same platform as our support helpdesk so that we could quickly and easily include links to relevant articles when responding to requests. It also enabled us to publish the knowledge bases in other languages, too!  German! The knowledge bases are due for a design update this year, so they’ll fit seamlessly into the Zenkit universe.

And…

• We’ve added archive access in Hypernotes
• Made it easier to find files shared in chats in Zenchat
• Added JSON export for collections, lists, and notebooks
• Added syntax highlighting for code blocks in Hypernotes
• Kept up all 8 translations of all four of our apps (with a new language coming soon)
• And much, much more!

If you want to keep up with all these updates as soon as they’re live, please feel free to take a look at our public changelog. Our dev team add details about what features were added, and which bugs were fixed in each app or the Zenkit platform as a whole.

Are you making use of these new features? We’d love to know! Leave a comment below, or get in touch with our team. As always, we’d love to hear your feedback.

Cheers,

Siobhan and the Zenkit team

The post What’s New in Zenkit? appeared first on Zenkit.

We’re so excited to announce the release of the fourth member of the Zenkit family: Hypernotes!

Hypernotes is a note-taking app designed to enhance your knowledge management, and help you create, share, and understand knowledge in a totally new way. It’s designed to be used for any writing task; wikis, Intranets, documentation, book outlines, research, diaries, first principles, a personal Zettelkasten, etc. This means that it can also be used by just about anyone, and the range of plans makes it accessible to anyone from students, NGOs, and freelancers, all the way up to SMBs and large enterprises.

All that said, it’s not just any old note-taking or team knowledge app…

What’s the problem with traditional knowledge management?

1. They’re great for taking notes, but not so good at helping you access them.

The tools traditionally used to capture and share knowledge are linear and hierarchical by nature. Most popular knowledge bases and note apps are very limited by their pre-defined hierarchies and folders. Anything you write has to fit into a certain category, or get slotted into a folder or notebook with other notes of a similar theme. 

This inevitably leads to hundreds, if not thousands of notes containing valuable knowledge that end up gathering dust because it’s simply too difficult to find them, which also means writing is duplicated, sometimes multiple times!

Who hasn’t started taking notes, writing down ideas, or collecting useful quotes and articles, only to forget what it was called, where it should be stored, or even what category it belongs in? Sometimes something you write defies being categorized; it could be in multiple existing categories, or needs a new category entirely.

Search goes some way to solve this, but it doesn’t always find everything you need, especially if you’re not using the “right” search terms! This means that knowledge is lost and forgotten, and all that note-taking leads to nothing… what’s the point of documenting something if nobody reads it?

2. Knowledge is lost when people aren’t around to point you in the right direction.

Companies aren’t just faceless productivity machines. Their competitive advantage lies primarily in people: how employees apply their knowledge, experience, and skills in their work.

When someone is away or leaves the company, their unique knowledge goes with them. Arnold Kransdorff, a knowledge management researcher and author, puts the impact of this bluntly: If this knowledge walks out without being documented, the organization will be “plagued with an inability to learn from past experience, which leads to reinvented wheels, unlearned lessons, a pattern of repeated mistakes, productivity shortfalls, and a lack of continuous performance improvement.” Ouch.

Just think how much time, money, and effort could be saved if companies were able to continually and effectively capture each employee’s unique knowledge over the entire duration of their employment.

What makes Hypernotes so much better?

Hypernotes creates a living knowledge base. It’s structured kind of like your brain is. With Hypernotes, notes organically link to one another, so finding relevant knowledge is much easier, even if a note was written years ago! The more you write, the greater your knowledge becomes and the more links are created between things you didn’t even consider to be related.

With Hypernotes, your “read/write” ratio is therefore increased: Because notes organically link to one another, finding relevant knowledge is much easier, even if someone is accessing them for the first time. Readers simply have to click through to find relevant articles that always link back to where they started, and new knowledge is automatically connected to old with suggested links.

And because we’re Zenkit, Hypernotes of course has extremely effective task management built right into it, and you can connect your writing with any other app in the suite. Here’s how…

Bi-Directional Links

Whenever you’re writing in any note, you can use shortcuts to link your text to other relevant notes, kind of like hyperlinks online. You can do this by inserting the title of a note you’ve already written, inserting an entire block of text, or by using a tagging system.

The magic though, is that these links go both ways. Once you link from note A to note B, then a mention will be added to note B that links right back to note A!

Hypernotes also automatically scans your writing to look for words or phrases that match other notes you’ve written before. It then suggests that you connect them with a mention at the bottom of each related note:

If you choose to connect these two suggestions in the example above, whenever you look at the notes “Zettelkasten Method”, “Zettel Unique Identifier”, or “Structure Notes”, there will be a link on Niklas’ name leading you right back to this page where everything you’ve ever written about him is collected! (This is also how Hypernotes works as an excellent CRM, as you can track and make notes on all your interactions with people you’re in touch with).

Outlining

Notes are not written in plain prose, but use an outline of bullet points for each new line. The reason for this is that each separate bullet point, or “block” as they’re called, can be indented, creating a hierarchical outline of the information you’re writing down. Each individual block can also directly be referenced in any other note, so instead of copying & pasting things multiple times, you write it down once and it’s available to use anywhere else in your notebook!

In this example, the blocks are indented to three levels, and there are several references shown (there’s good old Mr. Luhmann!). Clicking on any of the bullet points opens the block up to behave like a totally new note:

Knowledge Graph

Yeah, notes and pages are cool and all, but just wait until you see the graph! The knowledge graph is a visual representation of all of your knowledge and all the connections within it.

The graph shows by way of color-coding which notes have tasks attached, which have comments, notifications, which are favorites, and more. You can focus in on notes to see only the things most relevant to it (and you can change the levels of focus as you wish with a simple slider):

And you can also “collapse” the connections to see how one note is connected to other, more distant notes & ideas:

This all is fun to play with, but in the end it provides an invaluable resource that makes finding connections between ideas an intuitive, visual experience. Using a tool like this can help you to make connections between ideas that you never thought could be related, sparking yet more ideas, better writing, and a better-informed worldview.

Task Management

It wouldn’t be a Zenkit product without a nod to collaboration! Hypernotes isn’t designed just for a single person building their knowledge (although it is perfectly suited to this!). It’s designed to facilitate better knowledge collection and sharing among team members, where each user is able to intuitively and actively contribute to building a base of information to be shared by all.

You can add members to notebooks, and create and assign tasks on the notebook and note level:

There is a general task area for each notebook. This is found on the left hand panel and you can add tasks here at the top of the page, and also view all tasks, even those that are assigned to a specific note.

Within an individual note, you can add and view tasks in two ways:

Each note has a “Tasks” button in the top right hand corner that will show all tasks related to that note. You can add tasks from there, mark them done, and open them to assign people & due dates, attach files, and more.

You can also add tasks in-line, directly in your text:

The task will appear right in the middle of your text and you can continue writing as if it’s just part of the sentence

Of course, each task can be opened, members assigned, due dates, reminders & repeaters added, files and more info attached, etc.

You can also connect Hypernotes with all other Zenkit products, which means you can view and work with these same tasks in Base & To Do, and chat about them in Zenchat!

Shortcuts

All this sounds a bit complicated, but there are plenty of shortcuts (and a handy list explaining them all) that make using Hypernotes super simple.

From anywhere in your text, use the “/” key to open the quick command menu:

Quick commands help you add references to other pages or blocks, add images through links or uploads, create tasks, add items from other Zenkit products inline, and even use special text formatting like code and LaTex!

There’s also an info menu shown on each page which lists helpful shortcuts for adding references, using the graph, formatting text, and much more.

I could go on, and on, and on, and on about all the features and functions we’ve built into this incredible app, but I think I’ll let it speak for itself. You can use Hypernotes totally for free online, and on your mobile devices:

Web | iOS | Android

Of course we also created desktop apps, which you can download from the Hypernotes platforms page.

That’s all folks! We’d love to hear what you think about the newest member of the Zenkit family! We hope you all enjoy using it as much as we enjoyed building it. Please feel free to share your feedback in the comments below, and don’t forget to share your support on our Product Hunt launch tomorrow!

Cheers,

Siobhan and the Zenkit Team

The post World, Meet Hypernotes appeared first on Zenkit.

We’re so excited to reveal the reason we’ve been so quiet these last few weeks: World, meet Zenchat!

Zenchat is a chat app. But it’s not just any old chat app. Zenchat’s built-in task management functions enable holistic collaboration in teams like never before.

Meet Zenchat

Zenchat is just like the chat apps you know and love, with a little Zenkit magic thrown in:

Chat 1:1, in a group, about a project (from Base or To Do!), or even about a single topic or task.
Quickly turn any message into a task & assign or edit within your chat. Never switch apps for routine task management again!
Get in the habit of directly chatting about tasks so valuable information stays where it belongs. See that chat in the comments of any task or item, in any Zenkit product.
Connect Zenchat to the Zenkit Universe to see your tasks in advanced views like Kanban, Gantt, to do lists, and vice versa.
Like all Zenkit products, Zenchat is enterprise-ready: SSO, SCIM provisioning, admin tools, identity management & more.

So now you know the basics, let’s get back to the beginning. Why exactly did we make a chat app?

The Story Behind Zenchat

When we first started building Zenkit we thought that communication tools (like team chat) and tools to add structure to work (like Kanban boards, to do lists etc) had an equal impact on productivity and collaboration. We thought it was 50–50.

But if you watch the people around you, it’s more like 90–10, or even 99–1! Humans are naturally inclined to chat. It’s a habit that sticks with us not only in our private lives, but at work too. That said, without that 1% of structure, there’s no sustainable productivity. Information just gets lost in chat threads.

So we have a problem: People don’t want to leave their chat, but they have to in order to track their work. But when you use an external app to manage tasks, you lose all the valuable commentary and feedback related to that task because—let’s face it—you’d always rather have a quick chat about something than use the comment function in a task app.

But what about integrations? Well… we don’t think integrations quite cut it either. Commands are not handy for regular users (e.g. commands to add a task, or commands to show tasks). And like normal messages, the integrated task elements also get lost in chat threads and messages.

On top of that, there’s ambivalence about where to add task relevant information. Do you chat about it in your team or with your manager? Or do you add it as a comment on a task? The likelihood of someone adding the relevant info to a task after chatting about it is about as high as people using the comment feature in a task to discuss it. (So… pretty unlikely)

So we decided to make something that could do both. Something that would seamlessly combine collaboration and task management into one app.

That was the genesis of Zenchat.

We wanted to combine chat and tasks perfectly so that you’ll never have a jarring context switch that brings you out of your flow, you can keep task-related discussion connected to the task itself, and your conversations gain more direction and relevance.

How to Use Zenchat

Simply go to chat.https://zenkit.com and log in with your Zenkit account (if you’re not logged in already)!

1:1 Chats

Zenchat will already have all of the people you already collaborate with in other Zenkit products available to chat with. Simply search for their name and get chatting!

If you’re not yet connected, invite them to join Zenkit by clicking the + icon, then “Invite new user by email”.

Group Chats

From that same + menu you can create new group chats with members you’re connected with. Give the group a name, add as many members as you like, and get chatting!

Project Chats

This is where it gets interesting! Using the Zenkit Universe, you can connect any collection from Base, or any list from To Do, to a chat. Once connected, you have a group chat directly connected to your project and anyone who’s a member of the collection or list will also be a member of the chat. Tasks created in this chat will become tasks in the To Do list, or items in the Base collection.

Whenever anyone chats about or comments on tasks or items, a short summary of that will be added to the project chat so that you have a bird’s-eye view over what’s going on in your projects.

Topic Chats

Chat about any task or item. In any chat, click to open any task and start commenting on it. “Star” a task to make it appear as a separate chat in the panel to the left.

If you’re commenting on a task or item in another Zenkit product, you can choose to chat about it instead! To do so, open the item, click the … icon in the top right hand corner and choose “Open in Zenchat” (this only works if you already connected the chat to the collection or list).

Creating and viewing tasks

In all chats, any message can be turned into a task! Click the … icon on any message and choose “Convert to task”. To view the task details, simply click on the task to open it. You can even begin chatting about it from there, or click to expand and add even more detail!

A list of all tasks can be viewed from the task panel in the chat – simply click “Tasks” in the top right corner of the chat to view them. This panel can be opened as a small drop down menu or pinned as a panel to the right of your screen.

Chats are connected to To Do by default, but you can also connect them to Base. Once connected, you’ll see the option to “Open in To Do” and “Open in Base”.

What does this mean for other Zenkit products?

The great news is that with every new Zenkit product, all other products are improved. To release Zenchat, we made big improvements to the database and naturally several big changes to the comments! You’ll now see the chat in the comments section of tasks and items, and in these chat comments you can now send voice messages, attach pictures, preview links, and more!

Alongside the release of Zenchat, we’ve also updated our website to showcase the Zenkit suite and make plenty of space for all the new products coming soon!

Get started with Zenchat

You can use Zenchat on any device or platform you choose. Download the version you need here: iOS, Android, Windows, MacOS and Linux: .AppImage, .tar.gz, .deb, .rpm. Find the full list of download options here.

We hope you love using Zenchat as much as we do! Please let us know what you think in the comments below, and if you’ve given it a try we’d love to hear about your experiences!

Cheers,

Siobhan and the Zenkit Team

The post World, Meet Zenchat appeared first on Zenkit.

This is a very big day for us, and for Zenkit. Today, the Zenkit you know and love has been joined by a new product: Zenkit To Do. To Do is the first of many new products that will be joining the Zenkit family, so it’s time you were properly introduced!

But first of all: What does that mean for the original Zenkit application and for you as a Zenkit user?

The original Zenkit app will be in the center of the whole Zenkit product family. We will continue to improve its existing features and functions, as well as innovate as we always have done. To express this new central position, we rebranded it as the “Zenkit Base” or simply “the Base”. With the release of To Do, Zenkit Base will be stronger than ever. You can learn a little more about this rebranding and the latest changes to the Base here.

Now, on to the star of today’s blog:

What is Zenkit To Do?

Zenkit To Do is a super-simple task management tool designed from the ground up to help you work productively and collaborate with anyone. It’s just as beautifully designed as Zenkit, but much simpler and easier to use for daily task management.

In case you didn’t catch it last week, here’s To Do in action:

You can start using it by logging in to todo.https://zenkit.com with your existing Zenkit login credentials (or if you’re new here, register for an account).

What can it do?

Like any good task management tool, To Do allows you to focus on what needs to get done, reminding you at the appropriate time, and helping you get your team on board.

Here’s what you can expect in the first batch of features available with the launch (as you can expect, there’s a lot more on the way!):

Inbox
Quick Add
Smart lists
Starred
Sharing
Due Dates and Reminders
Repeaters
Subtasks & Checklists
Files
Comments
Offline support
Dark mode & new themes
And lots, lots more…

Check out the full list of features here.

So far, so… normal? We’ve picked out the most necessary features needed for people to get things done effectively. But what really sets To Do apart from the crowd are the additional features that make it a stellar choice for anyone looking for a little something more from their task manager.

The special sauce

Like Zenkit itself, To Do is enterprise ready, with groups, roles, SAML, SCIM, auditing, and everything else you need to ensure that your team is able to work securely on the same platform.

The most special thing about To Do, however, is that it’s part of the Zenkit Universe. This means that it integrates seamlessly with Zenkit Base, and any other products we will launch in the future. (We will roll out this sync the week after Easter).

So what does that mean, exactly?

While To Do can be used as a completely separate product, it is also deeply connected to Zenkit Base (and all future Zenkit products). All tasks within the To Do app can also be accessed and changed within the Base (and vice versa).

Tasks can be added and changed in the Kanban, mind map, Gantt chart, and all other views of Base, and the simplified to-dos are automatically synced to matching lists in To Do. This means that now you can choose if you want to use the full functionality of Zenkit Base or the simple, task-focused style of To Do (or both together).

It’s especially beneficial for teams who may already be using Zenkit Base, and would like to add more users to their setup but don’t necessarily need everyone to have full access. By adding To Do to your Zenkit suite, even more users will have access to whichever collections you choose to link, without having to join your collections or workspaces directly. The learning curve for To Do is also much smaller, meaning that new team members or clients can get on board quickly.

Zenkit To Do vs. Wunderlist

For those of you familiar with Wunderlist, Zenkit To Do should make you feel right at home. That’s no accident – Wunderlist’s imminent shutdown has left many users worried about what to do with their data, and dissatisfied with many of the alternatives. Zenkit To Do was created with the intention to give Wunderlist users a new home, too!

Additionally, with a “one-click-import” function, Wunderlist users will be able to transfer their lists, along with due dates and starred tasks, directly into Zenkit To Do.

Is there anything else I should know?

First of all, congratulations on getting this far! Today’s post has been a little longer than usual, so thanks for sticking with me. From now on we’re just crossing t’s and dotting i’s:

You can learn more about To Do on it’s dedicated home page, and all the features are listed on the To Do pricing page.

To Do has its own dedicated subscription structure, separate from the Base subscription and pricing. If you already have a Plus subscription for Base, you can still access To Do for free, and vice versa. All pricing information can be found on the To Do pricing page.

We have updated our Terms of Service today to reflect this addition to the Zenkit family, as well as to clarify and define some new terms used to describe how data is shared between the different products. Zenkit Terms are applicable to all Zenkit products.

Lastly, we’re hard at work putting together a new knowledge base specifically for Zenkit To Do. We’ll keep you posted as soon as it’s ready to go! If you have any questions, you’re welcome to get in touch with our lovely customer success team via the in-app chat, or via email to service@zenkit.com.

That’s it folks! What do you think of Zenkit To Do? Will you give it a try? We’re so happy to finally be able to show it to you all. It’s been a couple of months in development and it’s hard to keep such great news a secret

Cheers,
Siobhan and the Zenkit Team

The post World, Meet Zenkit To Do appeared first on Zenkit.

You may have noticed some visual changes around Zenkit recently – smoother lines, more fluid animations, and a subtle polish here and there. We’ve been working on something big, and this is just the first part of it. While we’ve been taking this crisis a day at a time, our team has been very busy working away at this update, and a huge project that we can’t wait to show you!

First Things First: Some Changes and Updates

A lot of the change is primarily visual. Zenkit still does the amazing things it’s always done, except now with a fresh look. We have built a couple of new features though, just to keep up with demand! (Don’t worry, the Zenkit mobile apps will get this update later this week).

Same Name, New Domain

The Zenkit you know and love is the same as ever, but it will now be accessed via the URL base.https://zenkit.com. Just a small indicator of things to come

If you have any collections bookmarked or linked anywhere, don’t worry, you’ll automatically be redirected to the right place!

Updated Profile and Settings

You can now access your Zenkit profile by clicking on your profile icon, then again on your name. Your profile manages your email address and password, language and date settings, authentication options and more. Other app settings, like theme, notifications, offline settings, and more, are accessed by the “Settings” menu.

New and Updated Themes

We wouldn’t let this design refresh without a few new theme options to choose from! The biggest difference you’ll notice is in the transparent theme, and how you pick your theme.

Transparent or not, light or dark, just click a toggle to switch between options. When you switch between light and dark, the appropriate backgrounds will appear underneath for you to choose from.

Filters for Gantt and Table Headers

Lastly, a little new feature that should make working in tables and in the Gantt view a little easier: You can now access filters for a specific field by clicking on the column name. This saves time by enabling you to quickly drill down into your data without losing context.

These are trying times. We hope you’re all well, staying inside when possible, helping each other out, and getting help when needed! Working from home or under great pressure can be strenuous so we hope that these changes to the app make your work, wherever you are, that little bit more delightful.

A Sneak Peek at What’s Coming Next…

On that note, we would like to introduce you to the newest member of the Zenkit family: Zenkit To Do.

Zenkit To Do was designed from the ground up to make managing tasks as easy as possible. With a beautiful, intuitive design, smart lists, reminders, and more, it enables you to collaborate with your team, family, and friends, wherever you are. (Update 06.04.20: Learn more about it here – Meet Zenkit To Do).

So you see, from now on we have two products: The original Zenkit product, now known as Zenkit Base, and Zenkit To Do, the first of many new products to come. Zenkit Base will be the centre of the new and evolving Zenkit Universe. You will learn a lot more about this in the weeks to come.

For now, the most important and wonderful thing to know about this is that they work seamlessly together. Zenkit Base and Zenkit To Do share the same data store. You log in with the same email address and password. The tasks you see in Zenkit To Do are the exact same tasks as they are in your collections in the original Zenkit app. There’s no syncing, no imports, and no hassle. Mark something as “Done” in the To Do app, it will also be done in your Zenkit collection, and vice versa.

The beauty of this system is that different people need different types of tools. We tried to achieve this within the main Zenkit app, but of course, it got a bit too complex for some use cases. Now, a manager who needs a high-level overview of a project can create a Gantt chart, mind map or Kanban board, then link the collection to a Zenkit To Do list. From there, employees and other team members can work on their assigned tasks in a simple list, quickly find tasks due today or this week, and more, without having to deal with the more complex charts.

For those of you familiar with Wunderlist, some of the functions and features may ring a bell. We’ve taken inspiration from one of the most beloved task list apps around and wanted to offer a similar option for Wunderlist users looking for a new home as it’s gone for good on May 6th.

We will release Zenkit To Do in early April. We hope you’re as excited as we are!

Cheers,

Siobhan and the Zenkit Team

The post New Look, New Features, and an All-New Product (Soon) appeared first on Zenkit.

We’re excited to announce that the team at PomoDoneApp have built a direct integration with Zenkit using our newly released API! PomoDone is an app that helps you apply the Pomodoro Technique® to your work, helping you gain control over your time and boost productivity. They claim to help to eliminate distraction, sharpen focus, and prevent burnout, and from experience, I can say that’s just the case!

What is the Pomodoro Technique®?

As a big fan of this method, I’ve written about the Pomodoro Technique® in the past, but if you need a refresher, here’s a breakdown of the basics:

• Write a list of everything you need to do, in bite-sized, actionable tasks. (Check out my guide to writing effective tasks for ideas on how to do this really, really well!)
• Set a timer for 25 minutes.
• Work on the task until the timer rings, then put a checkmark next to your task.
• Take a 5-minute break. Walk around, grab a coffee, and do some stretches. Being active helps!
• Repeat! Keep adding checkmarks to your list until you’ve got 4 down, then take a longer break. 30 minutes is good.

The benefits of using a time tracking system like Pomodoro® are manyfold: According to Pomodoro® founder Francesco Cirillo, the technique can help you to handle interruptions, improve motivation by improving the content of work, reduce the complexity of your goals, meet deadlines without time pressure, and much, much more.

The beautiful thing about using a tool like PomoDone is that you don’t have to set the timer manually or re-write your to-do lists. You can download the desktop app or install the browser extension, then quickly connect it up to Zenkit collections to see your tasks in the app. When you’re ready to start focusing on a task, hit the timer and get started!

How to Integrate Zenkit with PomoDoneApp

First, you’ll need an account for both Zenkit and PomoDoneApp. Once you’re all signed up, here’s how you can connect them:

Click on ‘My Account’ in the top right-hand corner of PomoDone’s homepage, then find Zenkit in the list of integrations shown on the next page.

You’ll be redirected to a Zenkit page where you can give PomoDone access to your Zenkit items:

Click on ‘Authorize’, after which you’ll be redirected back to PomoDone where you can search through your Zenkit collections from the ‘Projects’. Choose your collection, click ‘Add to PomoDoneApp’, and you’re done! You can choose as many collections as you like. Once you’ve added them all, open the desktop app or browser extension to see all of your items and start timing them!

Clicking on 5, 15, or 25 sets the timer for that amount of time, with a 5-minute break automatically built-in. The timer will automatically continue for 4 cycles, but of course, you can also change the timer intervals to suit your own preferences. You can learn more about using PomoDone here, and as always, you can learn more about this integration in our Knowledge Base.

We hope you guys enjoy using this integration as much as we do! Have you tried using the Pomodoro Technique® before? Let us know in the comments!

Cheers,

Siobhan and the Zenkit Team

Note: PomoDoneApp is available with a free trial, after which it costs $2 or more per month. Pomodoro Technique® and Pomodoro® are registered trademarks of Francesco Cirillo.

The post Boost Your Productivity with PomoDoneApp and Zenkit appeared first on Zenkit.

The new year is often a time to reflect, to re-prioritize, and resolve to be and to do better. It brings with it a surge of motivation that inspires you to meet your goals faster. Here at Zenkit, we’re no different. Our development team has been hard at work, not only on developing some of our upcoming features, but also releasing a plethora of small updates that make using Zenkit just that little bit better…

Default Text Type

This one’s been a long time coming, but it’s finally here! You can now set the default text editor type of any text field in your collection. This means that you no longer have to update each text field to Markdown or HTML individually. Once you pick your default type, it will instantly be applied to the field in all future and existing items.

It’s super simple to update your text editor type:

• Click on the name of your text field.
• Click ‘Properties’.
• Pick a text type from the drop-down menu under ‘Editor Type’ and hit save!

This menu is also accessible from the fullscreen text editor, from the drop-down menu found in the top right-hand corner:

Permanent Delete

Long asked for, permanently deleting items is finally possible in Zenkit! If you’ve made a mistake, or have sensitive data that you need to remove permanently, the delete function is a lifesaver.

To permanently delete an item, you must first archive it, then click on the … icon in the top right corner of the item to open the actions menu. Click on ‘Delete Item’ to remove it permanently.

Note: Once you permanently delete an item, it’s gone forever. It is not possible for you or anyone on our team to restore the item once it’s been deleted. Please make sure you really want to delete it before confirming!

We’re aware that there are several steps to this, but it’s designed to protect you from accidentally deleting something. Eventually, we will also make it possible to delete items in bulk, once we’ve created a browsable archive.

As always, you can learn more about permanently deleting items in our Knowledge Base.

Notification Filters

This is one of my absolute favourite new updates. I’m sure I’m not the only person who gets bogged down with notifications from time to time, so having a way to narrow down which notifications I see is a blessing. The new notification filters let you select to show only read/unread notifications, and notifications for only the collection you’re in!

Using the notification filter is as simple as opening the notifications menu, and then clicking ‘Notifications’ to open the menu.

If you need a refresher on notifications, don’t forget to check out our notification documentation, or our spotlight on notifications.

Copy Values of a Field

In the past, you could only copy a field and all of its properties, but none of the values of that field. This means that it was impossible to replicate e.g. an entire column of the table without a lot of tedious manual data entry. Those days are now over! When you copy a field, you can now optionally copy all of the information that field contains, too!

To copy field values, just check the checkbox that appears under the field name on the confirmation dialogue:

Field Activities

Just a little, but still very helpful, update: Collection activities will now include activities about the addition or deletion of fields within a collection. This way, you’ll be able to see who created or deleted a field, and when exactly it happened.

Final Thoughts

We hope you’re as excited about these little updates as we are. We hope to keep improving Zenkit this way, bit by bit, for years to come. Let us know in the comments below what you think of these updates. We’d love to hear your feedback.

We’d also like to say thank you so much to all of you who have supported Zenkit and our team on this journey so far. We can’t wait for all the amazing new features to come!

Cheers,

Siobhan and The Zenkit Team

The post What’s New in Zenkit? appeared first on Zenkit.

It’s been a long time in the making, but we’re over the moon to announce the release of Zenkit for Android today!

The Zenkit Android app is a beauty. Clean, simple, and a perfect representation of all we’ve tried to achieve with our web app, now available anywhere.

Along with its release, we’re also releasing a brand new update to the iOS app, to put it on par with the Android and web versions.

The Goods

To put it simply, Zenkit on Android is exactly that. It’s the entire Zenkit experience in app form*:

• Kanban, calendar & to-do list views
• Creating teams and collections
• Managing collaborations
• Uploading files & images
• Super powerful filters
• My Favorites
• My Calendar
• My Team
• Global search
• And one more thing…

Offline Access

When your internet connection is a bit slow, when you’re driving through a tunnel, or even when you’re 30,000ft up in the air, you can work with Zenkit.

Yep. Zenkit can be used offline. You can walk out the door, into a forest or up a mountain and still access your data. And this isn’t just for the Android and iOS apps: you can use Zenkit offline in your web browser, too! (!!!!!!!!!!!)

How is this possible?!

Well, when you open a collection on your phone (or computer), the data in it will be saved to your device.

This means that you can add and edit items, write comments, regroup your views, and filter your collections. And it’ll all be synced up again once you get back online!

Bonus: Storing your Zenkit data locally also means that load times and filters are fast.

How Did We Make This Magic Happen?

Unlike the first version of the iOS app, we decided to build a “Progressive Web App” (PWA) instead of a native app for Android.

A progressive web app is a website that looks and behaves just like a mobile app: You can add a Zenkit icon to your phone screen, get and send push notifications, access your device’s hardware (like your camera), and work offline.

So why did we make a PWA instead of a native app?

At Zenkit, we firmly believe that progressive web apps are the future. We see the underlying technology in this area continues to improve every year. That’s why we decided to make progressive web apps the foundation of the Zenkit mobile experience.

PWA technology allows us to keep all Zenkit apps, on all devices, completely up-to-date and on par with each other at all times. It lets us consistently deliver the optimal Zenkit experience to our entire user base.

Every performance update or additional feature we make for the web app will also be provided to all Zenkit apps on all devices. This means, for example, that the offline technology we built for the iOS and Android apps can be used not only on future desktop apps, but also for the web browser — not tomorrow, but today. Right now.

Using a PWA instead of a native app also means that we can send regular updates to the app, without having to wait through long app-approval processes. Not only that but just like the Zenkit website, your app is updated on use. This means that simply using the app will get you the latest version.

Security and the privacy of your data is very important to us. Using a PWA means that you have secure access through our existing https:// protocols. As with all other features, any security updates and fixes will be immediately available in the Zenkit app, too.

Last but not least, due to its web-based origins, the Zenkit app is very lightweight. It doesn’t require a huge download and can be accessed even if you’re working with a low-quality internet connection. The first time you access it, it’s loaded with your average website load speed, but the next time you open it, access will be almost instant thanks to the cached data.

Our goal is to help our customers be as productive as possible in any situation they find themselves in. We want to give them access to their information on whatever device they choose to work with. Mobile devices are a vital part of today’s workplace and a big part of being productive — especially when on the go.

As with the main Zenkit web app, we’re aware that there’s room for improvement. However, you can take our word that we will work hard to continuously improve our app to make it the best

We hope you enjoy using Zenkit on Android, and we’re excited to see where the future takes us!

Martin, CEO of Zenkit

I want to send a huuuuuuuuge thank you to our developers who worked night and day to get this up and running. Congratulations, team!

That’s all from us! We’re super proud and excited to have finally released our Android app, and we’re looking forward to hearing what you think. Please feel free to comment below or send an email to feedback@zenkit.com. Enjoy!

Cheers,

Siobhan and the Zenkit Team

*Support for mind map and table views are coming soon. We just want to make sure they’re perfect before we send them out

The post Zenkit for Android appeared first on Zenkit.