Today, we’re proud to finally release our most requested feature ever. Since Zenkit was launched way back in 2016, our users have been requesting that we develop a Gantt chart or timeline view. We’ve been putting it off, not because we thought it was a bad idea, but because we thought it was so important that we had to do it right. We had to wait until the moment we were able to do it justice.

Now is that moment.

Over the years, we’ve learned a lot. Not just about building software, but also about project management and everything it entails. We feel that Zenkit the product, and Zenkit the team, is mature and experienced enough to manage the complexity involved in delivering the best Gantt view we could.

With the new Gantt view, we didn’t want to create just a simple timeline view of your tasks. We wanted to make sure we could deliver every feature you’d expect from a fully-fledged Gantt tool. This means that not only are your tasks displayed on a timeline, but that you can create 4 different types of dependencies between tasks, add lag and lead, create milestones, view the critical path, and even display one chart superimposed over another.

Let’s get into it!

Benefits of Using Gantt

Zenkit started life as a Kanban tool – the increasingly popular project management methodology used by teams of all sorts around the world. Like Kanban, Gantt is a way to track and manage projects. The main difference between Gantt and Kanban is that Gantt gives you a more structured, granular overview of the project schedule, while Kanban focuses primarily on the progress of tasks. This means that you can precisely track the start and end dates of activities, whether or not an activity is dependent on another, the resources needed to complete them and much more. Unlike Kanban, Gantt charts give a clear and easy to understand visual representation of the project timeline, enabling you to understand your project schedule and resources at a glance.

Gantt charts were commonly used in long term, complex waterfall projects that involve physical resources and multiple teams of people, particularly in industries like construction, manufacturing, engineering, infrastructure, IT, and more. Now, with the help of software (like Zenkit!), you don’t need years of special training as a project manager to manage complex schedules and task lists. Almost anyone can create a Gantt chart if they think it would help their project!

Introducing Gantt View for Zenkit

Gantt View is rolling out to Plus and Business users today! Here, I’ll cover the main functions of the view, but of course, as always, you can learn more about it in our Gantt View documentation.

Dependencies

You can create dependencies between scheduled items by dragging and dropping an arrow between the tasks on the chart. Click on the arrow to change the dependency type, add a description of the dependency, or add lag and lead.

Critical Path

The critical path shows the items in your chart that determine the minimum time needed to complete the project. If any item on the path is delayed or takes longer than expected, the project will be completed late. When the critical path is activated, the items on the path appear in orange.

Lag and Lead

Lag and lead allow you to add delays between tasks, or allow a task to start earlier than scheduled if there’s no clash of resources. This function is available only to Zenkit Business users. Lag is indicated in red, lead in green.

Milestones

Milestones are used to indicate important points in a project. Usually the start and end of a project are marked, as well as the completion of important phases, and appointments such as external review or auditing, or budget checks. Zenkit displays milestones clearly with a blue horizontal line.

Secondary Date

In some instances, it may be helpful to show one Gantt chart superimposed on top of another, for example, a chart that tracks the actual dates of your project on top of the originally planned dates. In Zenkit, this can be done by creating a second date field and opting to display it on the chart via the Gantt view options. This is available only to Business Plan customers.

Breakdown by Time Period

If your project is very long, it wouldn’t make any sense to view it on the scale of days or weeks. In fact, it may make more sense to view it in months or even years! Zenkit lets you change the scale of the chart, as well as zoom in and out along that scale.

Drag & Drop

Drag items onto the chart, move to re-schedule or drag the edges to change the duration of tasks. You can even drag and drop to change the hierarchy of tasks and subtasks! It may seem pretty basic, but it makes working in Gantt just that little bit more delightful!

We’re extremely proud of Zenkit’s Gantt view, and hope we’ve been able to do it justice! Do you use Gantt charts in your projects? What do you think of our latest view? As always, we’d love to hear your feedback. Please feel free to leave a comment here or contact our team to let us know!

Cheers,

Siobhan and the Zenkit Team

The post Introducing Gantt View for Zenkit appeared first on Zenkit.

Feature prioritization is an important aspect of product development. Adding new features to your product allows you to improve it by meeting customer demands and staying ahead of the competition. However, it can be a difficult operation. 

Prioritizing feature requests is an ongoing process in which product teams must collaborate to determine which new features to prioritize. Decisions must consider market competition, cost, time, and available resources, as well as align with business objectives. 

So, how do you know you’re making the right choice? 

In this article, we’ll show you how to prioritize feature requests by considering the dimensions of each feature, as well as popular frameworks for implementing them and how the process looks from various perspectives. 

11 Dimensions of Feature Prioritization

The process of determining which features or functions of a product should be developed or improved first is known as feature prioritization. To prioritize features, the following dimensions can be used: 

1. Estimated Profit

Profit is a significant factor to consider when deciding which features to prioritize. The first step may be to focus on the feature that will cost your team less to build rather than one that will cost more. However, the construction cost isn’t the only figure to consider. Consider the following example, which breaks down the figures involved in two feature requests: 

Cost to build

A: $1,000,000     B: $5,000

Revenue

A: $2,000,000   B: $100,000

Profit

A: $1,000,000   B: $95,000

At first glance, it appears that feature A has the potential to generate $2 million, so why would it not be prioritized over feature B? However, if you do the math, you’ll see that B has a higher profit margin. 

2. Business Value

This dimension factors in how much value the feature adds to the company or organization developing the product. Features that are more likely to increase revenue, lower costs, or improve the organization’s competitive position are typically prioritized higher than features with less business impact.

Market research, such as analyzing customer needs and behaviour and examining the competition, can be used to determine business value. Prioritizing features that align with business goals and objectives is critical to ensuring the product’s financial and strategic success. 

3. User Value/Market Risk

This dimension refers to how much value the feature adds to the product’s end users. Features that have a direct impact on the user experience, improve the user’s ability to achieve their goals, or provide significant benefits to the user are typically prioritized higher than less impactful features.

If you don’t have specific profit figures, you must estimate market risk. The market risk can influence where a feature should be placed on your priority list. 

It is not uncommon for features with higher technical risks to be associated with lower market risk. A social media app, for example, is something that can be built over the weekend, but that means that almost anyone can build it, which increases market risk. Building a teleport device, on the other hand, would take much longer than a weekend and would require a lot more effort, but it would pose a much lower market risk. 

Conducting user research, such as user interviews, surveys, or usability testing, can help to determine user value. To ensure the product’s success, it’s critical to prioritize features that align with the user’s needs and goals. 

4. Technical Risk

Each feature request brings with it its own set of technical risks. Delays, additional costs, or a feature inadvertently affecting other parts of your software in unexpected ways are all possibilities during development. Ideally, you should weigh in on each feature request and prioritize those that will not overburden your development team or process. Less risky features or those with a lower potential for negative impact on the product or project are typically prioritized higher than riskier features.

A risk analysis can be used to determine the risks associated with a feature, which examines the potential impact of the feature on the product, the likelihood of the feature causing issues, and the ability to mitigate any potential issues. To ensure that the product is stable and reliable, prioritize features that have a low risk of causing problems. 

5. Technical Complexity/Effort/Resource Availability

In addition to costs, the availability of resources should be considered when prioritizing feature requests. This can include but is not always limited to, the number of development work hours, time, and effort required to create and maintain each feature. 

Features that can be quickly and easily implemented are typically prioritized higher than features that require a significant amount of time or resources. A feasibility analysis, which examines the technical feasibility of the feature, the availability of resources, and the timeline for implementation, can be used to determine the effort required to implement a feature. To ensure that the product is delivered on time and within budget, it is critical to prioritize features that can be implemented efficiently. 

Here’s an example of how this could work: 

Feature A will take 10 weeks to complete, while Feature B will take 5 weeks. 

You currently have your entire team available, but keep in mind that the holiday season is approaching. Will you still have the same amount of power in 10 weeks? If yes, then perhaps feature A should be prioritized; if no, perhaps feature B should be prioritized right now. 

Thinking ahead can help you avoid problems or delays that could arise if only half of your team is available in the final stages of development. 

6. Team Risk

Because there are many different people involved in product development, and everyone wants to add their two cents, team risk is another dimension to consider when prioritizing feature requests.

Developers, for example, may not take an idea rejection lightly if the reasons are not adequately explained. Other stakeholders may be disappointed that their latest brilliant idea will not be realized for very valid technical reasons. As a result, issues concerning the people who work on the product can sometimes outweigh technical risks.

7. Team Value (aka. “Eating your own dog food”)

“Eating your own dog food” is a saying in the software industry that refers to companies testing their products internally in real-world scenarios to get a sense of how their customers would use them. 

Inquiring about the value of a product from the team that created it is both quality control and good marketing. Consider this: no one knows the product better than the people who created it. So, asking everyone involved how much value they place on a potential new feature could help you decide which requests to prioritize and which to reject. 

8. Development Cost

This dimension includes the cost of developing each feature. It entails determining the resources (time, money, and manpower) needed to construct each feature. In most cases, if the estimated profit is significant, you would usually continue with the feature development. However, there may be times when a feature is too expensive to justify the effort (even if it has the potential to generate a large profit!). 

Asteroid mining, for example, has the potential to generate enormous profits, but the costs associated with carrying it out may make it prohibitively expensive to pursue right now. 

While other, more attainable features are prioritized, the asteroid mining feature request equivalent may have to take a back seat.

9. Time-to-Market

This dimension emphasizes the importance of each feature. It entails determining the time required to develop and release each feature, as well as the consequences of delaying its release.

10. Dependencies

This dimension addresses how the feature interacts with other features or functionalities of the product. Features that rely on other features or functionalities that are already prioritized higher are typically prioritized higher than standalone features. A dependency analysis, which examines the relationships between different features and functionalities, can be used to determine the dependencies associated with a feature. To ensure that the product is cohesive and functional, prioritize features that can be seamlessly integrated into it.

11. Urgency

This dimension considers how urgently the feature is required. Features that are critical to the success of the product or project or have a tight deadline are typically prioritized higher than less urgent features. Examining the project timeline, customer needs, and business objectives can help determine the urgency of a feature. It is critical to prioritize time-sensitive features to ensure that the product is delivered on time and meets the needs of the customer.

By taking these dimensions into account, product managers and teams can effectively and efficiently prioritize features and ensure they are delivering the most valuable features to users and the business. 

Popular Feature Prioritization Frameworks

Prioritizing feature requests for software development is a critical task for any software development team. Here are some tips for effectively prioritizing feature requests:

Kano Model

The Kano model is a framework for understanding and categorizing the needs and desires of customers. Noriaki Kano, a Japanese researcher, invented it in the 1980s, and it has since become widely used in product development and customer satisfaction analysis. 

The Kano model divides customer needs into three categories: 

1. Basic Needs: Customers expect these features as a bare minimum for a product or service to be considered acceptable. If these requirements are not met, the product or service will fail. Reliability, ease of use, and safety are examples of basic needs.
   
2. Performance Needs: These are features that customers are explicitly looking for in a product or service. Meeting these needs can help a product differentiate itself from competitors and increase customer satisfaction. Examples of performance needs might include speed, design, and quality.
3. Excitement Needs: These are features that customers do not necessarily expect to see, but when they do, they delight the customer and create a memorable experience. Innovative features, personalized experiences, and unexpected benefits are examples of excitement requirements.

   

Product designers and developers can prioritize which features to include in their products and services by understanding the various types of customer needs. Additionally, the Kano model assists businesses in identifying areas where they can exceed customer expectations and gain a competitive advantage. 

RICE Score Model

The RICE framework is a product development prioritization model that helps teams decide which projects or features to work on first. It takes into account four factors that are commonly used to assess a project’s potential impact: 

• Reach: The number of individuals who will be impacted by the project or feature. This includes both the size of the target market and the level of engagement or interaction with the project that users will have.
  
  
• Impact: The extent to which the project or feature will have an impact on the user or the business. Revenue generation, cost savings, customer satisfaction, and brand reputation are examples of such factors.
• Confidence: The degree to which the project or feature is certain to have the desired impact. This can be based on customer feedback, market research, or previous experience.
• Effort: The time, resources, and complexity needed to complete the project or feature. This includes both the development effort and any post-launch support or maintenance. 

The RICE framework is used to assign a score to each project or feature based on the four factors. The following is the formula for calculating the score: 

RICE Score = Reach x Impact x Confidence / Effort 

Projects or features with the highest RICE scores are prioritized first because they are expected to have the most impact with the least amount of effort. The RICE framework provides a systematic and objective approach to prioritization, assisting teams in making data-driven decisions and focusing on the most likely-to-succeed projects or features. 

MoSCoW Method

The MoSCoW method is a technique for prioritizing tasks that is used in project management, software development, and business analysis. It is a simple framework for determining the priority of requirements and features that are critical to the success of a project. 

MoSCoW is an acronym that stands for: 

• Must-Have: Essential requirements or features that must be delivered for the project to be considered a success.
• Should-Have: Important but not critical requirements or features. They can be delayed, if necessary, but they should be delivered as soon as possible.
• Could-Have: Requirements or features that are desirable but not required for the project’s success. If time and resources allow, they can be included.
• Won’t-Have: Requirements or features that aren’t part of the project’s current scope, either because they aren’t necessary or because they can be added later. 

Project stakeholders can use the MoSCoW method to prioritize requirements and features, allocate resources, and focus on delivering the most critical elements first. This helps to ensure that the project achieves its goals and provides value to the stakeholders.

Value vs. Complexity

The Value vs. Complexity framework is a software development tool for prioritizing and managing project requirements. It assists teams in assessing and evaluating each requirement along two dimensions: the potential value it adds to the project and the level of complexity involved in implementing it. 

The Value dimension refers to the value that a requirement brings to the project in terms of business value, customer value, or strategic value. The higher the value of a requirement, the more critical its implementation. 

The level of technical complexity involved in implementing a requirement is referred to as the Complexity dimension. The more complex the requirement, the more time and resources will be needed to implement it. 

Teams can prioritize their work based on the relative importance of each requirement by plotting it on a Value vs. Complexity matrix. High-value, low-complexity requirements should be prioritized first, while low-value, high-complexity requirements should be deprioritized or deferred. 

The Value vs. Complexity framework assists teams in allocating resources and focusing on delivering the most critical requirements first, all while minimizing risk and avoiding unnecessary complexity. It can also assist teams in identifying opportunities to simplify complex requirements or divide them into smaller, more manageable pieces. 

WSJF

The Weighed Shortest Job First (WSJF) framework is a prioritization model used in Agile software development and product management. It assists teams in determining the order in which to work on backlog items (such as user stories or features) based on their relative importance and urgency. 

When prioritizing backlog items, the WSJF framework takes four factors into account: 

• Business Value: The extent to which the backlog item contributes to the overall business goals and objectives.
• Time Criticality: The extent to which a backlog item is time-sensitive and must be completed within a specific timeframe.
• Risk Reduction/Opportunity Enablement: The extent to which the backlog item reduces risk or opens new opportunities.
• Job Size: The amount of time and effort required to complete a backlog item. 

The formula for calculating the WSJF score is as follows: 

WSJF Score = Business Value + Time Criticality + Risk Reduction/Opportunity Enablement / Job Size 

Teams can prioritize their work and focus on the items with the highest value and urgency by calculating the WSJF score for each backlog item. This enables teams to provide value to the business more quickly and reduces the risk of delays or missed deadlines. 

The WSJF framework is especially beneficial to teams working in a Lean or Agile environment, where the emphasis is on delivering value quickly and efficiently. It enables teams to make informed decisions and optimize their workflow by providing a structured and objective approach to prioritization. 

Cost of Delay

The Cost of Delay (CoD) framework is a decision-making tool that assists organizations in prioritizing their work by calculating the cost of delaying the delivery of a feature or project. Don Reinertsen popularized the framework in his book “The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development.” 

The CoD framework takes into account four factors: 

1. Value: The worth of a feature or project to the organization, its customers, or stakeholders.
2. Time criticality: The feature or project’s urgency or time sensitivity.
3. Risk reduction or opportunity enablement: The extent to which a feature or project reduces risk or opens up new possibilities.
4. Effort or cost of implementation: The effort or cost required to implement the feature or project. 

By taking these factors into account, the CoD framework enables teams to quantify the cost of delaying the delivery of a feature or project and use this information to make informed prioritization decisions. The framework also assists teams in identifying the most valuable work to prioritize and reduces the risk of delaying critical work. 

By using these frameworks, software development teams can prioritize features more effectively and efficiently, ensuring that the most valuable features are delivered to users and the business. 

How to Prioritize Software Development Feature Requests in 7 Steps 

Prioritizing feature requests for software development is a critical task for any software development team. Here are some tips for effectively prioritizing feature requests: 

1. Collect and Analyze the Requests

The first step in prioritizing feature requests is to collect all requests from various sources. Customer feedback, internal team members, stakeholders, and market research are examples of these sources. It is critical to organize the requests in a single location, such as a product backlog, to make them easier to review and prioritize. Analyze each request by evaluating its potential business value, technical complexity, development cost, and potential impact on the user experience. 

2. Evaluate Each Feature Request

Once the criteria have been established, compare each feature request to them. Score each request against each criterion and assign a weight to each criterion to reflect its importance. You can use a scoring system or a simple categorization method such as high, medium, and low priority to categorize the requests. A critical user value criterion, for example, may be given more weight than an urgency criterion. Use a spreadsheet or another tool to assist with the evaluation and scoring process. 

3. Rank the Requests

After evaluating each feature request, assign a score to each one. This order will aid in determining which features should be prioritized first. Begin with the most popular feature requests and work your way down the list. 

Various ranking methods, such as weighted scoring, cost-benefit analysis, and comparative analysis, are available. You should also define and agree on the prioritization criteria for the feature. Defining the criteria for prioritization is critical to ensuring that everyone is on the same page about the important factors for the product. User value, business value, effort, risk, dependencies, and urgency are typical criteria. To avoid future disagreements or confusion, ensure that all stakeholders agree on the criteria. 

4. Align with Company Goals

Ensure that the prioritized feature requests are in line with the overall goals and objectives of the company. Prioritize the features that are most important to achieving those objectives. 

5. Consider Time and Resource Constraints

Consider your team’s time and resource constraints. Prioritize the features that can be delivered within the time and resources available. 

6. Communicate the Priorities

After prioritizing feature requests, communicate the priorities to stakeholders such as the product owner, development team, and customer support team. Ensure that everyone is on the same page with the priorities so that the team can focus on the right features. Consider using a visual aid, such as a product roadmap, to help communicate the priorities and timeline for each feature’s delivery. 

7. Re-Evaluate and Adjust Priorities

Review and adjust feature prioritization on a regular basis based on market conditions, customer and stakeholder feedback, and the development team’s progress. 

Priorities should be established on an ongoing basis, and they can shift at any time. Periodically re-evaluate the prioritization criteria and adjust the priorities accordingly. Make sure to notify stakeholders and the development team of any changes in priorities. 

Following these steps will allow you to effectively prioritize feature requests and ensure that your team delivers the most valuable features to users and the business. 

Final Thoughts

Building new features can be exciting, but if the prioritization process isn’t up to par, it can strain the team and take the fun out of development. 

Taking into account the various dimensions of each feature request, as well as implementing a framework and evaluating the process from various perspectives, can make feature prioritization a more enjoyable experience for everyone involved. 

What criteria does your team use to prioritize feature requests? 

The post How to Prioritize Software Development Feature Requests appeared first on Zenkit.

We’ve been pretty quiet on here recently, and for good reason – our dev team have been hard at work redesigning the entire app from the ground up! Zenkit’s new design is cleaner, more modern, easier to understand, and way more mobile-friendly.

We loved our old design, but it lacked a coherent structure, having been built upon bit by bit over the years. Each new menu was written separately, every new feature was designed on its own, and the app wasn’t that fun to use on mobile devices. We decided to unify the whole design language of the app while improving mobile usability:

“We needed a flexible solution for dialogues, that would work on desktop, tablet, and mobile. The framework we came up with allows us to display dialogues in multiple modes (dropdown, modal, inline) and the mode can vary between devices. Even better, dialogues can be stacked on top of each other or reused separately in different contexts.

There simply wasn’t a framework or library out there that was capable of doing this on the web, so we built one ourselves.”

Jesse, CTO

So what’s new? Well, everything, and yet, not all that much! This is still the Zenkit you know and love, and most things are still where they used to be, just slicker and with way cooler animations. The first thing you’ll notice is the way items, menus, confirmation dialogues, and all manner of text entry points all adhere to the same design rules now. But we can be a bit more specific than that…

Mobile Updates

An all-round better UI & UX

Since the user interface and user experience on mobile devices (particularly iPads and other tablet devices) were what initially encouraged us to give Zenkit a design update in the first place, it’s only fitting that we start by highlighting the new features we’ve added to the mobile apps.

The team worked hard to ensure that the mobile apps looked and behaved as you would expect from a native app. Buttons are bigger, the text is better-spaced, the navigation animations are much clearer, and menus are easier to find. Binary actions such as subscribing to or downloading a collection, toggling default settings in a field, or managing notification settings are now controlled using simple toggles. Common mobile behaviours such as swiping to perform certain activities are enabled, and it’s now easier to share from other apps directly into Zenkit. The apps will be available in the next couple of days. So let’s get down to the details:

Swipe gestures on mobile

iOS users rejoice! The swipe gestures you know and love are now a part of Zenkit, too! (And, of course, they’re also available for Android users ;)) There are a few places where swiping comes into play:

• Home screen:
  • On a collection: Swipe right to archive, left to add an item or open settings
  • On workspaces: Swipe left to open settings or add a collection
  • On global views: Swipe left to open settings
• In an open item:
  • Files: Right to delete, left to download/open a link
  • Members: Right to remove
  • Checklists: Right to remove
  • Collection / Workspace Members: Right to remove
• In the notifications menu: Right to mark as read/unread
• In list view: Right to archive an item

Share files to Zenkit from any other app

You can now easily share links, images, documents, and more to a new item in Zenkit via your phone’s ‘Share’ function! When you share a file, you can pick the collection you want to add to, give the item a title, and assign a due date.

Once added, the new item will open and you’ll be able to add any further details. This sharing feature will, of course, be expanded in the future, with options to add to existing items and to enter data for other fields immediately in the share panel.

Shortcuts/Quick Add

For phones that support it, you can now add items and search your Zenkit collections by long hold on a Zenkit item!

Open the camera from the ‘Add files’ button

You can now add a photo directly from your camera by selecting the ‘Take photo’ option from the menu that appears when you click ‘Add a file…’ on any item.

All-Round App Updates

Of course, we didn’t just update the mobile apps! The design update applies to all versions of the app—web and desktop apps included. Many of the changes are just tweaks to the existing UI, however, there are several areas where we’ve made some big changes or added new functionality, which I’d like to highlight here.

New Profile, Collection, and Workspace settings

One of the biggest visual changes is the way our settings dialogues appear, and this is especially visible in your profile, as well as workspace and collection settings dialogues.

These new settings dialogues open with a single click (instead of the sometimes multiple clicks needed to open them in the past). Now, all actions are kept in the sidebar to the left, while settings are manipulated in the main panel on the right. If you enable an add-on, you will see it listed at the bottom of the actions panel so you can change your add-on settings directly there.

We feel that this new layout makes it much quicker and easier to find exactly what you’re looking for, and reduces the number of clicks needed to get anywhere.

Public vs private views

A new collection-specific feature we’re fond of is the new public and private views. Now, whenever you create a saved view (with or without an attached filter), you can choose whether that view is available to all users of the collection, or just shown to you. Private views will appear at the top of your view list, followed by public ones.

You can re-order them within their groups, and whenever you create a new view, it’s automatically marked as ‘private’ unless you toggle it back to ‘public’.

New saved filter settings

Not to be outdone by the views menu, we’ve made some changes to how filters look, too! In our new design, saved filters can be accessed by a ‘Saved’ tab within the menu:

Filter settings have also received the ‘brand new menu’ upgrade, with lovely slide effects, clearer button hovers and a more logical layout.

More attached filter options

It used to be that when you wanted to add a saved filter to a view, you needed to first have that filter active.  Now, you can pick any saved filter from your list to add to any view. It’s also now possible to add or change filters on a view from the mobile app

New menus for field settings and activities

Field settings and activities have had a boost, too. You can still access them by clicking on the name of the field, but now it directly opens the field properties menu, with various field actions shown underneath the properties.

Quickly add or remove labels, edit field descriptions, toggle default settings on or off, or take advantage of field functions like duplicating, using bulk actions or setting a field as the Kanban grouping order all in one place.

Export button for mind maps

Finally! Export your mind maps in their entirety to .png format. The mind map export button can be found in the top right-hand corner of the map and will export your entire map in a streamlined, easy-to-read map.

“More” button for activities

Accidentally deleted everything you wrote in a text field? Now you can retrieve that info by clicking ‘More’ under the activity to find your original text. This will open a panel that contains the entire text that was in the field before it was deleted. You can also comment on the activity from this panel (even if it’s just to let your colleagues know you’re putting everything back where you found it!).

18 new label colours

Last, but not least! Pick from a range of 32 colours for your labels to help differentiate your tasks & make your coloured items stand out!

That’s not all…

We’ve been busy creating a whole lot of exciting new features which we’ll be rolling out over the next few weeks (including a new way to connect Zenkit with other apps.. ). This update also has a whole host of bug fixes and little tweaks around the app that makes using it much more of a pleasure.

We hope you love the new design as much as we do! Please feel free to leave your thoughts and feedback in the comments below

Cheers,

Siobhan and the Zenkit Team

The post Introducing a Brand New Zenkit Design appeared first on Zenkit.

Today we released a big feature update that we hope will help you collaborate better, enjoy your work more, and simply get more done!

Task lists

My Favorites

‍ My Team

We have also released our Wunderlist import, so you can move your lists over in a flash. These features are a huge step towards achieving our goal of becoming the perfect task management tool. We hope you enjoy them!

To-do lists, Zenkit Style

Do you like checking tasks off as you get them done? Does that little ping of completion put a pep in your step? Does watching your task list get shorter and shorter make the little productivity-ist inside of you glow with happiness? Then do we have the feature for you!

With the ‘Task Lists’ add-on you can upgrade your Zenkit collections into the kind of to-do list you’ll recognize from Wunderlist, Todoist, Google Keep, Remember The Milk… Pretty much any to-do list app out there!

When you enable the task list add-on, you’ll be able to check tasks off in any view with a single click. But just like the rest of Zenkit, this neat little feature is a lot more flexible than you’d first expect…

The task list feature works with any label fields you have — so yes, you can move an item from ‘to-do’ to ‘done’ with a click, but you could also move it from ‘in progress’ to ‘published’ or ‘not urgent’ to ‘urgent’.

This feature can be enabled for any collection, and you can choose which label field and labels you want to use in each collection.

Anywhere you check the box, you’ll see the change reflected in every view.

Learn more about Task Lists.

Wunderlist Import

Our to-do list update wouldn’t be that useful unless you were able to import your existing lists, right? So we’re pretty excited to release our Wunderlist import, too! You guys use the Trello import a lot, which makes a lot of sense because a lot of users have already started a project there and don’t want to start all over again in a new app. So with Wunderlist, we wanted to give you the same opportunity.

To import from Wunderlist, just select it from the import options when you create a new collection.

We’re so happy to be able to roll this out to you all. We’ve had a lot of fun testing it over the last few weeks, and hope that you’ll get as much enjoyment out of it as we do!

Learn more about importing from Wunderlist.

“My Favorites” for Zenkit

Many popular apps let you ‘Favorite’ things. It’s a great way to track your personal favorites, be they Tweets, Instagram images, or even tasks on your to-do list. We wanted to let you do the same thing in Zenkit, so we made the “My Favorites” add-on!

How does it work?

“My Favorites” is another global add-on, which means that it lets you collect items from across your entire account in one place. It’s a private view, so nobody else will know which items are your favorites, and which aren’t.

By default, when you activate favorites, it simply lets you tag any item in any collection as a favorite. You can then view all of your favorites in a single space by opening the favorites view from the navigation panel.

You can choose to set up multiple favorite tags (kind of like a global labelling system). When you go to mark an item as a favorite, you can choose which tag to give it, and then view that item in a favorites list.

Of course, we also let you choose the colour of the tags, and we’re pretty in love with the confetti explosion too!

Make Favorites work for you

Personally one of my favorite ways to use favorites is with a ‘Pomodoro’ tag. I am absolutely obsessed with using the Pomodoro technique, as it’s one of the few time management methods that’s had a massive positive impact on my productivity.

I have a Pomodoro tag set up, and each day when I’m assessing my list of things to do, I assign that tag to the tasks I want to focus on for the day. That way, instead of looking at a cluttered Kanban board containing everything that needs to be done, I have a focused, distraction-free view of my most important tasks for the day. When I’m done with a task, I remove the label and it slides out of view.

But of course, that’s just one way to use it…

Pomodoro works for me, but maybe GTD is your go-to productivity booster. For example, you could set up a favorites tag for each of your context lists (locations). Just check your ‘At Work’ list as soon as you walk into the office, or switch over to ‘Errands’ to look for things to do on your way home.

Or maybe you don’t use Zenkit to manage tasks at all, but use it instead to collect recipes, track your stamp collection, or share family photos! With favorites, you can clearly mark the pictures that make you smile, bookmark your most precious stamps, and save the recipes that wowed your friends and family at your last dinner party.

Learn more about My Favorites.

See All of Your Work in One Place with “My Team”

Many of you have requested a way to see tasks assigned to you from across different collections in one spot. And we’ve delivered. Like My Calendar, ‘My Team’ is a global view that draws information from across your entire account and displays it in one intuitive list.

We hope that this view will help you collaborate better, delegate work more easily, and understand your colleague’s workflows more intuitively.

So what does “My Team” do?

The assigned items view shows you all items that you are assigned to from any collection in Zenkit. But that’s not all!

You can also use it to see which items are assigned to anyone you’re collaborating with!

Not sure what a colleague’s work structure is? Want to see if someone has a little room in their schedule to finish up a task? Easily switch between your colleagues’ profiles to view their workload and even assign items to them in any collection!

Learn more about My Team.

These new features are live and available to every single Zenkit user.

We hope you all enjoy them! Please feel free to comment below or send us an email at hello@zenkit.com with your thoughts. We can’t wait to hear from you.

Cheers,

Siobhan and The Zenkit Team

The post Zenkit 2.0: Task Lists, Wunderlist Import, and More! appeared first on Zenkit.

Text — it’s what we use to communicate all day, every day. (Hint: You’re looking at it right now.) So, it’s almost too easy to forget what an impact well-designed text has on a reader’s ability to understand, and even enjoy reading. In Zenkit, it used to be that you could only use one sort of text to get your message across — plain text. But plain text can only convey so much information…

This week I want to focus on a feature we released along with our big design update, but hasn’t had its fair share of the limelight yet. Our brand new text fields!

Now, we didn’t reinvent the wheel here. All we did was make it easier for you to format text to make your messages stand out and give them some context. But what good does that do you?

The Benefits of Well-Designed Text

According to the Handbook of Human Factors in Web Design; font type and size, vertical and horizontal line spacing, line length, and several other factors all affect a reader’s comprehension of the text.

Especially in the fields of web design and content creation, guidelines for text formatting abound. Why? Because in the midst of work emails, news pieces, social media, and other web-related reading, busy professionals do not have the time or energy to decipher plain, boring, confusing text.

It has become the norm to format text clearly and include rich media to help the reader along. Here are a few ways text formatting can help text readability and reader comprehension:

• Visual hierarchy helps the reader find the most important points
• Clarity is gained through the use of bullet points and sub-headings
• Increased reader understanding through the inclusion of images or diagrams
• Ease of reading & reduction of eye strain increases with increased font sizes

But why is this important to use inside an app? After all, it’s not like you’re writing a blog post or publishing text publicly…

Well, just like with a well-crafted email, a well-crafted task description, user story, or blog draft written in Zenkit will help your team better understand your message, potentially reducing stress and confusion, and leading to better collaboration.

The possibilities are endless! If you’re working in a big team and frequently need to use template text for emails or blog posts, you could use the HTML text editor to create and share templates that fit your brand. If you use Zenkit to save recipes, you can now include the step-by-step images shown on the site if you want.

So let’s get to it!

Markdown and HTML in Zenkit

By switching from Plain text to Markdown or HTML editing in Zenkit, you can use all the one-click formatting tools you’re familiar with: make your text bold, italic, or underlined, create ordered & unordered lists, and add links to any anchor text in a snap.

Made a mistake? Just hit ‘undo’, or use the eraser button to return your selection to plain text.

In the Markdown mode, you can also add tables and style code snippets to show as code to anyone viewing but not editing it.

Need help with Markdown? Hit the “?” button for a quick guide to markdown. If you’re not yet a markdown pro, we’d also suggest you check out Daring Fireball and GitHub’s guides to markdown syntax (Zenkit supports both ‘flavours’).

Distraction-Free View

In addition to the text formatting options, we’ve also introduced a ‘full screen’ option for when you really just need to write. In full-screen mode, the rest of Zenkit is hidden behind your text editor, so you won’t be distracted by other items, notifications, or reminders.

Something even cooler, though, is that you can drag and drop webpages right into Zenkit. Yup. You read that right.

Highlight any part (or even all) of a webpage, then simply drag and drop it into the full-screen text editor to see it replicated exactly!

This would be a great way to share design ideas with the rest of the team or collect nicely formatted articles to read later. You can also click the ‘source’ button (</>) to view the code behind it.

We hope you enjoy this extra level of customisation and flexibility that rich text adds to your workflow! For a full breakdown of Zenkit’s new rich text formatting capabilities, check out our Knowledge Base.

Cheers,

Siobhan & The Zenkit Team

P.S. Got feedback? We’d love to hear from you! As always, reply here, send an email to hello@zenkit.com, or fill out our blog feedback form.

The post Text in Context appeared first on Zenkit.

Over the past couple of months, we’ve been working on a big redesign of Zenkit, and we’re so excited to finally be able to share it with you! The new design will be rolling out over the next week, along with some great new features.

But first, why a redesign? Well, we love Zenkit for its flexibility, its future-facing, can-do attitude, for the sheer joy of working on it. But we felt that all these wonderful things weren’t reflected in the design. Although it was clean and simple, it didn’t feel fun or exciting. Some of you noticed this too. With your feedback, we’ve tried to find a beautiful balance between fun and function.

I had a chat with Jesse, our Lead Developer and main man behind the design, about the process and some of his favourite new features.

How Did You Go About Redesigning the App?

We are constantly working on the design in order to improve the user experience. Usually, we release small updates all the time, but once in a while, we lock ourselves in over the weekend and go through the whole app through the eyes of a new user.

By looking at it from a fresh perspective, we can get some distance from it and collect all the little details that we don’t notice because we’re looking at it all day, every day.

Next, we combine all those details to find a general rule that we want to apply. For example, this time around we noticed that the heavy shadows were overwhelming in some places and that the “hard” corners felt rather cold. So we came up with the general idea of giving the app a friendlier and lighter feel by reducing shadows and rounding up corners.

Sometimes when implementing little design changes, one thing leads to another and we find ourselves with a complete redesign. That’s exactly what happened here.

I Really Like the New ‘Create Collection’ Dialogue:

What Made You Decide to Do it This Way Instead of Just Staying with One Option?

We decided to use the six buttons to showcase what Zenkit is capable of, and to inspire users (old and new) to try a new perspective.

The animations, on the other hand, were kind of a coincidence. Martin (our CEO) and I were redesigning the new collection process when he had to pick up a phone call. I had some time on my hands so I started playing around with colours and animations. When he came back, I presented the results and we liked them so much that we decided to stick with them. ‍

Is There a Change That You’re Particularly Proud of?

I’m quite proud of the way we implemented dragging items between collections to move them. We didn’t want to compromise our existing drag and drop features in any way, so I had to come up with a way of switching contexts in the middle of the dragging process (either dragging within the list and scrolling that list when reaching the end, or dragging within the side panel and scrolling). I think the result is pretty cool!

Thank you so much, Jesse! 

(He did actually show me a few other things, but I can’t share them with you yet!)

I Said There Were a Few More Features on the Way, So What Else Is New?

Rich text for multi-line text fields

You’ll be able to use HTML and markdown to make any text stand out, or even to save webpages!

Templates for new collections or even new teams

This was another user favourite, so we’re happy to finally offer it to you. We hope that this will help new users learn about everything that can be done with Zenkit, as well as inspire current ones to try something new!

We’ve changed the way you can modify collections with a new ‘Add-Ons’ feature

This is where you’ll be able to change collection themes and add optional new features to your collection.

Bolder labels and more colour options for labels

This was requested pretty often by you guys, especially by Kanban fans. Let us know if you like them!

General speed improvements throughout the app

You’ll notice this, especially in the table and list view — once the page has loaded, scrolling is seamless! We’ve also made improvements to the responsiveness of the mind map view.

So there you have it. A new design, a bundle of new features, a lot of long weekends, and a lot more fun. We hope you love the new design as much as we do! We’ll be rolling it out to you in the next few days.

Cheers,

Siobhan, Jesse and the Zenkit Team

P.S. Keep your eyes on the blog in the next couple of weeks as I delve further into the details of our newest features.

P.P.S. We love your feedback! Let Jesse know what you think of the new design: comment here, or send an email to hello@zenkit.com.

The post Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Chaanges! appeared first on Zenkit.