During the first months of studying at University, I often asked myself whether I should find a part-time job in Karlsruhe, the city where I am studying. I constantly drove back to Ulm, where I’m from, to work at my old mini-job, which made adjusting in Karlsruhe complex. However, this was to change with my new working student job.

I began my search by writing down a few criteria, points, and questions that were the most important to me. Is the workplace easily accessible via public transport? Is the working atmosphere hierarchical or more familiar? Would I learn skills at this job needed for my future? Does the employer allow me to work from home, since I travel home often? Am I able to improve my English language skills at this job? 

I applied for various jobs that fit my criteria. Then came the first invitation from Zenkit.

Due to the circumstances of the pandemic, I had a telephone interview. This was challenging to me since my previous interviews were always conducted face-to-face, and I couldn’t gauge how to leave a lasting impression via telephone interview. 

Despite the circumstances, I was soon notified that I had received the job. Following that, I received very good onboarding in my area of responsibility, my tasks, and to the team in general. I have now been working at Zenkit in the Customer Service department for almost two years.

In my job I help and advise interested parties and customers with all product inquiries. I try to process and solve customer problems independently as best I can. In this way, our users are always informed and can carry out their work with our products in the best possible way.

By working in customer service, I was able to expand my knowledge and skills in the area of customer service and customer contact. Since I have many inquiries in English, I was also able to expand my vocabulary in the area of technical and business English.

In addition to my regular tasks and duties, I maintain the Reddit page for Zenkit. There I advise, help, and discuss with customers and other Reddit users who are interested in Zenkit.

Since I work at home and remotely most of the time, I can’t tell you much about working in the office. However, sometimes there is cake, for which, of course, I make an exception to my usual routine and come to work at the office. Even though I’m not in the office that much, I enjoy the camaraderie-feel when working in the small community at Zenkit. Everyone is friendly, always courteous, and helpful.

Does the work help me with my studies? Yes, it does. The insight into IT and, to some extent, business activities, are very relevant both in my degree program and outside my studies.

Personally, I am happy with my choice. The fact that Zenkit has more of a startup atmosphere makes it more pleasant and direct in my opinion. This makes it easier for me as a working student to take a step into the working world.

If you’re interested in working at Zenkit, we’ve got spots open! Send an email to jobs@zenkit.com for more info

The post Internship Insight: Customer Service appeared first on Zenkit.

As a growing company, we’re always on the lookout for talent. With plenty of room to gain hands-on work experience, our door is open to students and graduates alike. To give you a glimpse of the variety of jobs needed to make your favorite project management tool sparkle, we had a chat with our product management intern on his experience working at Zenkit.

Name: Alex

Role: Product Management (Hypernotes)

Explain what a product manager is. What kind of tasks do product managers typically handle?
As a product manager you are the contact person between the product and the different departments in the company. I mainly focused on online marketing and PR tasks during my internship, but the beauty of product management in combination with a small company is that you will get a look into a lot of different areas.

Tell us one thing you found challenging during your internship.
I was working on various tasks from day one. Within the first month, I was responsible for various projects. For example, creating and handling the social media accounts for Hypernotes.

Tell us at least two things you have learned while working at Zenkit.

1. 1. How to effectively handle online marketing strategies without spending a ton of money on ads.
   2. How the release of a new product is handled internally.

What brought you to this role?
I was searching for internship opportunities and uploaded my resume to the website Cyberforum. Zenkit reached out and scouted me for the position.  

When you’re not working, what are you doing?
Different things: Playing online games with friends, following Esports leagues, and enjoying time with the family.

If you could have one superpower, what would it be?
Teleportation, because walking is boring.

What is your next step?
Finishing my bachelor’s degree. I start writing my thesis next semester.

Cheers, Alex. We wish you all the best!

If you’re interested in working on Zenkit, we’ve got spots open! Send an email to jobs@zenkit.com for more info

The post Internship Insight: Q&A with Alex appeared first on Zenkit.

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.

Zenkit To Do has been out in the world for less than a week, and the amount of positive feedback we’ve received from you (both long time Zenkit users, and users we’ve welcomed in the last few days) has been overwhelming and so, so wonderful. We could not have wished for a better first week!

If you’ve been in touch to share your feedback, feature requests, bug reports, criticism, or just some love for the team – THANK YOU! We’re reading every message you send, and trying our best to respond as soon as we can. 

Through all of your feedback, one request shone through as something that many of you want, nay, need:

Desktop Apps (for everyone)

You asked for it, so we made it happen. Apps to use on your OS of choice were the most highly requested ‘feature’ of the week, so…

Desktop apps for macOS, Windows, and Linux are all now available either as a direct download, or from the App Store and Snap Store (Microsoft Store coming very soon!).

You can find them here: https://zenkit.com/todo/platforms

There’s a handy shortcut you can use to make adding tasks to your To Do list super quick and easy:

Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+Space: quick-add a new item to any list you choose

There will be more info on all of this in our To Do knowledge base (also coming soon). 

List Add-Ons (for Plus plan users)

There are several features we’ve planned to implement in the first few weeks after the release and the first three are already here in the form of list add-ons. 

Add-ons are optional features that you can toggle on and off on a list by list basis. You can access them by opening your list, then tapping or clicking on the list name.

The three we’ve added today are available to all users with a Plus subscription or higher.

List Backgrounds

List backgrounds enable you to give each of your lists a separate identity by choosing a different theme for each. Just like the main theme, each list theme can be dark or light, solid or transparent, and the toggles will show the appropriate backgrounds for each.

As a Plus subscriber, you’ll also be able to upload any background you choose!

Email to List

Turn any email into a task by adding the ‘Email to List’ add-on! This add-on generates a unique email address for your list that you can then save in your email address book to quickly forward emails to Zenkit To Do.

You can also optionally assign a user to the newly created task through a unique email address, too. To do this, simply click on ‘Show more examples’ in the Email to List settings, and copy the address next to “Assigned to User”.

iCal Subscription

Send tasks with due dates on your lists to any calendar app you use! The iCalendar subscription add-on generates a unique URL for your list, and any task with a due date is automatically added to any calendar you add the link to. 

You can learn a bit more about how this works in our Zenkit Base documentation here. To note: due to the simplicity of To Do, you won’t need to add filters or pick date fields in the To Do iCalendar Subscription add-on

Thank you all once again for your wonderful response to To Do! We’re excited to keep making it better and better.

Cheers,

Siobhan and the Zenkit Team

The post Zenkit To Do: Desktop Apps and 3 New Add-Ons 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.

Name: Tzuan Li

Role: Online Marketing and Partnerships Manager

Where are you from?
Taiwan

Describe yourself in three words:
I am Tzuan

How long have you been at Zenkit?
I started in May 2018 as a translator (English to Chinese), then I joined the marketing team afterwards.

What brought you to this role?
My first position at the company was as a working student and an internship while I was still at university. These two roles led to a full-time position which I took up once I graduated.

What does it take to be good at your job?
A great understanding of Zenkit, combined with innovative and creative thinking for identifying different integration opportunities. You also have to have great communication and interpersonal skills because a huge part of this job is about building relationships with many different people.

My job involves an array of tasks such as conceptualization, communication, business development, and content creation, so having excellent time management is important, too.

How do you use Zenkit on a daily basis?
At work, I use Zenkit (obviously) for coordinating my marketing tasks, managing partner contacts database, and much more. In private, I use Kanban boards to organize my yearly goals and personal to-do list.   

When you’re not working, what are you doing?
You’ll usually find me doing something related to music, whether it’s listening to it, singing songs, or playing instruments. A new hobby that I’m acquiring is power walking in the evenings with my boyfriend—it makes me feel relaxed and content! And if I have the time, I love to travel solo because I’m amazed by the human connection which two complete strangers can establish.

Last song you listened to?
How long will I love you by Ellie Goulding

Last meal on earth?
Something hot and Taiwanese, such as minced pork rice (滷肉飯) or a seafood dish that my father always makes for Chinese New Year.

Favorite German word?
Pommes

Use it in a sentence.
Ich will Pommes essen!

If you could have one superpower, what would it be?
I would love the ability to teleport to wherever I want in an instant. It would be so great to just close my eyes and think of a place where I want to go, then, boom! I am there. 

What is your favorite thing about working at Zenkit?
My working pals! We’re not just work colleagues, we also do social things together. I really appreciate the relationships I have with my co-workers because I think that teams that have a great atmosphere can produce better business results. For instance, because everyone is so approachable, no one is afraid or too shy to ask for help when they need it. It really is a helpful and supportive working environment.

If you’ve got an integration opportunity you think would be great for Zenkit, get in touch with Tzuan at tzuan@zenkit.com.

The post Meet the Team: Tzuan appeared first on Zenkit.

Highly requested and eminently useful, a browsable archive has been a long time coming.  While we’ve had the ability to archive individual items and entire collections for a while, finding all the archived items has been a bit of a hassle. That’s why we’re excited to finally release our vision for a helpful, easy-to-use archive that feels like an extension of your collections.

The best thing about our new browsable archive is that you can use Zenkit’s powerful filters to help sift through your archive. Even if (like us) you have three years’ worth of items in the archive, you’ll still be able to find even the oldest one in moments!

Finding Your Archived Items

Zenkit’s item archive works on the collection level, so you can find all the items you’ve ever archived from a collection, all in one place. To find the archive, open your collection and click on the collection name to open the settings. On the left-hand menu, click ‘Archive’.

The simple list of items is scrollable, and the archive filter works just like any other collection filter, helping you find items based on any condition you need. Tasks done by a particular user? No problem. All of your tax-related tasks from 2018? Sure thing!

Restore or Delete Archived Items in Bulk

Once you’ve found the items you’re looking for, you can select them all (or only a few of them, if needed) and restore or delete them in one click.

Not sure you’ve found the right item? Click to open the item details just as you would for a normal item. All the details you need are there.

Once you’re satisfied with your selection, click ‘Restore X items’ or ‘Delete X items’ at the bottom of the list and confirm the action.

Please remember that if you delete items, they’re gone forever! Neither you nor anyone on our team will be able to recover them.

All in all, you can now quickly and easily find and recover accidentally archived items, take a stroll down memory lane, or finally get rid of all your old archives in one fell swoop! We hope you’ll enjoy finding old items as much as we enjoyed building a way for you to find them! The archive is already available for all Zenkit users right now.

Cheers,

Siobhan & the Zenkit Team

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You asked for it, and we made it happen. We’re so excited to finally announce the release of our game-changing subtask field and hierarchy view. We truly believe that these features will revolutionize the way you work in Zenkit, helping you intuitively structure your projects like never before.

All New: Subitems for Zenkit

Ever looked at your project and just felt completely overwhelmed? Whenever you have a large project to tackle, the best advice is always to break big tasks down into smaller subtasks that feel manageable and approachable on a realistic timeline.

However, depending on the size of your project, breaking things down to such small pieces can mean that your Kanban board, list, table, or whatever else you’re working with becomes cluttered and confusing. Looking at a seemingly endless list of tasks can put you right back where you started—overwhelmed and intimidated by the sheer number of things to do.

In the past, we’ve recommended a couple of workarounds – using two separate collections to manage higher-level tasks and all their subtasks or using a reference field within a single collection to link related tasks. Filters and saved views were a way to manage the overcrowding by helping you to focus on particular subsets of tasks, but they weren’t as precise as we’d have liked.

The introduction of our ‘Subitems’ field solves all of this by taking the breakdown of tasks to a whole new level.

Subitems enable you to quickly and intuitively add subtasks, sub-sub-tasks, sub-sub-sub tasks (you get the picture!) to any item in your collection. By opening an item, you can see at a glance which tasks belong to it and if it has a parent task. You can move items in the subitems field around using drag and drop to quickly change the order in which they appear, and which items they’re subitems of.

If you want, you can also enable a setting to show you exactly where in the hierarchy an item appears and you can click on the linked names in the path to open any item that appears before it in the path. If you have the task-list add-on enabled, marking a parent task as complete will also automatically mark all of its subtasks as complete, too.

However, simply creating a new field wasn’t enough…

Intuitively Add Structure with the Hierarchy View

The all-new hierarchy view is like an expanded version of the subitem field. It shows you every single item you’ve added to the hierarchy and lets you quickly add unconnected tasks into the hierarchy as a first-tier item, or as a subitem of any other item, by simply dragging and dropping them onto the list.

Indentations mark when items become subitems, and you can drag items left and right to change their level in the hierarchy. You can quickly collapse or open items to get a quick overview of top tasks or see everything in your project at once.

Make the Magic Happen with Filters

The magic of the subitems field and hierarchical structure really becomes apparent when you start working with filters and in other views. For me, the “aha!” moment happened in Kanban view, when I was looking for all the tasks related to one of my main tasks.

With the handy “Set filter for subitems” function, you can now immediately view all tasks related to a particular task in a couple of clicks. Not only does this help you intuitively know the progress of a particular part of your project, it also does away with the anxiety-inducing mass of tasks on your board in an instant.

But that’s not all we built. Along with this subitem filter, we’ve also created a filter to help you find all tasks within a particular hierarchical range – view all top-level tasks only, or any tasks within any range with a simple slide of the toggle.

These filters reduce the volume of tasks on your board to a minimal but important set, making it easy for you to know exactly what’s happening in your project, and what you’ve still got to do at a glance.

The Mind Map Connection

And that’s not all! We’ve re-built the mind map so that it connects directly with hierarchies and subtasks, so when you make a change in the mind map, it reflects in the other views and vice versa! With this update, we have finally cemented the link between the mind map and the other views, giving you multiple intuitive ways to work on your project.

Converting Existing Mind Maps into a Hierarchy Field

If you already have a mind map in your collection, you can convert it to V2.0 by clicking the button in the top right corner of your mind map window. Once you convert your mind map, the title of the collection becomes the centre of the map, and a subtask field will automatically be created so you can start adding tasks to the map from anywhere in your collection.

Checklists vs. Subtasks

Checklists will remain as a separate entity, in case you want to add lists to an item without creating entirely new items. However, you can also convert existing checklists to be subtasks on an item: All you need to do is to make sure that you have created the subitem field in the collection, then click the checklist name to convert it.

Tl;dr?

Check out the video:

We’re extremely proud of our new subtasks field and hierarchy view, and can’t wait to hear all about how you will be using it in your own projects! I’d like to extend a huge thanks to Jesse, who was the lead on this product, to Martin, our CEO, whose input was instrumental in taking this as far as it’s come, and to the rest of the team who supported the development of these awesome new features.

Cheers,

Siobhan and the Zenkit Team

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We’re gearing up to release some pretty big features in the near future, but that doesn’t mean we’ve stopped working on the little things! Here’s what we’ve added to Zenkit, along with a ton of tiny tweaks and fixes, in the last couple of months.

Sort in Kanban View

Sort your lists in Kanban view by any field of your choice! Kanban lists are used to be sorted simply by whether you added an item to the top or the bottom of the list, or by the order that you dragged them in. Now, with Kanban list sorting, you can choose to sort your cards alphabetically, by item age, according to the due date, labels, references, and much more.

How to sort in Zenkit’s Kanban view:

• Click on the name of your view in the top right-hand corner.
• Click ‘Edit’ next to your view name.
• Click ‘Sort by’ and pick a field.
• Pick ascending or descending.

It’s as easy as that! Like all other Kanban view properties, the sort is specific to that particular view. If you create multiple custom Kanban views, each one can have a different sort applied and it won’t affect how other views are displayed.

Private Fields for Published Collections

If you’ve published a collection, you can now choose to hide certain fields from appearing to visitors. This option makes it much easier to control what information is shared with the public, and allows you to track all data, even confidential data, in one collection.

How to hide a field in a published collection:

• Click on the name of the field
• Scroll down and click the ‘Publicly visible’ toggle to the off position.
• Alternatively, change the field visibility in the published collection settings!

The option to hide certain fields was highly requested after the release of published collections and is already being put to use by teams like Mozilla, who have been using published collections to manage the proposed sessions in each of their Spaces at the upcoming MozFest. See how they’re making use of published collections & hidden fields by clicking ‘See the proposed sessions’ on any of the Spaces.

As always, more information about public and private fields can be found in our Knowledge Base.

Update to Mobile Menus

When we released our big design update a few months ago, we released swipe gestures for mobile, too. Swipe gestures are used to access workspace and collection settings, add new collections to workspaces, manage collection members, and much more. For Apple users, this is an intuitive way to find these menus, since swipe gestures are built into the iOS environment everywhere. However, Android users are not as used to using them, since only a few apps implement this kind of interaction. This meant that some Android users were having difficulty making simple changes such as adding collections and workspaces on the go. So, we added a button…

You can now add new items, collections, or workspaces from the + button found at the bottom right-hand corner of the app’s home screen. Workspace and collection settings are still accessed by swiping left on the workspace or collection name, but it is now much easier to add new ones in an intuitive way! You can also access Zenkit templates from that same + button, so you can install pre-made collections straight to your device.

New Kanban Swimlane Design

Last but not least, we changed the way the swimlanes in Kanban view were displayed. In the past, the list titles disappeared after you scrolled down the page. This could lead to confusion, as it wasn’t always clear which list an item belonged to. Now, list names stick to the top of each section as you scroll so that it’s always clear exactly what list or label applies to each item in the section.

What do you think of these updates? Do you like them as much as we do? Let us know in the comments! Want to stay in the loop? Check out our changelog, which we’ll be updating with details of each new release (and will fill with details of past releases soon).

Cheers,

Siobhan and The Zenkit Team

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