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What we shipped: Q1 2020 in review

The Karbon product team was as busy as ever during the first three months of 2020.

A stylised version of Karbon's Kanban board

Below, you'll find a brief summary of every #KarbonUpdate released in January, February and March.

New Global Automators

Global Automators let customers adjust settings that update your workflows, tasks and work statuses automatically. Three new Global Automators were added to give more control:

  • Set a default status for an Email when it is assigned to someone (eg. Ready To Start)

  • Set a default status for a Note when it is assigned to someone (eg. Ready To Start)

  • Update the status of Work containing Client Tasks, when 5 client task reminders have been sent and the client tasks still aren't complete

New Tasklist Automators

Tasklist Automators allow you to apply ‘if this, then that’ rules to task sections in your work items and templates. Since they were introduced to Karbon, you have had the ability to automatically update the status of tasks or a work item can be set to update based on what happens to other tasks.

A new option was added to automatically update the due date or assignee of a task section, or the entire work item.

This gives the ability to trigger automatic workflows such as:

  • When the work status changes to Ready To Start, change the due date for all tasks in a section to 3 days after the Automator is triggered

  • When all Client Tasks are marked Complete, change the due date for the work item to 14 days after the work item is triggered

  • When all Tasks in a section are marked Completed, change the work assignee to a different colleague

  • When the work status changes to In Review, change the assignee for all tasks in a section to a different colleague

Learn 5 ways you can use these new Automators

Updates to Work Insights

Filters

We added filters to Insights so that users can drill down into specific teams, team members, types of work and more.

Available filters include:

  • Teams/ Colleagues

  • Clients

  • Work Type

  • Date Range

New Charts

Two new charts were added to help identify the efficiency of teams and processes. 

  • Average days spent in each open status

  • Number of times due date moved for work

Added Information on Colleague and Client Leaderboards

Tooltips were added on Leaderboards, providing more information about specific colleagues or clients.

Leaderboards were also given new dropdown menus showing:

  • All open work items

  • Open overdue work items

  • Average days open

Other Improvements to Work Insights

  • To make it easier for to interpret reports in Insights, new Tooltips were introduced.

  • Two new filters were added: Contact Type and Contact Category.

  • All charts were re-designed making them easier to read, and quicker to update.

  • Client leaderboard 'paging' was introduced so anyone can scroll through their list of clients, 20 at a time.

Revamped main menu

The main menu was redesigned to allow for quicker navigation between important items. Helpful areas of Karbon are now much easier to find, making it clearer for any new people using the app for the first time.

Work Scheduler Updates

Creating tasks and work items close to their start date can help reduce distractions in your team's to-do lists. However, sometimes you may want them to appear earlier—if you need to send Client Tasks in advance, for example.

A new blue color throughout Karbon

We made a color change throughout Karbon. Our pink colour (affectionately named, Tiffany), was replaced with a new Blue (we call it, Royal).

Blue is universally recognized as an action/link color, so this tweak make Karbon easier to learn and navigate. It also allows us to use colors like red to highlight something that requires attention.

Other changes

  • New activity items on tasks and notes give a clearer picture of why updates have been made—a full audit trail of what's happened. These activity items cannot be edited or removed.

  • A single email address can now be added to multiple contacts

  • There is a new option to add emails to timelines as you send them

  • The email attachment limit for Office365 users has increased to 33mb

  • Whenever a work item is reassigned to a new colleague, an option to re-assign any tasks, notes or emails within that work item is also given

  • Email signatures can be imported from Gmail or Office 365 with the click of a button

  • Added flexibility to choose when scheduled Work Items, and the Tasks within them, will be create. 

  • A notification now appears in Triage for certain system messages eg. when your Outlook mailbox is full

  • The design for the Karbon login page was given a minor lick of paint