TaskBlast

TaskBlast

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Roadmap 2022

Updated: February 28th, 2022 (Versión en Español)

While we are proud of the journey that got TaskBlast to where it is today, and glad on the functionality it has to help Software Projects and their teams. We wanted to wet your appetite with what features you can expect to see over the next months. However, we wanted to invite you to add your support for a feature in the Comments section below or even suggest new feature requests. If a feature gets a lot of support we will bump the position. Note these are not all the tasks planned, we will have lots of smaller incremental improvements to the app also but today we are focusing on the major features coming soon.

These are the improvements on TaskBlast that we are considering (no particular order):

 

 Suggested by TaskBlasters!!

Here are some features and enhancements suggested by TaskBlasters (TaskBlast users) and that we have found useful to incorporate in TaskBlast.

 

Import Projects from an Excel template

TYPE: ENHANCEMENT SUGGESTED BY A TASKBLASTER
PLANNED FOR: October 2021
STATUS: DONE

Suggested by a TaskBlaster last year, and a very important feature, we can now import Projects from other systems into TaskBlast.  Just go to the Settings section and follow the instructions.  You may learn more from our Help Guide about this feature.

 Open Taskboards from Projects Overview

TYPE: ENHANCEMENT SUGGESTED BY A TASKBLASTER
PLANNED FOR: November 2021
STATUS: DONE


Also suggested by a TaskBlaster last year, we added a link to open the project taskboard in a different window directly from the Projects Overview page.

Link in task title to edit Tasks

TYPE: ENHANCEMENT SUGGESTED BY A TASKBLASTER
PLANNED FOR: January 2022
STATUS: DONE


Kindly suggested by a TaskBlaster, this will improve the way you edit a Task, by not doing it through the pencil Edit icon, but from the task title, which is by far more intuitive and direct.

Company Logo

TYPE: ENHANCEMENT SUGGESTED BY A TASKBLASTER
PLANNED FOR: March 2022
STATUS: IN PROGRESS

Also suggested by a TaskBlaster, we will add the possibility to add your company logo at the top of TaskBlast screens.  This will help with team identity and to integrate TaskBlast with your company image and values.

 

Contact us at [email protected] and give us your suggestions to make TaskBlast a better platform and suited to your needs.

 
 

The following features are planned for 2022 or on our To-Do list to be added soon depending on how many requests we receive.

Improved Time Tracking Report

TYPE: ENHANCEMENT
PLANNED FOR: January 2022
STATUS: DONE

This will let you compare real costs and duration vs estimations, to better manage project deviations and opportunities. You will also have more control over who sees specific data and not only for clocked time, but also for time estimations that are useful for Sprint or Project planning.

Calendar Integration

TYPE: NEW FEATURE
PLANNED FOR: March 2022
STATUS: IN PROGRESS

While TaskBlast has support for Gantt planning, it is useful to have a project calendar in synch with external calendars like Google, Outlook or Apple to have the whole team engaged with the project and to have better communication and clear expectations.

The Calendar can be edited inside TaskBlast and automatically synchronized with cloud calendars and their subscribed users.

Mobile version for TaskBlast

TYPE: NEW FEATURE
PLANNED FOR: August 2022
STATUS: IN DESIGN

This is one of our favorite improvements to TaskBlast.  It will allow you to take TaskBlast on the go to update tasks, add pictures taken from your mobile straight to Task description or to Task Comments.  This will be very useful for projects that captures information on the field, or simply to let you update your progress while getting back home.

The Mobile version will also be helpful for stand-up meetings where you have no computer around, so the team can use the phone or tablet to follow things up.

Gantt improvements

TYPE: ENHANCEMENT
PLANNED FOR: September 2022
STATUS: IN DESIGN

Gantt is great feature we added recently. We are continuing to improve it and here are some of the planned improvements:

  • Drag and drop has already been implemented but will be improved very soon as it is currently not that intuitive.
  • Changing the sprint start and end date will automatically update the Gantt chart.
  • Better recalculation of data. As you adjust the Gantt bars, the Kanban attributes for calculating the time left etc. will update instantly.
  • Hours clocked and hours left will be added to the Gantt left side table.
  • Subtasks will be grouped under the parent task in a folder.
  • Various other improvements will be added.
 

Integration with Jira

TYPE: NEW FEATURE
PENDING TO BE PLANNED: Thanks for your feedback on Comments section

Whether you use Jira to manage your projects, want to migrate them to TaskBlast or want to work them in parallel on both systems, we want to include an integration with Jira in both ways: Jira-TaskBlast and TaskBlast-Jira, so you can choose the form more suitable to work your projects.

Integration with Cloud Storage

TYPE: NEW FEATURE
PENDING TO BE PLANNED: Thanks for your feedback on Comments section
STATUS: IN DESIGN

Projects handle a large amount of documentation, and having it in a single place that is easy to access to all team members is important for collaboration.  We plan to integrate TaskBlast projects with Cloud Storage Services such as Dropbox, Google Drive, Box, OneDrive, etc.

Resources Management

TYPE: NEW FEATURE
PENDING TO BE PLANNED: Thanks for your feedback on Comments section

One of the biggest new features we would like to add in the Gantt is Resource Management. You will now be able to see your staff availability by hours or task. Here is a sneak preview:

Gantt Resource Management
Gantt Resource Management

We will also show you some resource management data directly on the Kanban when you are assigning tasks so you can make sure the workload is distributed more evenly.

Resource Management Assigning Tasks
Resource Management Assigning Tasks


Dark Mode and Skin Support

TYPE: NEW FEATURE
PENDING TO BE PLANNED: Thanks for your feedback on Comments section

Some Developers prefer working in Dark Mode when programming so we would like to include this option for TaskBlast.  We also want to include support for skins to have a more personalized experience when using TaskBlast.

Roles and Permissions

TYPE: NEW FEATURE
PENDING TO BE PLANNED: Thanks for your feedback on Comments section

You can already set some basic roles and permissions in the time tracking tab:

Current role/permission options
Current role/permission options

However, we plan to expand those permissions quite a bit. Here is a recap of the new permissions:

New roles and permission settings
New roles and permission settings

Automated Assistant

TYPE: NEW FEATURE
PENDING TO BE PLANNED: Thanks for your feedback on Comments section

AI Bots seem to be everywhere these days. We weren’t just jumping on the wagon by creating another one. We wanted to solve a very real problem. When we talked to Project Managers we found out that the average time spent using project management software on a daily basis was 2-3 hours. When we investigated further the vast majority of that time was spent on 2 areas:

  1. Giving status updates to various stakeholders
  2. Updating tasks and following up on various issues

The high-level project overview will drastically reduce the amount of time it takes to give someone a status update on several projects. Updating tasks and following up on issues was really seen as a core duty of a project manager’s day. However, a lot of it can be automated.

One of the most important things that a Project Manager needs to do is stay on top of tasks. As tasks approach their due date, we need to know if they are still on track, and if not, what can we do to help get it back on track. We need to know the status of overdue tasks, blockers, why nobody has picked up unassigned issues etc.

What TaskBlast automated assistant will do is it analyzes those issues and automatically contacts the users assigned to the issues and asks for a status update. Let’s take a few examples:

Approaching due date – TaskBlast sends a comment to everyone assigned to the issue 2 days in advance of the due date to ask if everything is on track and if there is anything that might hold it up. This makes you proactive by addressing issues before they become a problem instead of after the bottleneck has already occurred. This type of proactive reach out can make a significant difference to your deadlines.

Another example – tasks with no assigned user. TaskBlast will look for the users with the least tasks on their plate and display a list of unassigned issues and see if they can take any which are suitable. This reduces the time spent following up with various people to see if they can take on a task and unassigned issues will never move so addressing this could again potentially have a very positive effect on your deadlines while also freeing up valuable time for you to work on other important tasks.

Overlooked issues. Issues that have sat in a lane for more than a few days without any updates. TaskBlast assistant would bump any of the assigned users and ask them for an update on why the issue has not been updated in x days. Once again, we are being proactive and addressing issues before they become an issue all while the project manager is off working on the things that really matter and not spending time on tedious tasks.

Improved Slack Integration

TYPE: NEW FEATURE
PENDING TO BE PLANNED: Thanks for your feedback on Comments section

We would be adding two new slack improvements we hope you will like.

  • Sync multiple slack chats to one project
  • Send notifications and a brief recap of closed and newly created tasks to a slack channel of your choice.

 

Integration with Zapier

TYPE: NEW FEATURE
PENDING TO BE PLANNED: Thanks for your feedback on Comments section

Zapier is a tool that greatly facilitates the integration between cloud services. We want to make it easier for you to integrate TaskBlast with other services in the cloud by integrating it with Zapier.

Integration with Staff Services

TYPE: NEW FEATURE
PENDING TO BE PLANNED: Thanks for your feedback on Comments section

There are a wide variety of services for personnel and Freelancers management like HubStaff, Harvest, Toggl, Freelancer, UpWork. With TaskBlast you can manage the time and cost information associated with the tasks on your projects.

Integration with personnel management services will allow you to cross-control information, as well as record cost information to generate invoices and payments through these services.

Sprint Reviews Report

TYPE: NEW FEATURE
PENDING TO BE PLANNED: Thanks for your feedback on Comments section

The concept is simple, identify what issues slowed you down during the Sprint/Release and put a plan in place to prevent it from happening again. This introduces a continuous cycle of improvement and increases the velocity of the team. The problem is with a large sprint it can take time to review each issue individually to see if there was anything that stood out about that particular issue.

Things that might make an issue a point of discussion might be:

  • Actual hours clocked 2x or greater than the estimate
  • Issue marked as a blocker and not resolved within 48 hours
  • Issue marked as awaiting feedback was not replied to within 48 hours
  • The issue was overlooked i.e. sitting without updates or moving lane for more than 5 days
  • Many more examples

What TaskBlast does is check the logic for what should flag an issue for discussion and display it in a view like which again reduces the work of the Project Manager or Scrum Master. On the left is the list of flagged issues and on the right is a list of bullet points of actions to implement in future to prevent a similar issue from occurring.  You can open an issue directly from this view to get more information.

TaskBlast will provide a pre-configured list of triggers that flag an issue as a potential issue for discussion.  However, you can adjust the triggers to decide yourself what the triggers should be. This gives you much more control over the number and types of issues shown.


Team View Report

TYPE: NEW FEATURE
PENDING TO BE PLANNED: Thanks for your feedback on Comments section

The Team View is for managing stand-up meetings but also can be used to get an overview of progress for individual team members.

On the left, you see basic stats on how many tasks the user has completed in the selected period. If you select a user then the right side will display information about that user. They can talk about what they have done since the last meeting, what they plan to do today and what obstacles are in the way of them making progress.

It also will sync with your favorite GIT tools, such as GitHub and BitBucket, and extract any recent check-ins as well as displaying what issues you worked on in TaskBlast also. This allows the user to quickly refresh their memory on what they recently worked on and can then fill in the stand-up meeting info based on this.


Epics and Features Support

TYPE: NEW FEATURE
PENDING TO BE PLANNED: Thanks for your feedback on Comments section
STATUS: IN DESIGN

With Epics and Features support, we would like to assist Project Managers to plan releases in advance and structure them in product functionality that is better for Stakeholders and Product Managers communication and planning.

Histories and Scrum Support

TYPE: NEW FEATURE
PENDING TO BE PLANNED: Thanks for your feedback on Comments section

We would like to include support for Histories in TaskBlast, in order to be able to edit Histories using the common template “As a… I want to… So That…”, as well as Acceptance Criteria for the History.

There will be support for History punctuation and Sprint velocity calculations and estimations.

Language Translation

TYPE: NEW FEATURE
PLANNED FOR: June 2023

We would like TaskBlast to be as easy to use as possible for all Team Members within a project.  Knowing that projects may have team members from all over the world, we would like to add TaskBlast the capability to be adapted to the language of preference.

 
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