We’ve been through quite a few iterations and improvements of Mission Control since our last ‘What’s New’ blog post. We always issue detailed release notes and webinars for each of the three annual releases of the software to our community. However, we’re so excited about all the updates we’ve made to Version 1.54, we can’t wait to share in more detail.
This version sees a marked improvement on our Kanban Whiteboard feature thanks to some really great feedback from our users and research we’ve conducted. We’ve focused on making the feature more customisable and user friendly making the digital experience even better than a real life post-it wall! We’ve got more detail about this and the rest of our top five new features further down this post.
All the improvements
Let’s start though by briefly covering off the main improvements you can expect from Version 1.54:
- Project Request Object: Enables you to create a request for a new Project from any Standard or Custom Object.
- New Kanban Whiteboard: This has had a major overhaul and whilst the overall visual hasn’t changed much, it’s now packed with a lot more power.
- Case Integration: Time can now be directly logged from a case record!
- New Create / Edit Actions Page: From the Project page layout you can now edit Actions as well as create them.
- Time Log Enhancements: We’ve improved the functionality around the prevention of users deleting Time Logs if they have been approved and/or invoiced.
- Expense Enhancements: Same as Time Logs we’ve also improved the functionality around the prevention of users deleting Expenses if they have been approved and/or invoiced.
- Team & Skill AND / OR Filters: Enhancements to filters to allow for more flexible searching for Teams and Skill sets.
- Role Enhancements: The ability to exclude certain roles from the Scheduler.
- Project Status Report Generation Button: A new button has been added to generate a PDF report instantly!
Top five new features
Now we can delve a bit deeper into what we believe are the top five hits of this latest version of Mission Control.
1. Kanban Whiteboard
First and foremost this is what we’re most excited about, the new functionality on our Kanban Whiteboard! You spoke and we listened and now the favourite feature of project managers who prefer to visualise the entire project status, is even better!
Add Actions: You can add a new Action by clicking the blue ‘Add Action’ button located in the header of the Whiteboard.
Quick Add Actions: You can quickly add a new Action by clicking the ‘Add Action’ just below the column header. This will open up the Quick Add section.
Action card updates: You can now customise the fields within the Action card as well as collapse and expand all the information, making it easier to visualise more cards on the page.
Prioritizing: We’ve also added features so you can change the priority of Actions as well as adjust the column headings depending on what you want to visualise. Delving deeper you can also filter Actions you want to see on the board based on a variety of choices.
Settings: We’ve added lots more options to customise settings for the Whiteboard from an individual and organisational perspective.
Role updates: You can now collapse and expand the roles at the side of the Whiteboard as well as filter by more options.
2. Create / Edit Actions Page
It’s always been quick and easy to build out new Actions on a Project using the ‘Create Actions’ page. However, what happens when something goes wrong, as it inevitably does in real life, and you need to make changes? Up until now, that had to be done one Action at a time.
We’re thrilled to be able to offer users a way to bulk edit all Actions within a Project. The existing ‘Create Actions’ page has been enhanced to provide additional functionality, including the ability to edit existing Actions. This page enables you to quickly create multiple Actions for one Project, including adding Contributors and Checklist Items.
Other page features include the ability to display existing actions, access the Resource Assignment Wizard and the Checklist Item Manager.
3. Project Request Object
A new ‘Project Request’ Object has been included, which lets you submit requests for new Projects. These requests can be reviewed and can auto-generate a new Project plan based on a specified template. What’s even better is that you can create a Project Request from any Object in Salesforce, whether that’s manually or automatically via a Process Builder.
Imagine you’re wanting to track the Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) of a new Lead, you could build a Process Builder to generate a Project automatically. So at the click of a button your sales rep could have a brand new Project ready to track their pre-sales effort against. Likewise, if you want to track the Cost of Revenue (COR) of a Customer, you could create a new Project upon close winning an opportunity, combining this with the new Case Integration feature (see Point 4 below), you can track all the time spent on supporting your customers.
There are so many scenarios where this will benefit our customers, we’re super excited to see how they put it to good use.
4. Case Integration
Case Integration is another great extension we’ve created to allow customers to log the time they’re spending on their customer support tickets, perfect for improving understanding COR and identifying efficiencies around customer service. You are now able to Log Time directly from a Case Record! A new field has been added to the Case Object which allows a Case to be related to an Action within a Project.
Once you have associated the Case to an Action, the Log Time component will automatically identify the correct Action to associate the Time Log to. The Time Log will then be created and relate to both the Action and the Case.
5. Team & Skill AND / OR Filters
Finding the most appropriate team member with certain skills is a key feature that not all PSA systems contain, it’s becoming increasingly popular with many of our clients.
We’ve had a few customers reach out to us saying they would really like to have the flexibility to search for resources that are in multiple teams, or possess multiple skills. Equally, they wanted to be able to search for resources that are a member of one team, or another or where they have one skill or another.
Sometimes it’s the simplest things that can turn something from good to great. Previously when filtering to find project resources you could only search for people with different skills or team membership using OR logic. We’ve added the AND logic into filtering to provide a more flexible search feature to help you find the right person for the job!
For more detailed information about all of these new features and more, please visit our release notes page or have a watch of our webinar.
If you are interested in learning more about Mission Control please get in touch.
