We’re delighted to announce the Axosoft Suite Version 14.2 Release. At a glance, 14.2 features include:
- Daily Scrum– Get a quick snapshot of your team’s progress to add a visual layer to your daily standup.
- WIP Limits– Limit the number of items inside a workflow step or limit the number of items a user has in a workflow step.
- Help Desk Improvements– Send notifications using the [Created by Email Address] option and copy an item to defect, task, feature, etc by changing the workflow step.
- UI updates– We have improved the user interface for Email Accounts and Archiving page plus more.
You can watch our What’s New video here, or continue reading below!
Daily Scrum
When it came to our Daily Scrum, it wasn’t uncommon to have team members forget what work they did yesterday or what exactly they were responsible for that day. Sometimes we had team members abuse the 15 minute limit and talk forever. We realized all this information exists in the Axosoft product; so we put together a projector-friendly visual that augments your communication with the team (with a timer for those long-winded individuals). We’ve started using this everyday internally, and now we can’t really remember a time without it!
You’ll notice the Daily Scrum icon is now enabled next to the Tools menu. A new window opens and you quickly see tons of information – so let’s break it down. Your current release selection is located in the top left corner just above today’s date. Clicking on this will give you access to select other releases you may be working on. Over towards the top center, you’ll find the release timeline. If this is one of multiple sprints in a greater release, you’ll see exactly how that fits with your release timeframe. Pretty cool right?
We hope all these awesome visuals add even more information to your Daily Scrum.
WIP Limits
For those who love Kanban, we’re happy to introduce WIP limits. Here’s what Card View will look like once you’ve enabled WIP limits:
WIP is short for work in process, and now within workflow settings you can restrict the number of items inside a workflow step or restrict the number of items a user has in a workflow step (or both!). You also have the option to go over WIP limits depending on your setting preferences.
Although WIP limits are visible in card view, they are still enforced when changing workflow from list view or when editing an item directly. Give WIP limits a try in to see how it affects your team’s workflow!
Axosoft Help Desk Love
We’ve made a number of improvements to Axosoft Help Desk with updates to email and workflow. In addition to updating the UI for managing email accounts, we’ve added the option to send notifications using the [created by email address] option. Now you can notify any one who sends an email about changes without having to add them as a customer contact first.
Just to reiterate, this means there’s no need to create a customer contact for every person who emails a ticket (or bug, or feature request, etc) to send them updates. If you have customers who need updating, be sure to try this notification recipient because it will save you time.
This same information can flow to another item type thanks to the second new workflow setting: Copy to [Item Type]. You can now automatically copy an item to defect, task, feature, etc just by changing the workflow step. To do so, edit the desired workflow step and enable the setting.
For example, I get a ticket emailed into the system from Irene. Upon closer inspection, it’s clear this is a bug so I just change the workflow step to Closed-Defect. Irene is then automatically notified of the change to defect and then she’s kept up to date on any changes from that point forward thanks to my [Created by Email Address] setting. This should help things flow much smoother.
Other new updates include:
- UI Updates for Archive Manager
- Global Culture setting for language
- Found under System Options/Localization
- User preferred time unit
- This means each user can select what time unit they want for all their modules.
- Muliti-item picklist for Burndowns
- Choose what item type you want included in your Burndown Chart
- Return of the Dashboard Twitter gadget:
That about sums up 14.2. Stay tuned for our next release!