We thought in addition to hearing about larger improvements to the TopLeft Kanban app as we release them, you might also like an occasional summary of the smaller improvements we make. So here goes- a summary of the changes we made in September:

Improvements

• Show ticket/task predecessors on cards
• Add a function for triggering synchronization of configuration or operational data. This is useful for quickly synchronizing TopLeft with your PSA after you change setup options in your PSA such as ticket statuses, priorities, boards, or queues. The function is available in the Admin > Synchronize Data menu.
• Show the board description as a tooltip when hovering over the board name in the main menu.
• Project boards- in the card menu there is a "Show description" item that shows the project description.
• When hovering the mouse over a card title, the description of the record is shown as a tooltip.
• Time entry dialog- when opening the dialog, the start time field is set to the current time.
• Make the "Add Board" links in the main menu more compact, giving extra room to list Kanban boards for customers with a lot of boards.
• Clarify password reset emails and new customer welcome instructions.

Improvements for ConnectWise mode

• When the 1-minute sync option is enabled, add synchronization of assignment records.
• In ticket boards using project phase swimlanes, order the swimlanes by the WBS code so they match their order in the ConnectWise project module.

Improvements for Autotask mode

• Show a warning to administrators when ticket callouts are not configured, indicatating that tickets will not be updated immediately when changes are made in Autotask. If you don't see the message, you're all good!
• On ticket and task boards using priority swimlanes, show the swimlanes in the same order as priorities are listed in the Autotask priority setup page.
• When hovering over a service call indicator, show the service call status in the tooltip.

Invisible Stuff

• Improve how records are saved to the database when synchronizing your data- only perform update queries when records have actually changed in the PSA.
• Update to most recent versions of certain Python language libraries, including our major framework Django.

Bugs Fixed

• Reduce number of database queries when certain fields are visible on cards.

Thanks for using TopLeft Kanban boards for ConnectWise or Autotask!

TopLeft now shows project ticket/task predecessors!

This helps you visualize the relationships between project tickets. When a ticket has a predecessor, the predecessor ID is shown on the card, and the predecessor's styling is changed when you hover over the field so you can quickly locate the predecessor on the board.

To show predecessors, you should:

1. Set up the predecessor records on the tickets in ConnectWise or tasks in Autotask
2. Edit the Kanban board- enable the "Show predecessor" option.

That's it!

Additionally, ConnectWise customers who use style customization can make use of the new "Ticket predecessor is in a closed status" condition.

Precessors are shown when the predecessor is a ticket/task. PSAs also support predecessors that are project phases, but at this time TopLeft doesn't show phase predecessors.

We now accept American Express for payments.

That's it, that's the whole message.

You can now view project tickets and tasks by their phase in their project, using the phase swimlane option for ticket/task boards.

If you make use of phases in your projects, this sort of board can add tremendous visibility to your workflows- especially if you use a phase board as a target for the "zoom in" functionality in project boards.

Watch this video to see how to configure a phase swimlane board, how to filter it to a single project, and how to "zoom in" to the phase board from a board showing your top-level projects.

TopLeft is very pleased to announce Kanban boards for projects. Now you can visualize your projects (not just project tickets and tasks) as they progress through your team workflows!

What project boards are useful for:

• Getting an overview of all your projects, whether you have 10 projects or 100.
• Visualizing specialized project workflows- for example, repeated projects you create from a template
• Identifying exceptions such as projects that haven't progressed in the workflow recently, are over budget, or have approaching estimated start or end dates
• Identifying bottlenecks such as busy project managers
• Visualizing your project start dates so you don't commit yourself to anything impossible

Read more about it in the blog post.

Attend the webinar where we'll demonstrate project boards and share about other upcoming project features coming soon.

TopLeft CEO Wim Kerkhoff was recently a guest on the podcast PSAImpact. Hosted by Chris Timm and Rayanne Buchianico, the series is PSA independent and helps MSPs worldwide get the most from their PSA tool.

Wim talked about Kanban and how it can transform workflows in a PSA- replacing chaotic, inefficient and opaque processes with smooth, fast, and visible processes. Get the episode at https://psaimpact.libsyn.com/psa-impact-episode-20.

Wim explained how Kanban drives business improvement: “Once you see what’s going on and what the bottlenecks are and what’s falling through the cracks, then you can start to make small changes in that process. The idea is it’s not top down- the people in the management team telling the rest of the team what to do- but enabling the people doing the work to say- if we make a change or stop this step or add this step, it will improve the quality and get work done quicker.”

Check out PSAImpact in your favourite podcast app or at https://psaimpact.libsyn.com.

We present you one more reason to not open ConnectWise or Autotask- now you can view ticket and task notes and time entries right in Kanban!

The Show Notes option opens a dialog listing the notes and time entries on the ticket or task.

When changes are made to tickets, opportunities, and tasks in Kanban, your PSA audit trail attributes the change to the Kanban API member, not to the staff member who actually made the change. Until now, it hasn't been possible to see which member changed data in ConnectWise or Autotask when the change came from Kanban.

TopLeft Kanban now offers administrators the ability to view a log of all changes to PSA data made by users in Kanban. You can see who changed a ticket status, assigned or unassigned a member, changed the rank of a card, or made any other type of change. To learn how to view or search the log, refer to the knowledgebase article.

This is available for both ConnectWise and Autotask.

Autotask users can now use Kanban to dispatch service calls for technicians! When creating a service call, you can see the times of any other service calls for the selected technician, so it's easy to schedule the call at the optimal time.

The dispatch tool is available for tickets and tasks under the "..." menu of each card.

For more info, refer to the knowledgebase.

You can now view SLA info on Autotask tickets. This helps Autotask customers take SLA times into account when prioritizing tickets and improves SLA success rate by focusing on tickets whose SLA is approaching.

Here's an example of a ticket whose SLA is approaching:

And here's how it appears if the SLA time has passed:

To highlight tickets when the SLA ends within a certain period of time, edit the Kanban board and check the SLA time field and set the SLA warning field for the appropriate column. You can set a different threshold for each column. The syntax for the field is "Xm" for a threshold in minutes, "Xh" for a threshold in hours, and "Xd" for a threshold in days. For example, to highlight tickets whose SLA ends in 2 hours or less, enter "2h" or "120m".

When the ticket is in a status where the SLA is paused, the label is "SLA Waiting Customer".

To learn more, visit the knowledgebase.