Here are highlights of what we improved in the TopLeft app in August.

Improvements

• You can upload attachments to tickets.
  
  
  
  
• Gantt charts can show project tasks grouped by who they are assigned to, so you can more easily see all the scheduled work assigned to a member.
• Added filters to client portal views for projects and ticket due dates. Now your clients can view a Kanban board showing work for a single project, even if the board normally shows work for multiple projects.

Bugfixes

• We fixed a few issues with Gantt charts:
  • Now taskbars show the name of the assigned member only once, even if a member has multiple service calls on a task.
  • The timeframe of a Gantt chart no longer moves when tasks are dragged and dropped to change scheduling.
  • Predecessors appear on tasks properly.

We've introduced a new variation of our Gantt charts to help you visualize how team members and managers are scheduled.

When you're viewing the Projects Timeline, showing how your top-level projects are scheduled, now you can group the projects by their Manager/Lead. This makes it clear how the projects are scheduled for each person when you have multiple managers.

Just click "Group by: Manager" on the Gantt page to view it this way.

Similarly, when you're viewing the Gantt chart for tasks of multiple projects you can now group them by member. Just choose "Group by: Resources".

With this view, you can see all the project work scheduled for each team member, making it easy to spot periods where too much or too little work is scheduled for a member.

As a reminder, Gantt charts are now available to all licensed users, not just those with Manager licenses. We'd love to hear what you think about the improvements we've made to Gantt charts over the last few months.

You can now attach files to tickets and tasks in TopLeft. This is available from the Files tab of the ticket editor.

The maximum file size is 10 MB for ConnectWise and about 6 MB for Autotask.

It's been a long time since we wrote a summary of what's changed in the TopLeft app. There's a lot in this update! In this period we also hired two software developers so we can keep improving things for you even faster.

Here's a summary of what we've been up to:

Improvements

• Added support for Single Sign On (SSO) using Microsoft Entra ID.
  
  
• Big improvements to Gantt charts: Gantt charts are available to all users (not just Managers), are available in client portal, can show work arranged by who's assigned to the task, charts can be exported to PDF, the tickets/tasks on the Gantt chart match those from the Kanban board from which it was launched, and we made a whole lot of usability improvements.
• CloudRadial client portal improvements: clients can now edit tickets/tasks by dragging between columns, adding a note to a ticket, or creating a new ticket.
• Added the ability to send ticket time entries and notes to any company contact or technician.
• Added swimlanes for tickets and tasks based on dates.
• When adding a ticket, you can set the ticket contact.
• Added a tool to test the permissions granted to the TopLeft API member, so you can proactively check the permissions are still correct instead of seeing errors in the app or sync log.
• When you assign someone to a ticket, the assignment is recorded as an internal note.
• Pods in the ticket/task editor now reload whenever any pod is saved, to ensure all form information is complete and up-to-date.
• The Users page in the settings section now lists the license assigned to the user.

ConnectWise

• Added display of images in tickets and ticket notes and rich text editing of those records.
• Added the ability to dispatch tickets to ConnectWise teams.
• Added display of company and contact alerts, so engineers are always aware of those special considerations for special clients.
• Added support for Company Sites- with a board filter, swimlane, label on cards, and ability to change the Site from the ticket editor.
• Added a board filter for the Company Type field of a ticket - especially useful if you use this field to identify the pod responsible for a ticket.
• Added a way to hide merged tickets.
• When dispatching a member to a ticket, you can set the Where and Status fields of the assignment.

Autotask

• Service tickets and project tasks can be shown together on one board!
• Added an option for project cards to show the project's department and use the department for swimlanes.
• Added a filter for Kanban boards to filter tickets by queue.

Bugfixes

• Times on Kanban boards now appear in the user's timezone, not the server timezone.

For those of you who use teams to manage work in ConnectWise, now you can assign a ticket to a team in TopLeft.

Also, notice we moved the Owner field to the Assignments section, so that all the assignment and dispatch-related fields are together on one tab.

Some clients have many sites and you need to track which tickets are for which sites. Now you can view and manage this in TopLeft for ConnectWise.

We've added three ways to make use of the company site for tickets:

1. Show the site on cards, like this:
   
2. Swimlanes for company site, so each company site has a swimlane that shows the tickets for that site
3. Change a ticket's site from the editing dialog:
   
   
   
   

Datto Autotask doesn't have an equivalent of this field, so this is not supported in TopLeft for Autotask.

Sometimes when you add a note to a ticket, you need to notify a variety of people. It could be an engineer or salesperson on your team who isn't assigned to the ticket, or someone at the client who isn't the main contact on the ticket.

When you enter a note or time entry on a ticket, now you can send the note to any contact at the client company or any engineer in your MSP.

Your choice is saved for the next time someone enters a note. Now you have complete flexibility in notifying clients and staff as you work on tickets.

We have great news about Gantt charts in TopLeft. They're way better than before! Here are the highlights:

• Gantt charts are now available to users with Engineer and Viewer licenses, not just to those with a Manager license!
• Gantt charts are in the client portal.
• Tasks can be shown by assigned resources so you can plan work and avoid scheduling problems more easily.
• You can export charts to PDF.
• A whole bunch of usability improvements to make your day better.

Keep reading for the details...

Gantt Available to All Users

Gantt charts can help engineers visualize their upcoming work, so we've made them available to those with Engineer and Viewer licenses. Previously Gantt charts were only available to Managers. Engineers can drag taskbars to change dates, while Viewers get a read-only view.

As with the Kanban boards, Engineers and Viewers can see tasks on the Gantt chart that are either unassigned or assigned to a user licensed in TopLeft. As always, those with a Manager license can see tasks assigned to anyone.

Gantt Available in Client Portal

Your clients also benefit from seeing project plans visually, so we've made Gantt charts available in the client portal- both the built-in client portal and the CloudRadial version.

Your clients can view Gantt charts from a Kanban board with project or project phase swimlanes.

To see a Gantt chart for a single project, your client can click the link in the swimlane header of the project.

To see a timeline of all their projects on the Kanban board, the client can click the link in the page header:

Show Tasks by Assigned Resource

To make it easier to see how work is scheduled among the engineers on your team, now you can organize tasks by their assigned resources.

Also, the names of the assigned members are shown beside each task:

PDF Export

Click the button. Get a PDF file of your Gantt chart.

Usability Improvements

We made it easier to use the Gantt charts. Some improvements include:

• Gantt charts use the same ticket filters as the Kanban board from which they are launched, so you see on the Gantt chart exactly what you saw on the Kanban board.
• It's much easier to scroll horizontally.
• Your display choices are persisted between page loads.
• It's easier to collapse or expand groups of tasks by using the new buttons in the task bar.
• Colours are clearer and we removed some strange artifacts that would sometimes appear on taskbars.

ConnectWise can show notices about companies and contacts in the ticket editing page. For example, a company may have an agreement that only a specific individual is permitted to approve work. This notice is shown on all tickets for the company so engineers are aware.

TopLeft can now show these notices. This will help your engineers be confident they can work from TopLeft without missing out on important company and contact information.

When a notice exists for a company, an alert icon is shown on the company label on the card.

We've added a few new ticket filtering options for ConnectWise users. You can use these filters to make boards that are more precise about the tickets that are shown.

The new filters are:

1. Company Site- you can choose to show tickets that belong to one or more particular company sites. We've also added a swimlane option for Company Site.
   
   
2. Merged tickets- you can choose to show tickets which have been merged into other tickets. By default, merged tickets are not shown.
3. Tickets without a type- if a board already filters by Ticket Type, it may be useful to include tickets that do not have a Type value provided. This is the "No type" checkbox below the Type field.

These are available on the Filters tab of the board add or edit page.