Clarizen 2.1 is out!

Highlights of this major release include:

• Full support of Firefox 2.X
• Email users can now also submit a Note with their progress update
• Fully loaded Reporting capabilities
• Advanced filtering across the different grids
• Budget calculations with hourly user rates
• Critical path indicator and Importance field
• Lead/Lag time enabled for dependencies

See below a detailed list of new and enhanced features along with related screenshots.

1. Firefox 2.x is now fully supported.
2. Reports
   • Now you can generate html-based reports directly within Clarizen via the Reports tab.
   • Pre-defined reports such as "My tasks this week" or "All tasks on a critical path managed by me" are provided by default along with many other commonly used reports.
   • You can create customized private or public reports and save them to your available reports.
   
   
   
   
    
3. Work Items View
   Users can now see all Tasks, Milestones and Projects (across all projects) in one centralized view and apply various filters to it.
   
   
   
   
   
4. Advanced Filtering
   On every page in the application (Apart from the Current Project page) you can filter every column according to its data type. For example, for Start Date, you can show ‘all tasks starting today', or for % Completed, show ‘all work items that are less than 50%'.
   
   
   
   
   
5. Advanced Budget Calculations with User Hourly Rates
   It is now possible to set an hourly rate per user/resource or use the default organization-wide hourly rate. Clarizen will automatically calculate the Planned Budget according to assigned resources' rates and re-quired work. For example, a user with a $100 hourly rate, assigned a 1 day task (8-hour work day), will set the Planned Budget to $800. Similarly, the Actual Budget will be calculated taking into account the re-ported % Completed.
   Organizations can select to enable/disable the rate-based budget calculations in the System Settings.
   
   
   
   
   
6. Progress Email with Notes
   When selecting to manually update completion from a Progress Report sent by mail, the user can add a note that would be added as a new Note in the respective task in Clarizen.
   
   
   
   
   
   
7. Actual & Remaining Effort Enhanced
   It is now possible to set Actual & Remaining efforts in hours, days, weeks and months.
   
   
   
   
   
8. Creating Sub-Project from Template
   Within the Current Project page, users can create a new child project from a template.
   
   
   
   
   
   
9. Critical Path Indicator
   A new view has been added to the system called ‘Scheduling' that includes an indicator if the work item is on the critical path.
   
   
   
   
   
10. Importance and Priority Fields
    Each task can be assigned a level of Importance (Critical, High, Normal and Low) and with a Priority value (numeric value) that is available via the Properties of the task.
    To assign a Priority, select the Properties option from the context menu of the task.
    
    
    
    
    
    
11. Personalized Welcome Page
    When first signing into Clarizen new users are greeted with a welcome page that is tailored to the role of the user accessing the solution for the first time, including:
    1. A page for Administrators with useful information on adding users, modifying the organization settings, turning on the budget functionality and more.
    2. A page for a Regular User with no assignments.
    3. A page for a Regular User who is already assigned some work items.
    4. A page for External Users (with or without assignments) with an explanation of the External User permissions.
    The welcome page is also accessible under the ‘More' tab should one want to revisit it after signing up.
    
    
12. External User Indicator on Resource Page
    A Boolean column (i.e. True/False) was added to the Resources page and to the User Management tab in the Admin page to indicate if a user is External.
    
    
13. Multi-Select Enhanced
    New functionality was added to support multi-select actions: Cut, Copy, Paste, Delete, Mark as Read/Unread and Change Type.
    
    
    
    
    
14. Lead/Lag Time added to Dependencies
    You can now add a lag or lead time (set a slack) to a dependency. Use a negative value to determine an overlap or a positive value to set a gap.
    
    
    
    
    
15. 'Updating' Message Revamped
    The auto save message was modified to an "Updating..." message at the bottom of the screen and optimized to take advantage of user's idle moments to run the updated calculations rather than require the user to wait.
    
    
    
    
    
16. Unique Display Name
    A user's Display Name has to be unique in the organization. By default the Display Name is set as the user's first name.
    
    
17. Hyperlinks Enabled in Non-editable Grids
    In non-editable grids, such as Search and Report results, work items are clickable so that when you click a work item it will open it in the Current Project page.

Stay tuned for our next major release scheduled for end of Q3 this year that will include plug-ins to MS Outlook and various web-based solutions using Clarizen's SOA platform.

Still missing something? Have feedback for us? We want to know. Contact us via email.