Jim and myself have been on the road for a couple of weeks, talking with new, existing and future users of Milestone Planner. We’ve learnt lots, and back at the office the coffee bill has gone down!

A lot of the new learning has gone into our latest release wave, now live, with more to come. I feel like we should call it the “shiny jazzy” release, even though it is mostly been about removing distractions, increasing the functionality and speeding the workflow of Milestone Planner – kind of a tall latte – all the coffee without the froth. Can you tell I haven’t had my morning coffee or put my headphones on yet? Anyway, here are the key changes:

Crisper Milestones and Actions

On the dashboard and milestone pages we have resigned the way milestones and actions are displayed. The new design is (hopefully!) much cleaner, clearer and more compact. That means you can see more at once, especially on netbooks and tablets with smaller screens that seem to be becoming more and more popular with road warriors.

The way dates are displayed has been enhanced too. The due date for milestones and actions is now highlighted when they are past due. It’s just a gentle reminder that the commitment needs to be renegotiated and adjusted – just click on the date.

Clearer Breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs are great little bit of information that let you know where you are. At the top of each action and milestone we have a new “breadcrumb” design. The breadcrumb is designed so you can easily see which project, workstream and milestones each item belongs to – a little trail of context. Clicking on the breadcrumb will focus the activity stream on that it, so you can see what has been happening. On a milestone you can also click on the workstream name to move the milestone into another workstream.

Jazzier People Bar and Sleeper Activity Stream

The pictures in the people bar now have a name on them, to help identify those people who haven’t uploaded a profile picture yet – there’s always one! At least now you’ll have a name to identify them by. To upload a picture, simply click the ‘my account’ button at the bottom of the page, then click on the profile picture.

We have added a ‘view all users’ button on the people bar for milestones and dashboard views, in the professional edition. Clicking the icon will show the milestones and actions for all of the users in the project at once.

The clearer design extends to the Activity Stream, which now allows you to see more clearly who made what changes, and when. There is more space between items, and each change gets its own line.

Activity Reports – Phase I

If you’ve sign up to the tracking features (go to your account settings page), you’ll be able to preview our new activity reports, which show what has changed on a project between now any any given date that you choose.

Faster Dashboard

The dashboard now defaults to listing the first few most relevant items in each stack (this saves a few mouse clicks every day). Milestones and users that have had activity since you last logged in have a star by them, so you can check out changes at a glance.

Auto Extending Project Timeline

The concept of project length (in weeks) is now separated from the length of the timeline view. That’s a very technical way of saying “if you move a milestone beyond the end of the project, we’ll make room for it. Automatically.” The same happens if you click on the scroll right button, past the end of a project.

And more…

The appearance of the menu has been tweaked a little, there are some bandwidth optimisations to help with mobile and slow connections, and a more touch friendly display for ipads, ipods, iphones and touch screen phones.

Keep sending us feedback, inviting folks and requesting new features – talking to people about how they use Milestone Planner has really energised us. Lots more things coming very soon!

Do Things Differently

Milestone Planner is about working more effectively, and has a very different approach (and philosophy) to ’1.0′ productivity software. Outcomes outperform activities. Purpose outperforms process. Deadlines outperform durations. Leadership and co-operation outperform command and control. Networked people outperform constraints and controls. So, what have we done? Here’s a quick video overview from Jim:

Actions over To Do’s

To Do’s are usually items without context, although good to do lists do have context, which helps to help prioritise and make sense of what’s in them. The real purpose of context is to ensure that our actions map to our goals (either personal or business). So, how are Actions in Milestone Planner different from what you might have seen with a To Do list before? Firstly, actions represent a commitment, either to yourself or someone else. Other things are fine, but they belong in a notepad or some form of idea store. Secondly, actions are created in a context –  they exist against a Milestone, inheriting it’s due date, and following it around.

Just like Milestones, Actions have an owner, but they also have a ‘supporter‘. The owner is the person who created the action. The supporter is the person it was assigned to, who is ‘supporting’ making it happen. The two may be one and the same of course. There’s nothing wrong with making and keeping commitments to yourself! Just like milestones, actions can be reassigned and edited in two clicks. If you are on a call or in a meeting, you can capture the meeting actions by clicking add action on a milestone, then simply type each action and kit enter – you don’t need to take your fingers off of the keyboard unless you want to assign them to someone else. It is super fast, enabling you to keep the flow of the meeting, and have a comprehensive action list at the end of it.

Actions have a status of  completed/done, started/in progress or not-started/backlog . This forms a basic personal kanban system, which you will see when you sign into the Milestone Planner dashboard. Kanban is something I’ve been big a fan of for a long time. If you want to know more about personal kanban, start with this presentation from Jim Benson (@ourfounder on Twitter), and check out the personal kanban site:

There have been hundreds of conversations that shaped the latest release of Milestone Planner. A huge thank you to everyone who’s taken time to speak with the SocialOptic team, dropped us emails, sent feedback or tweeted us. One conversation that stuck in my head is this one with Richard Maybury during a tvsmc meet up. I had my Zi-8 to had, so was able to catch it on camera:

Be productive, very productive! Keep the feedback coming, and thank you for inviting your friends and teams, and for keeping us healthy and growing! As we’ve been saying in the office all week: “ACTIONTASTIC!“

Our symathies go out to those who caught up in the travel chaos caused by the ash from Eyjafjallajoekull; we trust you have made it back home now! It has certainly pushed remote working up the agenda, and although we weren’t directly affected ourselves, remote working is a way of life for the SocialOptic team. You’ll usually find us with a Skype video conference in one window and Milestone Planner in another. There has certainly been a fair bit of real-time adjustment of plans with the number of  events that were rescheduled. We still managed to get out to a few events in London, and will blog about them shortly – face to face meetings definitely still have their place!

A New Dashboard

Back to the new release. You’ll find much more information on the dashboard. It now loads dynamically and gives a clearer view of what has been done, is due and is coming up next. If you haven’t seen it yet, just click on the projects page and add a new project – so that you have more than one project active. Click over to the dashboard, or wait until you next login; you’ll see it in action.

While you are on the projects page you will notice some other new features. The most visible one is the addition of gravatars to each project in the projects page, so you can see at a glance who is on each project team. We have also tidied the look and feel for the projects page, my milestones and dashboard views, as well as adding a couple of small fixes into the main timeline application.

Passing a Milestone

There is a big difference between agreeing a later date for a dead-line (slipping a milestone) and missing it. Obviously neither of the two are great, but the first is at least a bit more controlled. The difference between them wasn’t that obvious in Milestone Planner, so after much thinking and discussion we have added a new type of history item to record when a milestone is passed without it being completed.

On the morning after a milestone falls due, a message is automatically added to the milestone’s history to show that its date has passed. If you are using the RSS feed, that means that you will receive a message there. So, when it comes to review time, you can see if the milestone was missed then pushed out, as well as slipped or brought forward.

Moving Milestones Between Workstreams

We’ve gone vertical! Well, sort of. As well as dragging milestones backwards and forwards to change the date, it is now possible to drag them up and down, to move them between workstreams. The change is noted in the milestone history, as well as by an event in the RSS feed.

This new functionality makes it much easier to evolve and adjust bigger plans. The first iteration of your plan can be built without having to worry about workstreams, simply add milestones as you think of them. Then create workstreams and distribute the milestones, simply by dragging the milestones into them.

It is also useful for larger plans, where you want to ‘refactor’ them. Adding a “key milestones” workstream and dragging the most important milestones into it has become popular in the SocialOptic offices. Remember, if you are the project owner, you can also re-arrange the order of the workstreams, simply by dragging them up and down. In the case of the “key milestones” workstream, it seems to make sense to have it at the top, so we simply create it and drag it up there.

Happy to be Blue – Blue Means Done

Blue has always meant ‘done’ in Milestone Planner, however it has become less obvious since we removed the old-style dialogues and added in place editing. But blue is back! We’ve made it easier to remember that ‘blue’ means done by adding a new icon when you click on a milestone, with a nice blue tick. Thank you to @jenniwheller for reminding us that it wasn’t as obvious as it used to be.

We have also given the ‘time line‘ a bit of a blue tint too. As well as being ‘blue means done‘, it also makes it easier to see on low contrast screens, or if you are outside working in the sun – a bit hopeful in the UK in April, but we like to look on the bright side! While we are on the subject of the sweeping time line, it now also sweeps all the way to the right when you mark a project’s last milestone complete. It might just be because I’ve watched one episode too many of Dr Who, but it does give me a little buzz as it whizzes across the screen.

Feedback, as ever, is very welcome. Share and enjoy! Almost all of Milestone Planner’s biggest fans come via personal recommendation from people like yourself, so please do share, tweet, blog and generally spread the word.

• Edit milestones – no more pop up box! Just click the title to change it. Click the Milestone ‘triangle’ to pop up the status chooser and select red, yellow, green or blue (completed) – or delete the milestone. It’s whizzy, you’ve got to try it!
• See the owner – click on the person icon and choose an owner for the milestone. Type a name, and click ‘invite’ to bring them into the project. If you hover over the milestone owners’s name, any milestones belonging to  that person will glow. You might want to zoom right out on the timeline for the best effect!
• Scroll Wheel Support – for those of you with mouse wheels and track pads, you can scroll up and down using them.

A Greater Sense of History

The biggest change has been to how “history” is handled. When you hover a mouse over a milestone, it will reveal the when the milestone was last updated, and what the most recent change to the milestone was – with little icons for date, owner, text update, etc – and who may the update. If you click on the “Show history” pull down, you can see more of the change history:

In the Standard Edition of Milestone Planner, you have the last few changes, in the Professional Edition you have access to the full history since the milestone was created. You’ll notice the history isn’t just what happened to the milestone (created, slipped, status change, …), it can include an explanation or comment as well.

Whenever you update a milestone, the history box will pop up and ask you for a comment. It is optional, but sometimes it is helpful to add an explanation. For example, if I slip a milestone back 5 days I might want to add a note to explain that it will be late because Dave has been stuck at home in the snow. You can also add a URL into a note, for example linking to a relevant document or an image. The link will be hyperlinked in the history view.

Conversations Around Milestones

As you see, your team can now have conversations around any milestone, interwoven with the changes to it. The conversation is kept in one place, so everyone working on the milestone can see who and what is being affected by what they are working towards. This makes it much easier to distribute the management of the project, but ensure that things still remain on track. Even users with standard access to a project (who can’t add or move milestones) can add comments.

Conversations Face to Face

That’s probably enough of a brain dump for one post! Starting next week is Social Media Week, with events all around the world  - It is going to be great (I might have a slight bias). I’ll be at Social Media Week London (event schedule here – the tickets are almost all gone) and speaking at “Social Media in Enterprises”  on at Cass Business School on Tuesday (more detail on the Business Two Zero blog) and “Social Media Measurement” at Sun’s offices on Friday. Do come and say hello – I’m always very happy to chat about Milestone Planner!

Keep your browser warm, there’s more coming very soon!

When you next logon you’ll notice that the “Beta” button has gone. For  many services, being in perpetual beta is a fine fashion statement, but  we have a large number of users managing big projects within Milestone Planner, and we’d love more, so it’s officially time to come out of beta.

Being out of beta doesn’t mean we are perfect though – if you do see a hickup, then give us your feedback. There are so many permutations of browsers, operating systems and plugins, there there is always the occasional surprise. You’ll find we get things fixed very quickly if there is an issue, and that we are definitely still adding new functionality.

A number of users have asked us for premium features, so we’re opening that option up more broadly to users of Milestone Planner. The free service will remain as is. Create as many projects as you want and invite as many people as you need to manage the projects . The ”Professional” option adds full SSL support and full Milestone history for  users that have upgraded.

We’ll be adding in more features in the coming months, so  as an incentive to get in early, we have set up an 80% discount code, which gets you a whole year of Milestone Planner Professional for £19.80. Simply head over to the store – click “upgrade to Professional” and enter launch2009 as your discount code. If you are new to Milestone Planner, you’ll want to sign up and give it a try first. If you are upgrading an existing account, just use the same email address you normally login with and you are away.

The offer is only open to the first 200 people [a few left but only a few days left] who register after this post and before the end of december, and if you want to share the code via Twitter or via your blog, then that’s great with us [drop us an email and we'll send you a code].

If you’re a bigger business with lots of users, we have two other offers that might be of interest to you – drop us a line and we’ll tell you about them.

For now, if you are a Twitter user, you can follow us there: @SocialOptic or do subscribe to this blog’s RSS feed.

We are building social software for social business, supporting digital conversations that get more things done.

We’ll share more as it happens, right here.

-Benjamin, Jim and the SocialOptic team.