Release Notes: 2021

December 2021

• Coming Soon: Permission Profiles
  Set customized client permissions (all customers) to choose what your clients see with options including estimates, time entries, and all tasks.
  A brand new naming structure (pro & plus customers) with the current manager now named as ‘coordinator’ and a brand new level ‘manager’ including revenue.
  Customized permission profiles (plus customers) offer the flexibility to create your own profiles to meet your needs. You can customize what information can be viewed on each profile, such as revenue, reports, and time registrations.
• Task Overrun Alert
  As we make Forecast even smarter with Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, the task overrun alert will notify the project manager about potentially underestimated tasks. So if a task with a similar name has been done previously (such as website design), Forecast will look at whether you are grossly under- or over-estimating your task, helping you to scope out more effectively.
• Coming Soon: Advanced Analytics
  

  Forecast's robust and accurate data provides the foundation for advanced reporting, dashboards, and visualizations that drive professional services business growth.

  AvA will empower customers with intelligent insights so they can take timely and proactive action, to increase revenue, mitigate risks, decrease costs and drive efficiency across the business.
• Coming Soon: Skills
  

  Skills give you the opportunity to label your resources with their competencies, you are a step closer to finding the right person for the right task, at the right time. You can categorize skills to make them easier to manage, and upload skills to multiple resources with bulk actions.

• Retainer Target Breakdown

  Get a better overview of retainers in your Project Portfolio Report (PPR) where you can now view Retainer Period Targets

• Group Expenses by Phase

  Helping you manage your expenses, you can now group expenses by phase. 

• Invoice Reference option in show/hide

  On your invoices page, you now have the option to view the reference in the overview by selecting it from the show/hide menu. 

• Add and remove people to the project teams straight from the schedule people and schedule projects

  Our new feature allows you to add or remove a person to a project team using the hamburger menu in the schedule people or schedule project views. Perfect for quickly updating teams without any of the admin!
• Resource Heatmap by percentage
  You now have the option to toggle between viewing the resource heatmap between hours and percentage.

Month of November 2021

• Profile Permissions in closed beta testing
  With Forecast's in-development permission profiles, you can design your own profiles and set your own permission levels. Besides our five predefined profiles, you have the flexibility to create your own ones to meet your needs. You can customize what information can be viewed on each profile, such as revenue, reports, and time registrations.
• Integration with BambooHR
  The BambooHR/Forecast integration eliminates duplication by updating approved time-off requests directly into the resource heatmap. Up-to-date information is easy to find; for instance, if a request for time off changes in BambooHR, such as canceling it or altering the dates, the change will appear in Forecast. Time-off categories can be aligned by importing them from BambooHR or assigning what you have in Forecast to the corresponding categories for them to appear on your timesheets.  
• Performance Improvements
  Our goal is to make Forecast an even better experience for you. In this month's update, the time format in minutes and the column names across reports have been aligned across CSV exports.
• Time registration suggestions
  We resolved an issue where time suggestions were not available in some scenarios. 
• Task report
  In the task report, you can now separate hour and story point estimation and add a budget type filter.

Month of October 2021

• Integration with Pipedrive
  Plus customers can now connect Pipedrive with Forecast to align your sales department and project delivery teams. The integration enables you to turn Pipedrive deals into projects, so you can get better visibility of your project pipeline and more accurately plan your available resources. With the client import from Pipedrive too, you can now have one source of truth for your client records, without needing to update client information in separate systems. 

• Introducing Subtasks and Task Hierarchy

  The new task hierarchy in Forecast allows you to nest different tasks underneath each other. You'll be able to create a 'parent' task and as many subtasks as you like under it. The new subtasks will come with estimates, assignees, and start and end dates.

• Scoping 2.0
  With the introduction of subtasks and task hierarchy, we are replacing Scoping with Scoping 2.0. The Scoping 2.0 page has a slightly newer look while retaining the existing functionality and structure, with the addition of key project metrics that now sit at the top of the page, such as start/end dates, progress, plan versus actual revenue. Scoping 2.0 brings performance improvements, such as a faster loading time of under two seconds and the ability to drag, drop and nest subtasks under one another.
• Grouping Feature on Task Report
  You can now have two levels of grouping on the Task Report with the additional ‘group by’ option.

Month of September 2021

• An All-New Task Report [Beta]
  Introducing Forecast’s new Task Report which provides you with visibility of the tasks across all of your projects with customizable views thanks to grouping, filters, and a date range! The new report gives you a view of task progress as well as financial variance (planned vs actuals). 

• Manage Your Resources by Department and Role
  Thanks to this latest resource management release you can now manage your resources at a higher level by grouping them by Department or Role, helping you to understand where you can take on new work and avoid any potential bottlenecks. You can now use Forecast’s Utilization Report to understand past, present, and future billable utilization rates by Department or Role too.

• Updates to Baseline
  It’s now possible to download the key data from your project Baseline into a CSV for use in your proposals and quotes. You can now also add a Margin % column to your Baseline view, by selecting Margin from the show/hide eye.

• Invoice only on ‘Done’ tasks
  You can now choose to only invoice your clients based on tasks that are set to ‘Done’.

• Expense categories in the Expense Report
  Get a view of how Expenses have been categorized by adding the Expense Category into your Expense Report.

• Changes to the Time Registrations report
  At a glance, you can get a view of which time registrations have been invoiced and filtered by Project Owner and Budget Type.  

• Labels are now visible in MyTasks
  In MyTasks you can now view Labels, by clicking into the show/hide eye and selecting Labels.

• A Xero client import update for multiple Xero Organizations
  The corresponding Xero Organization name is now displayed next to the Client Name when importing clients from Xero if you have multiple Xero Organizations 

Month of August 2021

• ‘What’s New’
  While Nova's Monthly Roundup email is top-notch, 'What's New' is now your 'in-Forecast' source of all news and updates relating to our platform and other exciting stuff you should know about! In here you'll find information on important feature releases and product updates, webinars, and other learning resources, as well as incentivized activities like participating in surveys and research.
• Subtasks aka Task Hierarchy is here [Beta]
  The new task hierarchy in Forecast allows you to nest different tasks underneath each other. You'll be able to create a 'parent' task and as many subtasks as you like under it. The new subtasks come with estimates, assignees, and start and end dates.
  
  The new task hierarchy will help to reduce the overwhelm often felt by teams when tasks aren't broken down in enough detail and will better support them in accomplishing more complex pieces of work. Subtasks will also help to provide a more accurate view of whether a project will overrun on budget, or on time.
• Scoping 2.0
  

  Hand in hand with the new task hierarchy, we’ve also released a new version of the Scoping page - Scoping 2.0. This version brings a slightly new look to the Scoping page while retaining the existing functionality and structure (it should feel the same for the most part). An obvious change is the project summary that now sits at the top of the page with key project data displayed e.g. start/end dates, progress, plan vs actual revenue and more.

  Importantly, tasks can now be dragged, dropped and nested under each other, which is why this is timed with the release of the new task hierarchy. The new Scoping page also benefits from dramatic performance improvements, bringing loading times down to a maximum of 2 seconds.

• Hubspot Integration
  If you’re on our Plus plan, you can now connect HubSpot with Forecast to align your sales department and project delivery teams. With the integration you can:
  • Turn HubSpot Deals into Forecast Projects, so you can get better visibility of your project pipeline and more accurately plan your available resources
  • Sync important project information back to HubSpot
  • Import your clients from HubSpot, so you can have one source of truth for your client records, without needing to update client information in separate systems
• Rate Card Versions
  We know that client negotiation can sometimes lead to a change or two on the rate card, which is why we’re excited to announce that you can now create multiple versions of rate cards that are effective from a specific date.
  
  This change means your past pricing data won’t be affected by changes to a rate card. With this release, you’ll also be able to disable a rate card from being used again, while retaining the past financial data relating to it.
  
  Note, we have now removed the ‘Rate card’ page in the Projects tab, but it has been added into the Project Budget view and Project Settings, under Financials. 

Month of July 2021

• We're swapping 'Milestone' for 'Phase'
  You'll now see the term ‘Milestone’ changed to ‘Phase’ throughout the Forecast platform. We made this decision because ‘Phase’ is a commonly used term that better represents a specific collection of tasks within a project.
• Xero Invoice Export Update (for multiple Xero organizations)
  When exporting an invoice to Xero you can now see which of your Xero organizations the Forecast Client belongs to. The Client name in the drop-down menu now includes the Xero Organization name, so it's easy to see which Xero organization the invoice will be exported to.

Month of June 2021

• Mobile App: Updated and upgraded
  We’re very excited to be able to show off the updated Forecast mobile app for iOS and Android devices! We’ve made updates to the look and feel of the mobile app and now it’s just like the browser version of Forecast, so it’s familiar and easy to use. Performance improvements have also been made, making the app faster, smoother and better than ever. 
  
  What you can do in the app while on the go:
  • Get a view of the tasks you need to focus on, what’s overdue, what’s coming and what’s been done
  • Create new tasks, update statuses, add estimates, comments, and change assignees and dates
  • Create, edit and delete time entries in timesheets
• The Schedule Projects timeline can now be shared (and printed)
  You can now share the Schedule Projects timeline view (with filters applied). Share it with clients for an overview of their projects in a timeline, or share it with internal stakeholders, so they can get a view of projects in different stages - what's happened, what's coming down the pipeline and what's happening right now. You can also print it if you need to!
• Improvements to the new Project Portfolio Report
  • You can now display more financial information in the Project Portfolio Report's chart, such as the actual, planned and remaining revenue, cost or, profit
  • The CSV download of the report now contains all displayed information

• Duplicating projects through the API
  When using the API to create projects, you can now select a project to duplicate so you can use your project templates. API Documentation.

Month of May 2021

• Four improvements have been made to the Xero integration

  • The first update to the Xero integration enables you to raise invoices in Forecast for multiple Xero organizations. This update has made tracking invoices across your multiple entities a lot easier.

  • The second update to the Xero integration means you can now bring Purchase Orders from Xero into Forecast as Expenses, ensuring the financial data you have in Xero is more accurately reflected in Forecast.

  • With the third update to the Xero integration, you do not have to manually synchronize your invoices and clients anymore because this is done automatically by the integration.
  • And last but not least we have added the option to include the project name in your invoice line description when exporting the invoice to Xero as our fourth improvement.
• The external task creation form just got more secure
  When sharing the task creation form with a client you’ll now be able to password protect the form, in case the shareable link falls into the wrong hands. Create your own password, or let Forecast generate one for you - share the password with your client and they’ll be able to securely access the form using it.

• Time Registration Report data can now be exported 

  You can now download a CSV of the Time Registration Report, making it easy to use the data for reporting outside of Forecast if you need to.

• Quarterly zoom

  In both Schedule People, Schedule Projects and the Timeline view in each project, you'll now be able to zoom all the way out to take a look at the Gantt chart broken down by quarter. 
• Report owner and last edit is now displayed
  In our new reports (Utilization Report, Time Registered Report and Project Portfolio Report) we are now displaying who owns and who edited the report last.
• Jira comments are now synced
  When you are syncing a project between Jira and Forecast your comments on your Jira tasks are also imported into your Forecast tasks now.
• Better AI suggestions
  When our Forecast AI suggests you assignee, roles, labels or estimates for your tasks it is now relying on a new and improved machine learning model.

Month of April 2021

• Salesforce templates

  You can now select different templates when creating projects in Forecast through our Salesforce integration. Users can easily select which template to use and have them auto-populate data between Forecast and Salesforce. This will allow Salesforce users to get a better overview of how an opportunity is going and provide users with the ability to create overview reports.

• CSV download on Invoice Overview

  We have enabled download functionality on the Invoice Overview page, so it is now possible to download the Invoice Overview as a CSV. You will find the button next to the preview icon on the right-hand side navigation layer. Upon clicking, 3 CSV files will automatically be downloaded reflecting the 3 different budget types (Fixed Price, Time & Materials, and Retainers) on the overview page

• Unlink Invoices
  If you are using one of our accounting integrations (Xero, Quickbooks Online or e-conomic), you can now unlink your exported invoices in Forecast so you can edit them in Forecast independently of your accounting system
• New Color Picker
  We've made it easier for you to pick your project colors. You can now choose between 12 pre-selected colors for your projects.
• AI suggestions for Assignees and Roles
  

  We’ve boosted our AI to help you find the right person and role for the job when creating tasks on the scoping or the sprint page. While the AI already suggested assignees and roles in the task modal we’ve upgraded it to help you find the right resources across Forecast. Let Nova do the hard work for you!

• Performance improvements
  Once more we have improved the performance and this time we made the Workflow and the Sprints super fast. This update will especially improve the performance on these two pages if you are using large connected projects.
• Deprecation of the project overview
  With the new project settings page, all settings that were formerly found on the project overview now found a new home. Therefore the project overview page was not needed anymore and we made some room for new amazing features to come.
• Deprecation of the old utilization report components
  The new utilization report is out and we now replaced the old report components utilization list, utilization bar chart and monthly utilization with the shiny new report.

Month of March 2021

• New utilization Report
  We’ve released a brand new Utilization Report that allows you to instantly compare and analyze your team's billable and non-billable utilization rates. This consolidates the Utilization List, Bar Chart and Monthly Utilization all in one report. The new report is much faster and more accurate than the previous one.
• Timesheet Approval & Timesheet Locking (available on Plus)
  We have launched Timesheet Approval and Timesheet Locking in Forecast. You can now approve your team members’ time registrations for invoicing and ensure that only correct time registrations end up in your invoices, as well as lock timesheets to avoid changes being made after the cut-off.

• Start & End Dates

  In the Admin panel, you can now set a start and end date for your team members and virtual resources. This will allow for improved resource management. With this update, we have moved working hours inside team members’ profiles. The start and end dates of a team member are already taken into account in the Timesheet, where time registrations before the start and after the end date are disabled for the particular team member.

• Sprint Header & Story Points

  We’ve cleaned up the sprint header to only include information you need to efficiently manage and monitor your sprints. Plus Forecast now converts story points into hours dynamically by learning from your actual performance in your sprints so you have one thing less to worry about. 

• New Project Settings

  The project settings page has a brand new design with a much cleaner and easier way of navigating. You will now find your project settings have been segmented into 6 sections: General, Status, Tasks, Financials, Team & Integrations.

• Invoicing Improvements
  Following continuous enhancements to invoicing, we have improved the overall performance of the feature which will now allow you to generate, edit and manage your invoices much more efficiently. In addition to that, we allow now to include the notes of time registrations in your Time & Material invoices. Just select the "No grouping with notes" option in the grouping field.

• New Expense Modal
  We’ve improved the design of the expense modal. The most significant aspect is that it is now possible to add an expense on top of a fixed price. Only available for retainers that are fixed price.

• API Update - expenses connected to phases
  When pulling or pushing data from or to Forecast with our API, you can now also extract the associated phase of an expense item.
• Integrations Updates:
  • Quickbooks Online: If you are syncing your invoices from Forecast to Quickbooks Online you can now use the default customer tax as specified in Quickbooks for your invoices. Also, you can not convert the invoiced amounts from the invoice currency to your "home" currency of the Quickbooks company by setting an exchange rate.
  • Jira: We've added the option to sync over a start date from your Jira issues to your Forecast tasks. When setting up the integration you can select which start date you want to use for the synchronization to Forecast.

Month of February 2021

• Baseline!
  We're proud to introduce you to Baseline, Forecast’s newest feature. Baseline combines functionalities for:
  • Solving misalignment between project managers and account executives.
  • Avoid unrealistic project plans.
  • Predicting project profitability and being able to make changes accordingly before it's too late.
  • Seeing the effect of proposed changes in an instant and communicating that to the client.
    With Baseline, Forecast now caters to a seamless experience from quote to invoice of your projects.
• Time Registration Report (public beta)
  You asked and we listened - Forecast now has a new report to monitor the time registrations of your team members. The new design, grouping, and filter functionalities let you easily report on the time entries of your team and view the data from different perspectives.
  The report is currently released in a beta version so please make sure you submit any thoughts or ideas for improvement you might have with the Feedback button on the report.
• Fabulous Filters
  The filter component in Forecast is essential to narrow down a large number of projects, tasks or team members to only focus on specific ones. This month we have improved the filter opportunities so you can now filter for Followers, search in the Team filter and select only team members that are assigned to the project when filtering for tasks with specific assignees, followers or owners.
• Save time and duplicate
  You were always able to duplicate tasks and entire phases in Forecast. However, the duplicates would get the prefix "Copy" in the task name which resulted in spending time changing the name for every duplicated task. As we don't like unnecessary tasks we have now removed the "Copy" from duplicates.
• Sort your projects
  With the latest update to the Projects page in Forecast, you can now sort your projects in the project stages by clicking on the column headers. Please note that this is only available when you display your projects as a list (not the grid view).
• Spring cleaning in the Schedule Projects
  We have cleaned up the Schedule Projects a little bit and removed the project team bar. When expanding on a project and expanding on the project team section, you will now no longer see the bar dividing the phases and tasks from the team's allocations.
• Monthly Jira news
  Our Jira integration grows and grows. You are now able to fill out required custom fields when creating an issue or an epic in Jira from a task or a phase in Forecast. If there are mandatory custom fields set up in your Jira account, you will be asked by Forecast to fill those in before Forecast can create the issue or epic in Jira.
• Quick update on Quickbooks Online
  If you are exporting your Forecast invoices to Quickbooks Online you can now take advantage of the following new features:
  • Sales terms that are set up for your clients in Quickbooks now also apply to invoices synced from Forecast.
  • The invoice date from Forecast is escorted to Quickbooks
  • Your setting to let Quickbooks control the invoice reference that you can toggle on when exporting an invoice to Quickbooks is now saved so you don't have to set it new for every invoice.
  • Your Quickbooks setting to allow online payments is now also taken into account for invoices exported from Forecast.
• Migrate your projects from Asana
  When you switched to Forecast from Asana, you can migrate your projects over into your new Forecast account. We are now also migrating the start and end dates on tasks and projects.

Month of January 2021

• Search and Filter on our Scheduling views
  You now have the possibility to search and filter for tasks, people and projects on the Project Timeline, the People and the Project Schedule. Try the new advanced filter functionality to plan your projects and resources while only focusing on specific items.
• New improvements on the Invoicing and the Budget
  • Improvements on the UI of the Invoicing and the Budget page enable you now to see the invoiced and paid amounts in all places properly.
  • We also ensured that you can add longer notes to your invoices and see your Budget in the desired currency.
  • Furthermore, we have removed the tax from the paid invoicing amounts on the Budget page and the Project Portfolio report so you can monitor your financials without having to do the math yourself.
  • Lastly, every sent invoice has now a unique URL to make it easier for you to share links to specific invoices with your team.
• New currency available
  The Trinidad & Tobago Dollar is now available as a currency on Forecast.
• New and enhanced Retainer functions
  • Running Retainers but without a fixed budget? No problem. You can now select Retainers as Time & Materials and even set a default target in hours on these. However when it comes to invoicing you can simply invoice the number of hours registered in each period and at the end of each month while monitoring if you and your team are hitting the target.
  • As a new feature, you can now download your time registrations of a retainer period as a CVA in the context menu of the period (three-dot-icon).
  • We have also fixed the CSV download of your retainer periods so you can extract the data of your retainer periods easily from the Periods page.
• Avoiding accidental deletion of important user information
  We have removed the option to permanently delete users from Forecast. The deletion of users is causing a lot of errors because also time registrations, allocations and assignments are deleted together with the user. This affects not only the time reports but also the utilization reporting and the financial monitoring it is now only possible to deactivate users on your account.
• Use the AI to assign team members
  As our AI functions are continuously improved we now have released a new feature that suggests you are the right assignee on a task. You can now quickly add yourself to a task and you will also find AI suggestions for your assignees on already assigned tasks.
  Please note that the Forecast AI first needs to have sufficient data on your account to be able to come up with useful suggestions.
• Performance, Performance, Performance 
  Forecast is also continuously improving on the performance. The latest update was released to the Scoping page and you should now be able to see shorter loading times on the Scoping page of your larger projects.
• Sync Tempo Time logs from Jira Epics to Forecast 
  As you are now able to sync your Jira epics to Forecast projects, you can also get your time registrations on issues in these epics synced to Forecast.
• New stuff on Xero
  Your Xero invoices now also have a link to Forecast so you can jump from your Xero invoice to your Forecast invoice with just one click
  You can also now log into Forecast using your Xero credentials if you have the Xero integration enabled in your account.

The Azure DevOps integration now supports the CMMI process