For our Osprey release we made too many user interface clean-ups to mention but we hope the new look of the application speaks for itself. It is much cleaner and simply devotes more space to your application with the removal of certain user interface elements like the footer or the open left panel. We also added an * next to required input fields to make it more obvious which fields are required input.

Changed the left panel from Griffon to Osprey. Rather than always showing the left panel with widgets either expanded or collapsed, which took up valuable screen space and left users with reduced space for the main app, we now only show an icon strip by default. If you click on any of the icons the left panel reappears and you can show or hide left-panel widgets as you wish by clicking on their icons. The left panel widgets always appear in the same order top to bottom as the icons and if you try to show too many rather than hiding the lowest one below the scrolling bottom we simply hide it again, unselecting its icon automatically. This is why sometimes when you click on an icon to show a widget the current one is hidden, and sometimes it is not hidden.

Aside from the user interface the main enhancement for Osprey was in performance. Performance improvements were made for navigation and loading of long lists: we now do what is called “lazy load” based on new options provided in the latest release of our underlying browser framework (Ext JS version 4.22). So if you are opening for example my tasks or my leads and have alot of entries while they are all queried from the server (allowing you to sort, group and filter based on the whole population not just on a subset) the system only renders or prepare a small subset of rows to present to you on the screen. Instead of click “next page” you can simply scroll to get more tasks, leads etc. rendered. This is called “infinite scroll” in programming circles!

With regard to long text editing such as comments we kept the cursor inside the long text after typing colon (:). “Task:” entered within a long text is a code for “link to some task” and automatically fires a search for tasks in iBE.net to link to. This has been speeded up and now fires in the background keeping the cursor within the long text. Links within long text were added to iBE documents (such as a link to another task or ticket) as well as to other web-sites or urls (such as Google Drive or drop-box documents). To invoke a link in a long text either enter the name of the iBE object followed by a colon (e.g. Task:) or click on the link or chain icon in our long-text toolbar.

Fix to the input field for $/unit such as unit price, cost rate or labor/service fees to default the currency from the company and validate that the unit must match either the product or service base unit (in case of a fixed fee for example) or be a valid time unit (in case of a T&M cost or fee).

Document sharing feature was introduced on several objects with a new “share” button in the main toolbar. This brings a popup allowing you to email links to this document to your colleagues or external business partners as well as defining permissions as to who can access or update this document.

Modified “my tasks” to show not only tasks where I am assigned as a resource and tasks where I am the primary workflow owner, but to also include tasks where I am a secondary workflow owner (for cases where a workflow step is sent to several people at once).

Fixes for app asking to save changes even when nothing was changed. This is being fixed on an app by app basis so if you find this still happening somewhere please let us know!

Links for “try our new beta-release” and “go to classic” in login and main app screens to support the gradual roll-out of our new Osprey 422 release