New design

Introduction

Here you get an overview of the new features and detailed explanations about:

1. How does Design 7 work?
2. Why do we make this feature for you?
3. Who will benefit from the release
4. Release plan
5. What do I need to use Design 7?
6. License limitations

Description

1. How does Design 7 work?

Design 7 is the base of TimeLog’s new design. This is the first delivery in the transition of the current product into a more modern and simple design with focus on simplicity, ease of use and accessibility.

When activating Design 7, all the current pages will work exactly like today, but in a more simple and calmer design. We tone down the colors, remove the side panels, move a few functions around and change some icons to remove a lot of “visual noise”.

Beside the visual changes, Design 7 is also based on completely new frontend technology that allows us to make new and much faster loading pages, and a new frontend server platform that includes load balancing and auto scaling, so we can secure a better performance also in peak hours.

Please note that a few functions temporarily are removed in Design 7. It is still not decided when they return to TimeLog, so if these are critical to you, you must wait before changing to the new design. You do not lose your data, if you click to test Design 7 and go back to the old design afterwards.

• Processes in the left side panel
• Customised help in the right side panel, where you document how to use specific pages in your company
• Personal links in the right side panel that made it possible for you to create direct links from one page to another

Don’t hesitate to let us know via featurerequest@timelog.com, if you miss these features.

Watch the interview, where our Digital Marketing Manager Andreas Agerlund Petersen talks to our Head of Product Management, Christoffer Lanstorp, who takes you through the updates we've made:

 

2. Why do we make this feature for you?

When we talk to our users, the most common change request is to make TimeLog more simple to use and to make the design more modern. This release is the first step in the journey to transform TimeLog into a modern, intuitive, fast and good-looking application.

We encourage you to provide your feedback, ideas and feature requests via featurerequest@timelog.com, so we can focus our development on the things you need and optimise user flows early.

You can even join our VIP user group for Design 7 to get more detailed information on plans for development and participate in meetups with other users to discuss Design 7. The VIP user group will be TimeLog’s user advisory board on Design 7.

3. Who will benefit from this release

All users can activate Design 7 for themselves and experience the new design. With Design 7 activated, you will automatically get all the new improvements to the user experience and functionality, which we release from now on.

4. Release plan

What you can use now

The first release is the basis for all the future pages in TimeLog. This means everything that surrounds the functionality itself, e.g. navigation, search, help etc.

The content or the functionality part of the page is not changed yet, but with the base in place we can start the transformation of TimeLog’s current functionality and improve the flows of the application.

The release contains the following changes.

New menu bar

The new menu bar is more simple and fixed at the top, so you always have you navigation at hand. We have modernised the icons and added a few new features.

All links to create something new is collected in the new plus icon, so you have one starting point when you need to create e.g. a new project, an employee or an invoice.

The super search in the menu is modified, so you by default get results from all search categories you have access to, and then you apply filters to limit the search to the categories you want. Just like you know it from when you search for hotels or flights.

We add strong support for keyboard navigation in the super search, so you can operate the super search result function with your keyboard arrow keys, expand or collapse categories and select an item in the search result using either the SPACE or RETURN key.
At any time, you can modify your search by typing, even when you have navigated down the list of the search result.

You can also access the filter using the TAB key and expand the filter with SPACE key. To return to the search simply use SHIFT + TAB.

Favorites are now Bookmarks

In Design 7, we change the Favorites to Bookmarks. In the old design, you clicked the heart icon to add a page as a favorite in the pink side-panel, allowing you to navigate the page from any place in the system.

Now the heart on the page is replaced by a bookmark icon next to the page title, and you find your existing favorites under the new bookmark icon in the menu bar.

To add or remove any page as a bookmark, simply click the bookmark icon next to the page title.

Page actions move to the page title

Some pages such as timesheet, project, invoice and more have a set of actions that relate directly to the page you are on. In the old design, you could access these actions through the lightning icon in the right side of the page.

We move these functions to the three dots next to the page title. Only pages that has page actions will show the three dots, and the actions are the same in the new design as in the old design.

Page settings move to a new page settings action center

In the old design, clicking the gear icon would take you to the page settings, where you could configure the specific page to your use.

In Design 7, you can access the page settings under the personal menu by clicking your picture or avatar in the menu bar. Clicking the page settings menu brings you to the page settings action center, where the page settings for your current page is loaded by default.

As a new thing, the page settings action center allows you to navigate all page settings either through the menu in the left panel or by using the build in search function.

Page help moves to the menu bar and changes icon

In the old design, you could click the lifebuoy to get to the help page for the current page. This function moves to the question mark icon in the menu bar.

The help will open in a new tab and from there you can also navigate the rest of our Help Center.

System administration moves to a full page

The system administration gets a face lift and moves from a pop-up to a full page. This gives more room for the system administration pages, but also makes it possible for you to copy the URL and send it to others as a direct link.

The content pages work exactly as today. Part of the future transformation of TimeLog is to update the system administration to make it easier to configure and manage your setup.

New profile and preferences center

We move four pages from the menu under your profile picture to a central Profile and preferences page. This allows us to extend your personal configuration options in the future with the target of making TimeLog more flexible and suited for your specific purposes.

What we work on next

As the Design 7 release is just the first step in a larger transformation, Design 7 should not be considered a project that closes. Instead, it is the base from which we will release improvements to the existing functionality from now on and forward.

Design 7 will stay a preview feature until we have around 80% adoption of the new design, This forces us to evolve the product and make the transformed features so attractive that we get you to move to the new design.

When we reach our target, we will give the rest of the users a fair time frame to make the move to Design 7 in their organisation.

The transformation is now started and the first improvements we look into are described below. Feel free to provide us with ideas and feedback via featurerequest@timelog.com, so we know what the most valuable next feature is for us to add or improve. The more we know, the better we service we can provide to you.

Search in system administration

We will extend the system administration with fast access to the system administration pages through search, so you don’t have to navigate to the page you are looking for.

Keyboard shortcut and keyboard navigation center

TimeLog today contains a few options to set up keyboard navigation and configure keyboard shortcuts to make navigating and using TimeLog without reaching for the mouse much easier. But we see that a lot of our users do not find the options to create keyboard shortcuts.

We want to make it easier to use keyboard navigation and therefore collect all handling of keyboard shortcuts in one page, so you as a user can see and configure all options in one place.

New frontpage

We want to develop a new front page for Design 7 that ultimately can function like a cockpit for you adapted to your role in your company. The frontpage will consist of relevant data and charts (like a dashboard), but could also contain feeds, an action center that highlights tasks you need to do and more.

We encourage you to let us know your perfect frontpage by sending a suggestion to featurerequest@timelog.com.

New filters and sharing filters

Many of the pages in TimeLog have filters for you to narrow down data to what is relevant for you in a given situation or process. With many use scenarios, there often is a need for many filter options. As a result of that, many pages in the current design has a massive top filter section.

In Design 7, we will make it possible for you to build your own filters to present you with all relevant options, but without taking up the space from your data. In this way, we can add even more filter options for your reports and support more use cases.

We also want to support multi option filters and smart search options such as “Larger than”, “All excluded selected”, “Contains” and more.

When you build filters yourself, it is important that you can save and reuse the same filtering, so you do not need to build the filters from scratch every time.

We will add a new Save filter option and allow you to share filters in your department or across the whole company. You will be able to control who can share filters at which level so you can build a standardised company level reporting.

5. What do I need to use Design 7?

• The latest version of TimeLog
• Activation of preview feature

6. License limitations

Design 7 is available to all users in all versions of TimeLog.