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Tasks List Update

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Level 4
Hey, all, As you have already noticed, with last week's release we've updated the Tasks list under a project. I'd like to outline the key improvements that you can expect with this change: Improvements in performance of list interactions - One of the main goals of this update is to improve the performance of list interactions. This means you can now efficiently interact with your tasks list regardless of the amount of data you have there and without feeling any delays in the actions. As an example, selecting all items on a 2000 items list now takes 200ms compared to 3 seconds on the previous version. View more information on your screen by default - We're now loading up to 2000 tasks on a page by default, so you can now enjoy seeing all of your tasks on the screen without having to change the items per page setting manually. Undo-Redo your changes on the list when you're in Gantt mode - The updated version of task list allowed us to implement Undo/Redo functionality for list actions when you're viewing the Gantt Chart. You can now reverse the changes to the task hierarchy, add/delete items, make inline edits etc. and save time in the process, as you will be able to save only once when you're done editing your project plan. We are hopeful that the mentioned updates will help you manage your work more efficiently. This is one of the most used areas of our product so we analyze all your feedback from various channels to make sure we address your concerns and reported problems with urgency. We've patched fixes for several reported problems and will continue to fix the rest with higher priority. Other than the bugs, below are the main points that we've received a lot of feedback on, along with our plans to address them: List Scrolling - In the new version, the list separates from the page to enter and exit full screen mode when the users scroll up and down. We're working to improve this experience and are looking into ways to scroll the whole page instead of separating the list. Column sizes - We got feedback in Preview phase that the distribution of column sizes needs improvements. We adjusted the sizes for all the columns in default Workfront views, but did not have a quick way to update column sizes on the custom views. We're working on improvements for custom views as well to display the information in a more convenient way and will make it available asap. In the meantime, you can manually resize columns on your views, which will stick even after logging out and logging back in. Browser search limitations - To improve the performance of lists, we've used lazy rendering, which means that the browser renders only the currently visible portion of the data. As a result, the browser search only finds items that you can actually see, so the items down the list are not found. To address this, we've introduced Quick Filter functionality, which allows filtering on the whole page data. We're planning to introduce a keyboard shortcut for Quick Filter soon, which will allow you to activate the quick filters and use it via the keyboard. Please feel free to email me any further feedback you have at lilitmkrtchyan@workfront.com, or "https://calendly.com/lilitmkrtchyan/lists-discussion"> book a call to discuss your use cases in more detail. We are committed to improving the experience for planners in this core area, and I'll continue to update here with the progress of improvements we make. Thanks! Lilit Lilit Mkrtchyan Workfront
85 Replies

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Level 10
Hi Skye, Yes we're DEFINITELY seeing the same thing. I just had one of our PM's turn off the automatic calculation because of it.

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Level 10
My chicago users were incapacitated by it (to the tune of waiting up to 45 minutes). Users in Seattle are reporting up to 5. I've been telling folks to manually recalculate (project actions / recalculate timeline) which does it immediately for me (which seems strange). I'm not able to replicate... still trying to figure out if it's a project related thing or a time related thing (computers all taking a break around 9:15AM?) Do you have a ticket open? :) I'm so lazy... -skye

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Level 3
Will these patches be applied to sandbox sites? MTCF Matt Fuller AFSG

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Level 10
Hi Skye and Vic - yes, we've experienced a couple of instances of the flashing grey boxes, which require a manual timeline recalculation. Hi Louise - we've also had the issue where it jumps out of edit mode when you press enter to move from one task to another. We have a ticket open for this which Dev have accepted as a bug to be fixed. In terms of overall speed, I'd say that we are also not seeing any significant improvement. I'd say the larger projects are actually a bit slower to load, but performance is probably better than the old task list once it's loaded and you're using it. (especially good not to have to switch pages). David Cornwell

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Level 10
LOL. Yeah me too. I haven't opened the ticket yet.

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Level 1
Our PMs are also experiencing issues with the flashing grey cells. Sometimes, refreshing the page helps speed the loading process up a bit, but on larger projects, the only thing to do is wait until the dates load. This is definitely hindering our processes and making things less efficient because adding/changing just a few tasks ends up taking much longer than expected. We are relieved the task list scrolling is fixed and are hoping this fix will be next. Hannah Wilson LC Creative Media

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Level 10
I'm opening a query under ticket 1193744 if anyone else wants to jump on the bandwagon. -skye

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Level 10
Hi @Lilit Mkrtchyan - we've noticed that since the changes to the task list scrolling, Ctrl-F now works again. Presumably this means that lazy-rendering has been switched off. Previously, you mentioned that you were working on a fix for the lack of Ctrl-F functionality. Does this mean that Ctrl-F is back for good, or will there be some other replacement in the future? THanks David Cornwell

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Level 10
I'm submitting the following issue 00139973 to Workfront helpdesk, in case anyone wants to hop on it. My PMs group their project task list by job role, and then expand a grouping so that they can click the first task on that grouping and "shift-click" the task at the bottom of the grouping. This "bulk selects" every task between the first and last click. Or it used to. Now it just randomly selects tasks. Like if we want to select a set of tasks between task 10 and 26, it selects random tasks from 3 to 71, including everything in the grouping we expanded. The behavior has been happening since April 8 apparently, but today was the first day my users thought to involve me. :). I haven't seen this issue talked about in this thread so I thought I'd pop it in here. -skye

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Level 10
Holy smokes! This is the biggest bug yet, in terms of potential damage that can be done by users bulk editing tasks including tasks from other groupings which they didn't select. What I did was: Group the tasks by Assigned To Expand one of the groupings Click on the first task Shift click on the last task (so that around 20 tasks were selected with) I then expanded the other groupings and found most of the other tasks were also selected! If users don't know this and then bulk edit, there could be massive data corruption issues. I'll get a ticket logged straight away. Regards, David Cornwell

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Level 10
Thanks for relaying this one, Skye, and for confirming, David. I had not thought to test the bulk update feature. As a best practice/what works best related question... When serious/urgent items like this arise, how are those of you who are WF SysAdmins reading this thread raising awareness with your users (eg email, WF announcement, WF login page graphic, etc.)? Regards, Doug Doug Den Hoed - AtAppStore Got Skills? Lend a hand! https://community.workfront.com/participate/unanswered-threads

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Level 10
It really depends on the issue. Phone tree for this one. Only kidding: sorta. We have a group of representatives from each team of users we set up in Workfront, so I inform the reps and they inform their teams. If it were any more serious, I would have to email all users. I hardly ever use WF announcements, because sometimes what I'm reporting is a performance issue, and getting the announcement out would be impacted by the performance issue... -skye

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Level 10
Hi @Doug Den Hoed - AtAppStore - I usually will post an Announcement, but I also email separately because many users ignore their notifications/announcements, and quite a few don't have email notifications enabled for announcements. In this case, I just sent an email to our key PM and RM users who do the bulk of the task editing in Workfront. David Cornwell

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Level 4
Hey, everyone, The problem with shift+select was introduced with the weekly patch as a result of another issue fix. The team is working on this right now as a high urgency item. Our apologies for inconveniences here. Thanks! Lilit Lilit Mkrtchyan Workfront

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Level 4
Hey, David, We have not switched off the lazy rendering with the scrolling update so not sure what you're seeing. As for the improvements for browser search, we're adding a shortcut for activating the Quick Filter, as well as planning to have a jump to functionality for clearing the Quick Filter and navigating to the task in the list. Thanks! Lilit Lilit Mkrtchyan Workfront

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Level 7
To answer your question @Doug Den Hoed - AtAppStore I used to send an announcement to our department via email; however, now, I send out a message via MS Teams instead. Terry Hynd EBSCO Information Services

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Level 7
Hi Lillit, Please can you confirm if the column width issue is resolved? It appears to me it is, but I wanted to check before confirming to users. Also, were any other fixes released with this week's patch? Louise Reynolds Premier Farnell Senior Global Marketing Workflow Specialist

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Level 4
Hello, @AtTask Admin Premier Farnell , We've release an improved version for column sizes allocation to Preview just today. Nothing has been released to Production directly. Would you like to have a call and discuss the improvements in Preview? If so, please use "https://calendly.com/lilitmkrtchyan/list-improvements">this link to book a call. As for the patch, is there a specific fix that you're looking for? There were a number of issue fixes released with the weekly patch. Thanks! Lilit Lilit Mkrtchyan Workfront

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Level 4
Hey, everyone, We've introduced an improvement for loading views with better column sizes in task and project lists. The change is now in Preview and available for your testing. Please take some time to check it out there and let us know what you think. You can provide your feedback via Give Feedback button, email me at lilitmkrtchyan@workfront.com or book a quick call with me via "https://calendly.com/lilitmkrtchyan/list-improvements">this link. Thanks! Lilit Lilit Mkrtchyan Workfront

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Level 10
are you able to specify what the change is (or are you keeping it secret until after we test)? Do you know yet what the release date is? I wasn't sure how to test because I had been giving up and programming the resizing into my column views for the task names. So I went in and took out the entire line of code (my "width=400" line) and when I saved it, it looks like there's a default task name width (or is it being prioritized so that it's as wide as possible?). It looks like the description field is similarly being treated. Not sure if any of the other fields have this treatment, as all I see are those two changing. I also tried resizing a window and found that the description field will shrink to accommodate any change in browser size. At one point, all the columns will grow wider if I keep increasing the size, but there's now a definite limit on how small any column width will get without you touching it and the task name column has a wider limit than the other columns. (And of course, the column widths can get much smaller if you manually resize.) I like it. I'll pass it out to my users and ask folks to review in Preview. -skye

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Level 10
A little like Skye, I'm not sure exactly what has changed other than the task name and description seem to have more space by default. It also seems like there is now less blank horizontal padding in each cell, so you can fit more fields on the screen. David Cornwell