Things are happening with Webforum

Share documents and group versions with document sets

Of course you want to put together a bunch of specific document versions and send them to a contractor or vendor and then keep working on the next version of the documents while maintaining a record of which version they got. In Webforum, we solve this by letting you make a document set that can be shared with other users or external parties.

Understand who else is involved

A lot of things need to fall in place in order to have frictionless collaboration in a project. We now introduce a members tab in all projects to make it easier for everyone to understand who else is involved, and in what role.

Don’t add unnecessary data!

From the April release we will hide business and other information about users on workspaces that do not use these fields.

Document templates include meta data

Our popular document template feature gets even better by ensuring that the meta data from the template gets copied to the created document. This means that the relevant meta data fields are pre-populated on a document created from the template.

More features in the BETA for Tasks in projects

Tasks represent commitment management for project groups. To get the best out of your collaboration everyone needs to have a shared view of what needs to be done, who’s in charge of what, and the status of the work.

Structured project settings

Setting up your project should be easy as ABC. We have grouped the settings page in order to make it clearer what the settings affect. We hope you like this Christmas present to all project admins!

What’s expected from me?

On the Startpage of the Workspace, there are widgets to let users see “my open issues” and “my activities”. We make it easier to get a single view of what is expected of you by merging the information from these two widgets into a single “to do” widget.

Faster opening of big plans

Because we have a lot of power under the hood it could sometimes take time to open plans with a lot(2000+) activities. We have found some tweaks to make the plan load faster – so now you have to find another excuse for hanging out at the coffee machine. 

Even safer documents

Versioning documents make sure that simple mistakes do not lead to irrecoverable loss of information. That’s why we now version all documents in Webforum. That way you can feel secure that the old version is always safe when you and your colleagues make changes.

Who’s updated the plan?

Wth the November release we introduce a log of when the plan has been changed and by whom. The log opens when you click on the “change log” button on the toolbar.

Document set subscriptions

Subscribing to documents and folders is a good way of making sure that you don’t miss any information about what’s going on in them. You get email notifications about changes to files and folders that you subscribe to.

Merge PDF-documents

To simplify your life and make you more efficient, we remove many steps in merging PDFs. Instead of downloading and merging the documents on your own computer and then uploading the merged document to Webforum again, you can now complete the entire process in Webforum.

Easier single sign-on

Single sign-on makes user login easier and more secure. Let your own identity provider manage the authentication and spare your users another set of user name/password to remember. We have now implemented a solution that lets your single sign-on work uninterrupted through a certificate update on your side.

Minor improvements

New flexible field for Issues – code structure. This works just like code structure attributes for documents.

Improved notification mail for mentions on the Project start page.

Connect your issues to the plan

Plans are important! It’s your way of getting from where you are to where you want to be. But it is also important to understand what the actual work is that comprises the activities in the plan. Now you can break down your plan activities into actionable issues.

A controlled way of sharing specific versions of documents

Of course you want to put together a bunch of specific document versions and send them to a contractor or vendor and then keep working on the next version of the documents while maintaining a record of which version they got. In Webforum we solve this by letting you make a Document set that can be shared with other users or external parties.

Minor updates

We continually work at making Webforum better for you. Read more about some of the more noteworthy improvements lately.

Better support for integrations

We love to support the way you work. One way of doing that is to allow you to use our open API to integrate with other systems. You can now update a folder via the api (PUT folder end point for techies) and we allow you to change a project number so that it is the same in two separate systems.

Include outside sources

Links are an integral part of how we share and explore contents on the web. With this release you can add links as documents in your project or workspace.

A sense of urgency

In the widget for “My open issues” on the workspace Start page, where you can see all the open issues that you are assigned. To get a understanding of what is most urgent, we now sort the issues according to their end dates. Issues with no end date last and issues will have the date in red.

Improved admin control

With the responsibility of administering comes a need for control – especially on who can see what. In this release we include more ways of seeing permissions for admins. Project administrators will be able to see effective permissions for any user in the project under the user detail in the project’s admintab.

Engage your colleagues in conversation

Nobody likes talking to deaf ears and with this release we make sure that your communication hits the intended target. You can now mention a specific person or group in your post or comment on the project start page to ensure that they get notified about it via email.

Look what’s happening in your project

The activity report is a great way to keep updated on all changes to the documentation on the workspace. To make it easier to understand which project is affected we now split the information per project.

Easier to see and manage project administrators

We have introduced groups on the project level to make this easier and we now implement a system group for Project Administrators. The purpose is to make it easier to see who has complete control over the project, including the permission set up.

Print your big plans in big format

Get maximum info on one page without the need to get out scissors and tape. We now support printing from the plan and project office in A1 and A2 formats.

No more blocks of text on the project detail

Now you can put the full project charter in the description field without taking up the whole project detail page. We have changed so that this field has a preview mode. The first few lines of text are showing with the ability to click in the field to display the full text. 

Easier to work with drawings

Our thumbnail preview for pdf and image documents has cut down frustration and made working with large numbers of drawings quick, easy and delightful.

Communication becomes a conversation

Now that we introduce comments to posts on the project start page you can really step up and make the conversation happen. Reply to your colleague’s posts and give them some credit for the great job they are doing or tell them that you disagree.

Sticky thumbnails

In last release we introduced thumbnail preview for pdf documents It was a great hit. Now the thumbnail view will stay on until you turn it off again.

Use the power of meta

With the April release we introduce the possibility to update meta data for many files without reimporting the file itself. This will make meta data updates in bulk much easier since it will not change the version number of the documents

Look your colleagues in the eye

Did you know that communication can be more efficient if you see the person you’re communicating with? Upload a smiling picture of yourself to Webforum and let your colleagues see who they’re dealing with.

Make it easy to do the right thing by using document templates

Help your projects to be more efficient by using pre-defined templates for requirements and checklists. Stop wasting time setting up the similar documents over and over again – create a template!

Save Excel as PDF

Earlier this year we introduced the possibility to create PDF straight from a document in Webforum. We are now extending the possibility to include excel files. The option to save an excel as PDF can be found in the context menu of the file in Documents under More actions.

Collaborate with or without a Gantt

At Webforum, we believe that the way you work should be in focus and we have therefore made the planning tab (Gantt) optional in any project. The project administrator can access the project settings by clicking on the Admin tab and selecting the area Settings.

Project start page – communications and overview

It is here! Like we told you last month, we are releasing a brand-new start page for projects. This provides a single source of communications and overview of what is going on in the project.

Find the right PDF or image in a jiffy

We now let you preview all pdfs in the same way that you can preview images in Documents. To quickly identify the file you need, turn on the thumbnail view in the folder.

Create text files in Documents (remove docs without a file)

We extended the possibility to include text files as well as the “old” options of word, excel, and powerpoint.

Select multiple values when filtering

We now let you filter on more than one value and quickly find the information you need.

Project startpage – see what’s happened in the project!

We know you want an overview of what’s going on in the project and you need to give the whole project group a place to collaborate and get a joint view of the progress. In February, we will release a beta version for the new Project Start Page.

Prettier PDF printing of issues

The pdf printing of issues is of crucial importance to many of our customers who use Issues and we have spent some time and love on improving this in 2017. We have also made the PDF-printout of issues a little prettier by left-adjusting multi-line text fields.

Save Office documents as PDF

We have made it a little bit easier to create PDFs from the documents that you have stored in Webforum by adding an option to the document menu: Save as PDF.

Introducing role based permissions in projects

We believe in transparency! That said, we also know that access to information – whether in the form of issues/work packages/actions or in the form of documents – usually needs to be structured.Now, we give you the possibility to create groups on the project level in order to maintain an easy permissions structure in the project.

New year and new challenges!

Here’s a summary of some of the most important changes in Webforum during 2017. A total of more than 380 unique improvements, bugfixes and other development packages have been released in 2017 to make this version of Webforum the best ever.