With Hindsight: Toggl Plan’s Quarter 4, 2020

What a year! So many changes in both the product and our company as a whole. We’ve rebranded, added whole new views and functionalities to Toggl Plan, had some awesome new team members join us, changed the way we structure our work and much more. 

Read on to learn about the last months of 2020 in Toggl Plan, everything we’ve done and learned.

The Product

Heads up, some of these new features and improvements might already sound familiar to you. We just couldn’t wait for the whole three months to share them so it is possible a mid-quarter update landed in your inbox sometime in November. But rest assured, this is a quarterly summary so we’ll make an official note of all the updates from Q4 here again so you’re safe even if you’ve missed the unexpected email update.

In-App Updates Center

Our much awaited in-app updates center is ready and visible on the sidebar menu! It provides a simple way to stay in the loop with all relevant changes and assures no one misses important discussions.

Whenever there are new updates, you’ll see a small red number next to the Updates menu. The updates are divided into two: 

• changes to tasks you follow and 
• mentions of you or new comments added to a thread you’re part of. 

Learn more about the updates center here.

Updates to the Standard Subscription Plan

The Standard subscription plan underwent a cosmetic name change in order to make room for a new Business offering (more on this below). But that’s not all! It also got two new features – recurring tasks and Toggl Track integration. You can find the full recap of our subscription plans in a dedicated blog post or continue reading to learn more about the new features.

Recurring Tasks

If you have any repetitive tasks/events in your work life, you’ll like this update. With recurring tasks you can set tasks to repeat daily, weekly, monthly, or annually. Perfect for regular meetings, reporting, admin, and other jobs. Read more about recurring tasks from our Help Center.

Toggl Track Integration

It’s now easier than ever to time how long you spend on Toggl Plan tasks. Connect your Toggl Track and Toggl Plan accounts to start/stop timing from your Toggl Plan workspace, and automatically send time entries to Toggl Track. Find out more from our Help Center.

New Business Plan for Advanced Control and Privacy

Somewhere in the middle of the quarter we finally shipped our much awaited Business plan, a new subscription tier for Toggl Plan users. It is best suited for teams in need of more control over their data and privacy. Business includes everything found in Free and Standard plans, plus Access rights, Data export, Priority support, and there’s more coming soon. You can compare the subscription plans on the revamped pricing page.

Access Rights

Access rights enables you to invite Guest users to the workspace who will only have access to limited Plans and Teams. It is great when working with sensitive information, multiple clients or collaborating with external stakeholders. Find out more from our Help Center.

Data Export

Data export allows you to export your Toggl Plan tasks to a .csv file, making it easier to review data for summaries, reporting, or for using alongside other tools. Export tasks from a specific Plan, Team or the whole workspace if you so desire. Read more how data export works here.

Revamped Bulk Actions

While bulk actions existed already before, they underwent some notable improvements this quarter.

• bulk-select is now also working on boards
• you can bulk-select tasks on a timeline and drag them both vertically (assign to new people or move to a new segment) and horizontally (change dates)
• the right-click menu actions now apply to all selected tasks. This means you can easily mark multiple tasks from the same Plan ‘Done’ at once.

Just as a reminder, you can bulk-select tasks by holding Cmd (Ctrl for PC) and clicking on the tasks you wish to select or holding Shift and click-and-dragging your cursor across the tasks you wish to select.

Task Import

While data import in itself isn’t a new feature, it is now easier to use than ever before. If you’re the kind of person who likes to list things out in neat Excel cells first, then you’re in luck. The good news is that if you already have a list of tasks in a spreadsheet or any tool that exports as .csv, you can now use task import to set up your new project at once in Toggl Plan. You can also use this for any existing projects, if you have a lot of tasks to add at a later stage.

You can find ‘Import Tasks’ in the 3-dot menu at the right top corner of Plan views (both timeline and board). Read more about how task import works and download the template from our Help Center.

Add Task Shortcuts

The ‘Add Task’ button and ‘N’ shortcut are quick new ways to add tasks. They pre-fill certain task properties depending on where you are in your workspace. We’ve explained this, together with 9 alternative ways to add tasks, in a recent article here.

Mobile Updates

We’re working towards the mobile app having feature parity with the desktop webapp. The latest updates to the mobile app include

• Revamped Team timelines
• New support for Project timelines
• Smooth continuous scrolling on both timelines
• Revamped task forms

Next up? We’re working towards making zoom levels available, adding support for Boards, making it possible to edit Plans & Teams as well as manage user profiles. 

Misc. Updates

As usual, in addition to developing new features and functionalities to help you plan and get work done better, we’re also continuously improving on the current app experience. As such, we’ve

• tidied up the timeline and boards header, making it nicer to look at and easier to switch between the different Plan views.
• improved the signup, verification and onboarding process for new users joining us. This also means a smoother experience for existing users creating a second, third or fourth workspace.
• worked on various ongoing bug fixes and UI updates. 

Hidden Gems

We’ve also worked hard on backend systems so we could roll out new features with caution, to make sure nothing breaks and receive early feedback to make it better for everyone. This means we can now experiment with new releases step by step, gathering initial feedback and making sure they fit nicely into your workflows.

We are currently experimenting with two new features to keep planning simple and help you stay informed.

• Making task adding simpler by providing an option to add tasks swiftly without always having to open a task popup. This is great when you only need to add task titles and want to enter multiple tasks in a row quickly.
• A My Work section – a single place where everyone can just focus on tasks that are on their own plate, without any extra noise. 

These experimental features are currently available for some of you, and might get released publicly based on the initial feedback. If you’re one of the people who has already noticed either of these features in your workspace make sure to reach out at support@plan.toggl.com to share your experience and opinions. Especially if you’ve grown to love them and want them to stay around or also if you find there’s something about them that could be improved.

The Company

In our last quarterly summary we mentioned testing out a new cycle based approach in the whole production process, aiming to deliver faster, better and work happier. As I promised to share our lessons learned, here are some of the main takeaways from the first two cycles

• Communication and collaboration requires a conscious effort and doesn’t just happen by itself. In cycles this means planning out how different departments can stay informed of project progress, release deadlines and changes to the original specs on the go. All this without exhausting project teams with excessive communication requirements that would come in the way of actually getting work done.
• If we’ve committed to cycles and project teams, we should be fully committed. This means sticking to dedicated project teams and not assigning projects to someone who has other responsibilities on their plate. It’s a fairly trustworthy way to make sure there will be delays and people with too many things on their hands.
• Cycle projects give people more autonomy and more time to focus on the work at hand. This not only makes people happier and more productive but also makes us as a company move faster. 

After two cycles we definitely still have a lot to learn and improve. However, we’re happy with the progress we’ve seen so far and thus the experiment continues! 

Final words

What makes planning simple and flexible for you? How do you prefer to stay informed? We’re keen to hear your thoughts so don’t hesitate to reach out at any time at support@plan.toggl.com.

Happy new year and may all your Plans get ‘Done’ in 2021!