iPhone & iPad updates

We deployed some improvements this morning.  

We no longer use the iPhone version of the site when you’re using the iPad. The screen there is plenty big and using the iPhone version was annoying. Therefore, No Kahuna now looks the same on the iPad as it does on your desktop/laptop.

We also improved the iPhone interface to allow you to adjust the subscribers for a task/message. This has been on our nice-to-have list for awhile now and it’s good to see it live.

Of course, we’ve got a ton of other improvements we’d like to make. We’ll let you know how things go as we make more progress. 

Task list improvement

We had a suggestion from @johnwlong awhile back to improve the task list page by taking into account newlines.  Previously, the task list simply showed the first X characters of the task.  Now, it shows the first X characters of the first line of the task.

This seems to really simplify the task list while giving users the ability to be more specific about what shows up on that task list page.  Let us know what you think!

Bye bye user filtering

Sometimes the best thing the makers of a website can do is remove a feature. It’s certainly uncommon in this age of software bloat and it can be painful if some of your customers have grown accustomed to the feature.  The pain, though, is often worth it because it helps to ensure that the site stays lean and is remarkably simple to use.

A few months ago, we introduced a new way to look at your tasks by allowing you to filter the tasks by user. We were thinking that the filter would simplify the view and help our customers to see only the tasks they needed to see.

The reality is that my own tasks are the most important thing to see when I click a category.  And seeing other people’s tasks grouped by each user underneath my own tasks is actually much more useful than we realized. An extra bonus is that removing the user filter area of the sidebar makes the page even simpler.  This was a case where we think our first instinct was actually right.

We’re pretty thrilled about the change and we hope you like it as well.

We have a number of exciting improvements for No Kahuna coming soon in the next few weeks.  We’re planning on making some significant performance improvements and we’re designing a simple way for tasks to be tagged which will allow you to slice and dice tasks in ways we can’t even foresee.

Task Sorting Just Got Better

The project managers out there will certainly appreciate the improvements we’ve made to task sorting.  Previously, the task sort order was based on the category *and* the user.  So each user could see the order of their tasks for a particular category.

Now, it’s only based on the category.  This allows you to sort all of the tasks in a particular category without regard for who the task is currently assigned to.  Much better!

File Attachment Improvements

When we originally added the ability to attach files in No Kahuna, we chose to make it a separate event, it’s own thing on a task or message.  We were thinking that this made things simpler.

The reality is that it confused many customers because they’re accustomed to attaching files to comments, tasks, and messages.  It’s unconventional to have a separate event for attaching things.  In addition, most folks followed up the attachment with a comment describing the attachment.

Therefore, we deployed a nice adjustment today.  Now we can attach files to tasks, messages, or comments when those things are created.

We’ve got a ton of improvements coming soon!

If you’d like more frequent updates about all things No Kahuna, you can check us out on Twitter: http://twitter.com/nokahuna

Message subjects

Most ticketing/issue tracking systems force users to specify a title and a body for a given task.  For most tasks though, we find that having a title is unnecessary and often annoying.  Therefore, No Kahuna doesn’t have task titles.  It’s an example of how we’re trying to simplify things and allow the site to get out of your way so you can get work done with your team.

When we added support for messages awhile back, we thought we’d do an experiment to see if the subject of messages was overkill as well.  It turns out that having subjects for messages does provide value.  While most tasks are short and don’t require a summarizing subject, most messages end up being longer and do benefit from a subject.

Therefore, this morning we deployed message subjects.  We hope you like them!