[February 2020] Upgrading to the New Release

The February 2020 release is live and we're kicking off the new year with some exciting new features and updates to TaskRay.  The February 2020 release is focused on improving work management in TaskRay and helping our customers get their jobs more efficiently, especially when it comes to managing different kinds of Projects and Tasks and support different teams and workflows.

This article will explain some of the major enhancements and provide some tips on how to can start incorporating them into your organization's use of TaskRay.

Consider Enabling Multiple Task Record Types

Until now, organizations that use Record Types for TaskRay Projects and Tasks were required to associate each Task Record Type with a Project Record Type.  This provided basic support for Record Types in TaskRay, but limited the use of Task Record Types to one per Project Record Type.

With the new Multiple Task Record Types feature, this limitation no longer applies and organizations can use multiple Task Record Types in a single Project.  This allows administrators to do things like configure different Page Layouts for different Tasks in a given Project, offer different Page Layouts for different Users who work on the same Task in a given Project, or customize the values of the List picklist to offer different options for Task status and columns in Kanban View depending on Task Record Type.

For example, if you use Milestones in your Projects, you might want to use Multiple Task Record Types to create a simplified Page Layout for Milestone Tasks where different information can be tracked vs. the other Tasks in a Project based on the fields included on the layout:

Additionally, you might choose to streamline the List picklist values available for the Milestone Task Record Type:

Which effectively limits the choices for the List status of Milestone Tasks:

There are a few important things to know about Multiple Task Record Types before enabling the feature:

1. The behavior is controlled by a new Enable Multiple Task Record Types custom setting in TaskRay Global Settings.  To enable the custom setting: 
   • From Setup, navigate to:
     • Lightning: Custom Code | Custom Settings.
     • Classic: Develop | Custom Settings.
   • Click Manage next to TaskRay Global Settings.
   • Find Enable Multiple Task Record Types and enable the custom setting by checking the box.
   • Click Save.
2. Multiple Task Record Types requires the Enhanced Modal Layouts custom setting to be enabled.  This setting determines if TaskRay uses Field Sets or Page Layouts to display record details, and it needs to be enabled so that Multiple Task Record Types use Page Layouts instead of Field Sets.  You can find more information about enabling Enhanced Modal Layouts here.
3. After enabling Multiple Task Record Types, TaskRay users will see a new option to select Task Record Types in Kanban View.  Selecting a Task Record Type will control the Tasks shown on the Kanban View and the appropriate columns to display based on the List picklist values available for the selected Record Type:
4. After enabling Multiple Task Record Types, TaskRay users will also see an option to select Project Record Types in the left sidebar.  Users can select a Project Record Type to filter the list of available Projects in the left sidebar or choose to view all Record Types:

Get Started with Task Group Modals

With the February 2020 Release, Task Groups are now accessible from TaskRay views just like Projects and Tasks:

Tracking more relevant information on Task Groups is a value-add for a number of use cases, but especially so if you use Task Groups to:

• Break down projects into stages or phases of work
• Group onboarding tasks by product or service
• Organize tasks by department or team

Task Group Modals also requires the Enhanced Modal Layouts custom setting to be enabled.  This setting determines if TaskRay uses Field Sets or Page Layouts to display record details, and Task Group Modals only support Page Layouts.

Consider taking a look at your existing templates to see if tracking more information at the Task Group level would benefit your process and team.  Keep in mind that Files stored on template Task Groups will also be included when a template is cloned, so you have the option of storing documents or files that are consistently relevant to executing the work in a given Task Group.

Consider Enabling Enhanced Cloning

The February 2020 Release includes a custom setting for Enhanced Cloning.  Enhanced Cloning offers a new, more accurate, and more efficient method of cloning template Projects and their related data in TaskRay.

Enhanced Cloning only controls what happens behind the scenes when the application executes code to clone template Projects, so enabling the custom setting does not require you too make any changes to your existing processes for cloning template Projects.

Opting in to Enhanced Cloning is optional at this time.  For customers with straightforward templates and process automation, Enhanced Cloning should just represent a more efficient way for TaskRay to create data in Salesforce.  However, Enhanced Cloning can offer immediate benefits for organizations that:

• Clone template Projects with a large number of Tasks.
• Have complex Task dependencies and schedule Tasks around non-working days using Project Schedules.

Although it's easy to enable Enhanced Cloning and then disable the setting to revert back to legacy cloning, we encourage you to test Enhanced Cloning in a sandbox environment before enabling the setting in your production org.  Enabling the setting in a sandbox and running a few comparative tests against your production org for your most commonly-used or most complex templates is a great way to make sure the new setting produces the desired result.