Release Notes: April 2025
A new quarter, and more improvements are landing in Ascendr! This month’s updates focus on making your workflows more efficient, your templates more powerful, and your customer experience even smoother. Let’s dive into what’s new in April.
New Features
Portal User Task Reassignment
You can now grant portal users the ability to reassign tasks via a new permission setting.
When this permission is enabled, portal users can change the "Assigned To" on a task directly from the portal.
They’ll be able to assign tasks to:
Any internal user who is a member of the project
Any external contact linked to the project (even if they don’t have portal access)
Create Projects Based on Start or End Date
You can now build project templates that calculate dates based on either the start date or the end date (e.g. go-live date).
Key updates:
When setting up or converting a template, choose whether it should anchor to the start or end date.
Tasks, deliverables, and other items can have due dates set as x days before or after that anchor date.
When creating a project, you’ll be asked for either the start or end date (depending on the template setup), and all dates will be calculated automatically.
If any items fall before today’s date, a warning will highlight overdue items.
This gives you more flexibility to plan backwards from go-live and align timelines more effectively.
Enhancements
Compact Timeline View
We've adjusted the CSS styling on the task Timeline View to reduce the height of each row.
This allows more tasks to be displayed on screen at once, making it easier to get a full picture of project progress without scrolling.
Display Deliverable Status Without Tasks in Customer Portal
Deliverables with no tasks assigned that are marked as Complete will now show their status correctly in the Customer Portal.
This ensures customers can still see accurate progress, even when a deliverable stands alone without linked tasks.
Portal User Tag Notifications Now Link to New Portal View
When a portal user is tagged in a task, the email notification they receive now takes them directly to the new version of the customer portal after login, instead of the detailed project view.
Preserve Task Description Formatting in the Customer Portal
Task descriptions now retain text styles, bullet points, numbering, and line breaks when viewed in the customer portal.
Comment Notifications and Visibility in the Customer Portal
Tasks in the customer portal now show a red badge with the number of comments, so users can easily spot where conversation is happening.
When viewing a task, each comment now clearly displays who posted it, along with their name and profile image—just like in the main task view.
Track Time in Days or Hours
You can now choose to manage time in days or hours, giving more flexibility across projects.
System Settings: Set the number of hours in a working day (in 0.5-hour increments).
Project Settings: “Budget Hours” is now Time Budget, with a dropdown to select days or hours.
Timesheets: Shows time in the selected format, with days displaying hours in brackets (e.g. 3 days (24 hrs)).
Project Summary Page: Columns updated to Time Budget, Time Used, and Time Remaining, with units shown and correct sorting by total hours.
Unwanted Features (Bug Fixes)
Unable to Remove Person from a Team
Fixed an issue where deselecting a person from a team and saving did not remove them from the team.
Release Notes: March 2025
We’re continuing to build momentum this month with a mix of usability improvements and powerful new features to give you more control and clarity across your projects. Here’s what’s new in March!
Enhancements
Template Conversion: Include Linked Resources
When converting a project to a template, you’ll now see a tick box option to include the following resources:
Downloadable documents
Document links
Embedded videos
This gives you full control over whether these resources are carried across into the template, making it easier to reuse rich content without manually re-adding it.
Release Notes: February 2025
A new month brings more improvements! February’s updates focus on enhancing usability, improving project management, and adding new functionality to make your workflows even smoother. Here’s what’s new in Ascendr this month!
Enhancements
Improved User Notification for New System Access
When an internal user is added to a new system, they will now receive a notification email instead of a password reset email.
Unwanted Features (Bug Fixes)
Project Filtering by Assigned To
Fixed an issue where some projects were not appearing when filtering by Assigned To.
Now, all relevant projects are correctly returned in search results, ensuring accurate filtering and visibility.
Dark Mode Display in New Customer Portal
Fixed an issue where switching to Detailed View, enabling Dark Mode, and then returning to Summary View caused the new portal to display incorrectly in dark mode.
The Summary View now correctly remains in its intended light mode, ensuring a consistent user experience for portal users.
Missing Button to Return to Summary View in Customer Portal
Fixed an issue where portal users who switched to Detailed View had no option to return to Summary View.
A ‘Summary View’ button has now been added, allowing users to easily switch back to the new portal experience.
Task Descriptions in Project Templates
Fixed an issue where task descriptions were not being retained when converting a project into a template.
Now, all task details, including descriptions, will correctly pull through, ensuring templates remain accurate and complete.
Release Notes: January 2025
Welcome to the New Year!
We’re kicking off 2025 with exciting updates to help you manage your projects and customers more efficiently. Here’s what’s new in January as we start the year with powerful enhancements and new features to elevate your workflows.
New Features
Revamped Customer Portal
We’ve launched a brand-new Customer Portal with a completely redesigned user interface, offering a significant upgrade to the customer experience. Here’s what’s included:
Co-Branding: Display your customer’s logo in the portal for a personalised experience.
Customised Welcome Messages: Kick off projects with a description or a tailored welcome message for your customer.
Clear Journey Overview: Deliverables and tasks are now presented in chronological order, making the customer journey easy to follow.
Embedded Media:
Add YouTube videos to share welcome messages, training content, or instructional guides.
Embed live resources like Google Slides, Docs, PDFs, Forms, and Sheets directly into tasks, making collaboration and sharing working documents seamless.
Switchable Views: Customers can toggle between the new streamlined view and the detailed project management view, including the timeline, for greater visibility into project details.
Project Updates
Keep everyone informed with the new Project Updates feature, designed to improve project communication and transparency. Here’s how it works:
Post Updates: Add a summary of the project’s current status directly against the project.
View History: Access a list of all past updates, including who posted them and when, providing a clear record of progress over time.
Latest Update on Summary Page: On the Project Summary page, the latest update is displayed in a dedicated column for quick reference.
Detailed View: Clicking on the latest update opens a popup where you can view the update in detail, browse the update history, and create new posts.
This feature makes it easier to keep stakeholders up to date and maintain a comprehensive history of project progress.
Time Tracking
We’ve introduced a powerful Time Tracking feature to help you monitor and manage project hours effectively. Here’s what’s included:
Record Time: Log time spent against a project by selecting the person, task, date, duration, and adding relevant notes.
Budget Integration: All recorded time is automatically deducted from the project’s budgeted hours (set in project settings).
Remaining Hours Display: The remaining hours are clearly shown both on the Project Page and in the Summary Tab of the project list, keeping you informed of your time usage at a glance.
This feature helps you track effort, stay within budget, and ensure your projects remain on schedule.
Unwanted Features (Bug Fixes)
Timeline Task Alignment
Fixed an issue introduced in the previous update where dragging tasks to reorder them in the project timeline caused the task bars to misalign with the date headers at the top of the page. This issue has now been resolved, ensuring accurate alignment between tasks and their corresponding dates.
These updates are aimed at improving your experience, simplifying processes, and making Ascendr more intuitive than ever. More to come soon!