New Sidebar Pro Extension arrives on top of a Packed Release full of Resource Planning Feature Updates!

The Hub Planner sidebar is one of our most distinguishing features and one that every customer loves to really give them that navigational and organizational control over their resources and projects. The new sidebar has been completed re-written code wise and also been given some design and UX enhancements. Lets first look at the development update and what it gives you as a user.

New Sidebar Pro Extension

Introducing the new Hub Planner Sidebar Pro Extension, Release 1! As part of an introductory offer we are giving away this new extension 100% free to all Hub Planner customers. The new enhanced sidebar will help Project Managers, Resource Planners and Team members to stay organized with their departments and client groups. Let’s take a look at what you get with this extension.

Now Create Sub Groups

Sub Grouping gives you the ability to create a new hierarchy within your sidebar grouping structure. This allows you to give more context to your existing groups and avoid renaming groups to distinguish them on the pre-existing flat structure.

A great example could be to group your projects by Client and then by the projects you do under that. On the resource side you can have a Developer or Department level group broken down into sub departments or disciplines. E.g Tech Department could be the top level group, with sub-groups being Front End Developers, Backend Developers.

The groups strength is being able to organize your people and projects and filter down the scheduler based on those groups. Remember resources and projects can belong to multiple groups, so you have no restrictions in how you want to navigate around the Hub Planner Resource Scheduler.

Group Sorting

Up until now the grouping in the sidebar has been sorted alphabetically. Now you can sort the sidebar yourself, and this is saved on a user level. So you can sort a little differently to your work colleagues to suit your needs and what is most important for you. Now Choose from Ascending, Descending or Manually create your own top level and sub group order. This feature gives you better control over how you want to organize your sidebar and what is most important for you.

Smart Grouping (Coming soon)

Smart Grouping will be part of a Release 2 of the Sidebar Pro coming soon. Smart grouping will allow you to create dynamic groups based on Custom Fields and other Criteria.

Multi Working – Real Time Updates

When you make a change in the sidebar such as renaming a group, adding a resource or adding a new Project, the sidebar will reflect the updates on each logged in resources page. This is perfect for working on large teams, cross borders and allows more team oriented planning meetings.

New Bulk Project & Resource Upload

A brand New Bulk upload allows you to get information into Hub Planner way faster. No need to download a template anymore. Simply copy and paste your data and Hub Planner will present options for you to split up your data. Similarly you can upload a file and we will help you process it. Third party connections, coming soon!

Duplicate Projects & Resources

Projects and resources can easily be duplicated by using the menu. This creates an exact duplicate of the project or resource. This is evry useful for example when trying to set up a project template. Please note it does not copy all scheduled bookings. Only the properties of the existing project.

Sidebar UX and Design

Although the sidebar may look very similar to the old design, things have been tightened up. At Hub Planner we care about every last pixel and we feel the latest update has really tightened up the user interface providing you with a really nice navigation sidebar to work with.

Performance Boost

The sidebar was completely re-written with a modern architecture approach in mind. The data load has been trimmed down significantly loading less data and giving you a more speedy experience.

New Sidebar System Groups

We have introduced new system groups to the sidebar for both Projects and Resources. Project Groups now have a group for all of the different Project Status’ of Floating, Pending, Planned, Active and Archived.

Upgraded Global Editing Window

Up until now we have used an inline popup for doing all your editing and creating of projects and resources. We did not go away from the concept, we just wanted to use more of the screen real estate. It is the same pop up, just maximized for a cleaner, fuller user experience. The main tabbed navigation has been moved to the top of the modals, and the spacing has been tightened up.

Events Unlocked

Events can no have just as much freedom as a Project. The entities are quite similar in nature, so we decided to add all of the project characteristics to an event. This means you can now track budgets on events, add milestones and phases etc.