What's New in Aphex: November 2022

This month has been all about making the Project Routine more inclusive, regardless of whether you own work or not.

Hopefully, it's loads easier to see what (and when) you're expected to contribute!

We've also managed to slip in a top request: ✨customisable task colours✨, as well as a new user onboarding experience.

P.S if you end up on the Nice List (by marking your plan ready), make sure to be on the lookout for a snowy holiday surprise ❄️ 🎄

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New Make Ready and Inclusive Project Routines

1 - Publication Deadline

Sticking to the Project Routine plays a pretty important part in a successful plan. So we've made the weekly Publication Deadline visible for everyone to see, straight from the Gantt.

Now, the whole team can clearly see the target you’re all working towards, regardless of wether they have work

2 - New Make Ready

When you click the Publication Deadline or open the Ready Menu, the dropdown will be colour coded to indicate if you're required to take any action before the next Published Version is created:

• Green: You own work in the lookahead and all missing data and clashes are resolved
• Yellow: You own work in the lookahead, but there is incomplete data or clashes to be resolved 
• Grey: You do not own work in the lookahead and do not need to Ready your plan
• Tasks for Review: You are responsible for Reviewing someone else's plan

And, in preparation for further updates to Readying, you may also see the 'Awaiting Review' tag appear once you've Readied your Plan... more on the new Reviewing Plans workflow to come!

3 - Quicker Access to Published Versions

So you've made your plan Ready, but what happens next?
Well, those of you who have a bit of experience using Aphex will know that your work will be included in the next Publication.

But, for people just getting started, it can be tricky to know what happens once you've submitted your plan. To fix this, you'll now find the next Publication, and your most recent Published Versions are all accessible from the Ready Menu.

Hopefully, this will help your wider team connect the dots on how the planning routine works.

Customisable Task Bar Colours

1 - Task Bar Colours

For the very first time, you can now control the colour of the task bars. Choose from: 

• Owner colour
• Subcontractor colour
• Shift colour

2 - Combine Task Bar Colours and Overlays

Task bar colour is now separate from any active Overlay. This means you can do cool(?) things like setting your task colour to indicate the Shift, while turning on last week's baseline.

You can open the Overlays menu to select your Bar Colour and turn on any Overlay.

3 - Colour Work Areas by Shift

Don't worry, we didn't leave the Map out of all the fun - you can now colour work areas by Shift too.

New User Onboarding

1 - Streamlined Profile

As part of a larger update to the way new users are guided to set up their accounts, we've stripped back the information you need to provide to keep the enrolment process as quick as possible.

We've also made it clearer that the user colour you choose will become the colour of any tasks you own in the plan.

2 - Join your Team

If your teammate creates an account before you’ve invited them to Aphex, they won’t be guided to set up their own Organisation. Instead, they’ll be encouraged to connect directly with you to arrange access.

Bug Fixes

In our continued effort to make the most reliable platform for you, we’ve been pedal to the metal eliminating some key bugs in the tool.

• • PPC Dashboard - Delay reasons do not filter to selected User/Subcontractor
  • Live Gantt print always prints All Tasks
  • Drag and drop for groups fails with auto scroll
  • Error when archiving Projects
  • Baselines not appearing on shared links
  • Actual Materials Date is not UTC
  • Editing another user's task unreadies your own plan

   

  
  Most of these were caught by some of our eagle-eyed users - thanks for helping us keep Aphex as robust as possible!