BuildBook Product Updates

New:

We’ve added a new Chat widget to the navigation bar to give you more visibility into unread Chat messages, across all of your projects. When you have any unread chat messages, a blue dot will appear on the Chat icon in the upper right corner. Just click the icon to see a list of projects with unread messages!

Fixes and improvements:

• The “Up Next” feed in each project has been improved to display any upcoming items for the next 14 days, starting with any items that are Overdue, so that you don’t miss a thing. 

• Email address is now optional when creating a new Lead.
• Clients were able to view the Schedule View in addition to the default Calendar View - this was fixed so that clients only have access to the Calendar View of the Schedule.
• Removed the “Add New” option in the Schedule on the Client Dashboard
  

Schedule enhancements:

• Various UI improvements to the Calendar View in the Schedule, including shading, displaying 5 weeks at a time, and the addition of the "add new" button to add a new Phase or Task to match the Gantt chart view.
• Adjusted sort order of items in the dependency dropdown to show up in the order that they appear alphanumerically

• Made dependency lag persistent: when a parent is moved forward or backward in time (or is resized longer/shorter), all dependents shift the exact same amount and the space (lag) between them is maintained. Items now allow negative lag: i.e. A child can start before the parent on the schedule. Negative lag is treated the same as positive lag - it is maintained when changing the dates of the parent item
• Phases can now be linked/dependent on each other

Fixes and Improvements

• Edits to existing fields in Selections and Budget weren’t saving when the modal was closed too quickly. We improved the experience so that users now see a spinner if data is being updated and so that they can see if the changes are saved or not before closing the modal.
• Fixed a bug in the Gantt chart where the arrow connecting dependencies wasn’t disappearing if the “ends before” field was removed from the dependency.
• Added the ability to remove the date from Change Orders and Payments in the budget - similar to Tasks, Selections, and Phases.
• Made the amount field in Budget and Selection items optional when editing an existing item.
• In the Gantt chart, if the date of an item grouped within a Phase was edited to start before the Phase start date, there was an error. This was fixed so that the parent item’s dates will shift to encompass the new item's dates.
• Fixed an issue in the Schedule where the scroll location didn’t preserve after changing a date in the supermodal.
  

This week, we rolled out an exciting set of schedule enhancements!

This release includes:

- Grouping: Now, you can group items such as Tasks, Selections, and Payments within your Phases. This makes it simple to adjust the dates of phases and still keep everything within it in sync. 

- Calendar View: We also introduced a new Calendar view to go along with the Gantt view. This is now the default view on mobile for all users (Gantt view on a phone is kinda meh, right?) and also the primary view on the Client Dashboard.

- Dependencies (beta) 🎉: We have introduced a beta version of schedule dependencies. Now, you can create dependencies between items in the schedule so that if a date changes for one item, all dependent items will also move accordingly. We are still fine-tuning this new feature, but we wanted to get it into customers’ hands now so that you can take it for a spin and share your feedback with us.

This week we did a bunch of housecleaning to make features like Budget and Selections smoother.

• "Share with Client" checkbox is now available on the “New Task” modal. Sharing a Task with the client was previously only available as an option on an existing Task.
• Resolved a bug where text that was copied and pasted into supermodals throughout the app wasn’t auto-saving.
• Fixed a bug where uploading an image to Files from mobile caused the image to be duplicated a dozen or so times and attached to various logs.
• Line breaks and formatting weren’t appearing within the text of Daily Logs - which is now fixed so that formatting is preserved.
• Fixed a bug where PDFs weren’t uploading on mobile
• Returning to the dashboard after viewing the read-only client dashboard caused some areas of the app to function as read-only, which is now resolved.

Fixed a handful of bugs related to Budget and Selections:

• There was an issue editing the name of an existing Selection Category from the Budget tab where users were taken out of the text box after a letter was typed and needed to click back into the name text box to continue typing the name.
• Selection descriptions in projects created from an existing template took multiple attempts to remove in the new project, which is now fixed.
• When creating a new project from an existing project template, unchecking Budget and checking Selections resulted in the existing Selections to not carry over due to certain aspects of these two features being tied together. Now if Selections are chosen to carry over without the existing Budget, the Selection amounts will appear in the budget.
• Editing costs on Selection Items weren’t saving correctly or weren’t saving at all, which was resolved.
• Now existing due dates in Selection Categories can be removed.
  

• Fixed some bugs in the client dashboard where the new photo viewer (carousel and pinch to zoom) weren’t showing on the Daily Logs, and the file upload button wasn’t working within Files.
• When multiple images are in a Daily Log, the images in the right column were cutting off the menu to download or delete.
• Improvements to the Activity Feed including removing the file name in photos and files, and for projects created from a template, we simplified what appears in the new project feed by removing the individual detailed entries.
• Images in "photos only" view of Daily Logs are now clickable/tappable. 
• New Daily Logs are generating the correct notifications but weren’t showing in the bell dropdown - this has been fixed.
  

New‍ 

• Mobile carousel - Improved the way users can look through multiple images in the mobile app so that you can scroll through them in one window vs. clicking in and out of each image individually.

• Added pinch and zoom to make it easier to get a closer look at pics when you need to.
  

Fixes and Improvements

• We recently launched our new native photo picker, but images uploaded to Selections were still using the old photo picker. This has been fixed.
• Fixed a bug in the iOS mobile app where the app got hung up on the “uploading” modal when trying to upload a video.
  

New‍ 

• Added the ability to completely delete a project. You can archive projects so that you could reference them later if need be, but there wasn’t previously an option to delete a project.

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• Created new unique default avatars. If a user hadn’t uploaded a profile pic, there was a blank portrait image. We created unique avatars with the first and last letter of the user’s name so you can see more clearly who is on each project! (the new avatars won’t appear until the user has logged into their account)
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Fixes and Improvements

• Fixed a bug in Selections that was causing a date to populate even if the date field was left blank. Now new Selection categories can be created without a date.
• Added hover tooltips to explain the icons in Tasks.

• There was a bug throughout the app where certain areas weren’t refreshing on their own when changes were made. We noticed this specifically where a refresh was required in the Up Next list when an item was deleted directly from that section, and on mobile in the Budget tab where a deleted Budget item didn’t immediately disappear. This is now fixed.
• Increased the resolution of our thumbnail images so they don’t appear as grainy.
• On Android there was a bug in Comments causing the keyboard to overlap with the message box - this is fixed in version 1.3.2.
• The User Settings option was missing for clients - now when a client is logged in and clicks their avatar there is a “Settings” link for them to add a profile pic, change their name or email, or reset their password
  

New‍ 

• Notification preferences now include the option to control which email digests you receive.
  

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Fixes and Improvements

• Fixed an issue where occasionally the mobile app would not fully load and leave a blank screen, which required the app to be restarted.
• Fixed an issue with Android in Chat where there were several bugs related to the chat box and the keyboard conflicting - making it so you either couldn’t see the message or couldn’t see what you were typing. Yuck. Now the text box is anchored to the top of the keyboard, and the message thread is scrollable. Whew!
• Files that were moved to the trash still appeared in the project activity feed until they were permanently deleted. We changed this so that moving a file to the trash removes it from the activity feed and restoring the file will also restore it in the feed.
• Chat notifications for clients were sending them to the Updates tab. This bug has been fixed so that clicking or tapping the notification sends them to the Chat.
• Fixed a bug on mobile where downloading attachments caused the navigation to disappear
  

New‍ 

• All new native photo picker and uploader - we built a new native photo picker and uploader for a more fluid upload experience on iOS and Android to enable users to:
  - Select multiple photos at once
  - Show upload progress, so you know that the photo is uploading
  - Grab photos from your photo album

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• Now it’s easier to send Chat messages on mobile - previously, tapping the Return key on your mobile keyboard would send the message. We changed this to function like texting, where tapping the Return key enters a new line, and tapping the blue Send icon will send your message.
• Add a new Task directly from the Schedule - now project setup is even more efficient with the ability to create a Task the same way you create a Phase, right from the Schedule.
  

• Daily Logs now show up in notifications - if your notification settings are notifying you of Important Events or All Events, you’ll now get a notification when a new daily log has been created. 
  

Fixes and Improvements

• You can now delete uploaded videos. The ••• menu wasn’t appearing when hovering on the thumbnail of videos. We improved the look of the ••• menu on both videos and images and includes the option to delete a video.
  

• When editing an existing Daily Log and adding a photo, the photo didn’t appear in the index without refreshing the page. Log index now shows newly added photos without refresh.
• Comment meta-information lines weren’t wrapping consistently on mobile, causing the commenter’s name and date stamp to wrap on individual lines. We adjusted comment meta wrapping on mobile to wrap together on a single line globally.
• Fixed a bug where clients couldn’t be @mentioned in the comments of a Daily Log.
• When editing a log that has no attachments, the UI didn’t show the “Add Photo or Doc” link without clicking the attachment icon. Now “Add Photo or Doc” link is visible.
• Fixed an issue where the Chat box to type a message was covering up the Chat thread as it auto-expanded, so users couldn’t scroll to read previous messages in Chat.
• On Android, Task editing had a limited editable view. We changed this so that when the keyboard is visible, the viewable area is larger
  

New

• Mobile push notifications and notification preferences - with the latest version (v1.2.2) of the BuildBook iOS or Android app installed, push notifications on phones and tablets are live.
  
  Now you can choose what events you want to be notified about (@mentions in chat or comments, when you’re assigned a task, when a Daily Log is posted, or when you’re added to a project) along with specific client activities (when a client sends a chat message or leaves comments).
  
  You can also decide how you want to receive notifications (email and/or mobile)
  

• More content in notification badges - you have more insight into what’s going on throughout all projects - including the avatar of the person who created the notification, project name, time, task names, and more chat details.