Release Notes > 01/03/2020

Thanks to customer feedback, we focused this release on fine-tuning existing functionality by creating small but meaningful improvements for our experienced users. We hope that you enjoy the additional features around blocking cards, and the increased flexibility of setting WIP limits.

Blocking Card Settings & Improvements

Blocking a card is very helpful on a Kanban board. It provides a clear signal that a card is blocked and therefore action must be taken based on the blocked reason. We always provided the ability to block a card and to log a blocked reason, but now we offer a couple of advanced settings to manage blocked cards.

card blocking setting - kanban zone

As shown above, the new board setting called Card Blocking offers two options set by default to OFF.

  • Prevent blocked cards from moving on the board acts as a safety mechanism to make sure that blocked cards don’t move. Although this makes sense to not move a card while it’s blocked, this makes it bulletproof.
  • Prevent blocked cards from affecting WIP limit is a decision that each team must make when setting up their boards. There is no right or wrong way to choose this option, but we often see teams choosing to not count blocked cards as part of their WIP limit, so now we made this easy to do ti programmatically.

We also improved the way linked cards handle blocked cards. When viewing cards on a board, if that card has a linked card that is blocked it will show in red in the link progress bar and in the list of linked cards on the card.

blocked linked card on board - Kanban Zone

WIP Limits at the container level

Having WIP limits is a core property of Kanban. When building complex boards with lanes or split columns, you can now set WIP limits within any container. For example, you have an In Progress column that is split with two sub-column (Ready and Doing). The goal is to not permit more than 4 cards within the In Progress step of this board.

wip limit all containers - kanban zone

In the example above on the left, the WIP limit is set at the card container level Ready (1) and Doing (3). But on the right example above, you can now also set a WIP limit at the container level by having In Progress (4). This gives you the flexibility to decide at which level you prefer to set the WIP limit. In this simple example, the team wants a WIP limit of 4 but doesn’t care in which sub column are these 4 cards.

To start taking advantage of this new feature, simply open the board editor and you will notice that now all containers have a WIP limit option.

Improvements

  • The card API now offers the ability to get all cards at once, instead of only individually.
  • The Throughput report used to only offer a view by Labels, but now we added a view by Priority, Size and Custom Fields that you set up for your organization.

Fixes

  • Report’s names are no longer cut off on mobile devices.
  • Inviting a new member to your organization now shows up instantly in the list of members.

As always, don’t hesitate to send us your feedback so that we can continue to improve Kanban Zone. You will never hurt our feelings if you find an issue or something that could be improved, so don’t be shy.

– The Kanban Zone Team