Do you work at an agency? Then you know the drill: No project is the same. It can be really frustrating when tools don’t offer the flexibility you need to meet specific requirements. With Custom fields in awork, you'll soon be maximally flexible! This feature gives you the superpower to capture exactly the information that's crucial for your unique projects—whether it’s detailed budgets, specific client feedback, or clear priorities.
But that’s not all! Because one scoop of ice cream is never enough, our Custom ice release not only brings Custom fields but also tackles other hot topics from the awork community. Get ready for cool features that will improve your project planning today and make working in awork even more intuitive. Your dashboard will become more personalized with new display options for the task and absence widgets. Plus, your templates will have more possibilities to be filled with content and details. Discover all the features and improvements in this article.
[.b-important-block]Custom fields in awork will be available to you very soon! In just a few days, they will be rolled out to the first workspaces on the waitlist and then gradually made available to everyone. You'll receive an email and an in-app notification in awork when it's ready.[.b-important-block]
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We discuss everything about the new features in our awork Community. There, you can connect directly with our Product Manager Lucas (feel free to post & comment in english 😉).
🔜 Customize your tasks with Custom fields
Tasks consist of many details – from due dates to specially created tags for billing. These details help you and your team stay on top of things. Until now, you’ve added extra information through tags, comments, or individual descriptions to complement the standard fields in awork. While this was a clever workaround, it quickly became messy with many tasks and reached its limits.
With Custom fields in awork, you can predefine specific task details for your workspace and use them directly in project tasks. This keeps all the details consistent without sacrificing flexibility. You can choose from various field types like text, number, checkbox, selection, date, or user. Custom fields are created for the entire workspace and can be flexibly activated or deactivated in individual projects – keeping your projects organized and free from unnecessary information.
🔎 To give you a preview and help you get started, here’s how Custom fields work in awork:
- Create fields (Admin):
- As an admin, you’ll find the new Custom fields tab in the workspace settings
- Here, you can create, edit, and delete fields
- To create a new field, click the plus symbol
- Give it a name and choose the appropriate field type (text, number, checkbox, selection, date, or user)
- After saving, the field will be available for activation in all workspace projects
- Activate fields (Project lead):
- In the project settings, you’ll find all available Custom fields
- As a user with edit rights in a project, you can activate the fields needed for the project
- Once activated, the fields will be available to all users in the project tasks
- Use fields (User):
- The activated fields can now be used in project tasks as details, columns in task lists, or filter criteria
- As a user with edit permissions on a task, you can fill in the Custom fields
- As a user with view-only permissions, you can see the fields but not edit them
[.b-important-block]To use Custom fields, you need a Business or Enterprise plan. The number of fields is limited to 12 in the Business plan and unlimited in the Enterprise plan.[.b-important-block]
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All workspace-wide fields can be displayed as columns in task lists and used as criteria when creating a task filter.
📌 Example: Have you set up a custom priority field for your tasks and marked all high-priority tasks as "High Priority"? You can easily create a task filter and select the "High Priority" criterion under Task filter. The filter will then show you all tasks with your custom "High Priority," so you always have the overview you need.
If you no longer need a Custom field or want to change the field type, you can easily do this in the Custom fields tab via the action menu. Just keep in mind that this may affect your existing field data.
Take advantage of the new flexibility in awork and make your workflows even more efficient! Looking for ideas on how to best use Custom fields? Check out our use cases for inspiration! ✨
[.b-button-primary]Read use cases ✨[.b-button-primary]
Features for optimal project planning
Sort your project overview
For efficient planning in your team, you need the perfect overview of your current projects. Especially in large teams with many parallel projects, it can be a real challenge to keep track of everything. With awork’s new sorting feature, you can now tailor your project overview even more to your needs. This way, you can quickly identify what’s really relevant and find the right projects faster.
Sort your project overview by:
- End Date
- Start Date
- Name
- Client
- Budget
- Task Progress
- Time Progress
- Status
📌 Example: Want to quickly see how your current client projects are progressing and where you might be falling behind? Group your project overview by Client and sort by Task Progress. This way, you’ll immediately spot which client projects need more attention.
Move entire projects in the timeline
Project planning can be unpredictable – you’ve created the perfect plan in awork, scheduled all tasks, and set start and end dates. But then something unexpected happens: a last-minute client request, a team member falls ill, or other unforeseen factors arise. Suddenly, your project needs to be rescheduled.
With our new feature, you can now move an entire project at once by a specific number of days. Let’s say you’ve set up the "Website Relaunch" project for your team, and the start date is just a week away. But you’re still waiting for the final go-ahead and important information from the client – who happens to be on vacation for three weeks. No problem! Just go to the project details, click on the action menu, and shift the entire project, including all due dates, by three weeks.
You can also move individual task lists or specific tasks. For example, if your team’s graphic designer suddenly falls ill, and you need to move her task list by seven days, simply select the tasks or lists in the task list and shift them accordingly. This way, you can quickly and flexibly adjust your planning to new circumstances – without any manual effort.
Keep track of your project progress with the new progress bar
Starting now, you’ll have a handy overview of your progress directly at the project level! The progress bars are integrated into the project details, so you can instantly see how things are going with your due dates, budget, tracked hours, and tasks. This makes it easy for everyone to see where the project stands – whether checking the project status or tracking time.
"Planned vs. tracked" view now available for clients
When you open a client created in awork, you can see all associated projects and the tracked times. To make planning and evaluating client projects even easier, the "Planned vs. tracked" view is now also available directly in the Times tab of your clients – just like for projects and users. This overview gives you detailed insights into the times of individual task lists and tasks within your client projects. This way, you can keep track of actual efforts and manage your resources for future client projects more precisely.
Change the task type directly in task details
Previously, to change the task type, you had to go into the settings of a task. From now on, you can do this directly within the task details! Save yourself the detour and update the task type right where you are working.
Better dashboard overview
Customize your task list view
The dashboard is your digital desk in project management – perfect for keeping an eye on your daily business. The task widget, in particular, is a powerful tool that shows you what’s next on your (or your team's) agenda.
Now, working with task lists on the dashboard is even clearer:
- Sort tasks in your widget by due date, name, status, and more
- Group tasks by categories, projects, due date, and more
- Show or hide completed tasks easily, keeping your view always up to date
This way, you always maintain a clear view of your to-dos and can organize your workday even more efficiently.
Keep track of your team's absences in the widget
For precise team capacity planning, it’s crucial to always have a clear overview of your team’s absences. To make this even easier, you can now set up an absences widget for your entire team directly on your dashboard. You can choose which teams to display, ensuring you only see the relevant absences and aren't overwhelmed with unnecessary information. Moreover, you can set up multiple absence widgets on your dashboard – each for different teams. This makes comparisons easier and helps you spot potential bottlenecks at a glance.
[.b-important-block]Absences and teams are only available from the Business Plan onwards.[.b-important-block]
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More content and details for templates
Edit tags in templates
From now on, when creating templates, you can automatically carry over your tags and then adjust them as needed. This brings you one step closer to preparing templates perfectly for your team.
Set start and end dates automatically
You’ve put a lot of time and effort into creating a project and then realized – it would be the perfect template for future projects! Luckily, that’s easy to do with awork. Previously, there was a small hiccup: the start and end dates of your tasks weren’t taken into account when creating a template, so you had to adjust them manually afterward.
But don’t worry, that’s now a thing of the past! With the new feature, you can set start and end dates directly as relative dates when creating a template.
📌 Example: You have a task in your project called “Create concept,” which starts one week after the project begins. When you convert this project into a template, the start date will automatically be taken over as a relative date. This means that when you create a new project from this template, the task “Create concept” will automatically start one week after the project begins.
Sort your templates alphabetically and find them in no time
Having trouble finding the right template because there are too many? With the new search function in the template overview, you can easily search for templates. Additionally, they will automatically be displayed alphabetically. This makes searching and finding templates a breeze!
Use awork even more intuitively
Adjust the split-view of your tasks
Now you can tailor your task view exactly to how you need it for your work. With the adjustable split-view, you can work on tasks while still keeping the full overview of your task lists.
📌 Example: Imagine you’re working on a client campaign project and creating the task “Design concept.” You open it and use the adjustable split-view to minimize the detail view while keeping an overview of all task lists and their details. This way, you always have key information like “User,” “Priority,” and “Planned effort” in view. With this view, you can add details to the task without losing sight of the bigger picture.
Quickly move tasks to another project
Have you planned a task in a project and realized it would be better placed in another project? Now there’s an easy way to move tasks to another project! Simply click on the task’s action menu and select Move to project. Then choose the desired list in the new project and the appropriate status – and the task will be in its new place. This also works for multiple tasks at once or entire task lists via multi-selection.
Keep track of all external users in one overview
To keep an eye on your external users in the workspace, we’ve added a new overview in your settings. Here, you can now see all external users involved in your agency’s projects at a glance. This way, you can:
- Remove externals directly from projects
- Group and sort users by projects or other criteria
With this overview, you maintain control over which externals are involved in your projects and can manage everything easily in one place.
Mix your favorite icecream!
With the Custom ice release, we’ve managed to offer something for every taste. Whether it’s optimizing your planning in awork or simplifying your work on the dashboard – this release fulfils some of the most requested wishes from our users. Was something for you in there too? Then go ahead and try it out!
[.b-button-primary]Try it now![.b-button-primary]
