It’s Christmas in July for all our Worknice platform users. We added 54 (!) new updates to Worknice, with some headline features being released that are useful to absolutely everyone. Among the big ticket items this month are extensive updates that make the smart inbox function even smarter and more powerful.

Also under the July Chrissy tree is a new task template feature, where you can now do some really cool things like create all the task items on your HR checklists ready for Worknice to manage moving forward.

Let’s jump in and take a look at some of the notable changes … ho ho ho!

Task templates – create and manage HR checklists

We hear about embarrassing oversights from HR professionals surprisingly regularly.

For example…

“We hired a new employee and their computer hadn’t been ordered. They didn’t get it until week 2, very embarrassing and a shocking first impression”.

When we drilled in to understand why, it became clear the problem was in the systems HR professionals had to execute tasks and checklists. Bing! We had an idea – add task templates into Worknice to help HR professionals add, delegate and manage tasks for onboarding, offboarding and everything in between.

Watch the short clip below that highlights a few cool features;

• Create task templates for onboarding, offboarding, and everything in between
• Add procedure’s, instructions or descriptions including links to pages within Worknice or external

A single smart inbox to manage your work

Keeping your finger on the pulse can be daunting. Just think, on a daily basis you have so many dates to keep on top of, track progress of new hires, and make sure you are aware of any important changes requested by existing employees. It can keep you awake.

**Wakes up at 2am

• “Are there any important dates coming up, such as employee licences or visa’s expiring?”
• “Has the new hire signed their contract? And have they actually signed it correctly?”
• “Has anyone updated their payroll information that I should check before the pay run?”
• “Have any employee feedback surveys come in – I forgot to check?”

**Finally falls back to sleep at 5am

Hey, don’t worry – Worknice has a smart inbox that solves all your issues. And best of all, it’s one..single..inbox. No need to rifle through different menus to find things.

And this month, we have added some really important upgrades to the smart inbox feature:

• Includes due dates and expiry dates of ad hoc or templated tasks
• Admins now know when an item (form, document, review etc) has been submitted by new hires or existing employees – admin can verify or process these items to ensure compliance
• Automatically adds and removes action items from the inbox (um, that has to be magic?)
• Admins can now view an employee’s inbox from the person profile

What else changed in July?

July 1 2022

• Changed the invite and password recovery processes to prevent bots from consuming confirmation/recovery tokens before the user has a chance to click the link.
• Added a self-service sign up process.

July 5 2022

• Fixed bug which prevented “Required Reading” documents from being marked as processed.
• Fixed bug where forms would not use the account configuration if they where assigned while adding a person.
• Moved email sending to a background process to improve overall performance.

July 6 2022

• Fixed bug that caused documents to disappear from the onboarding page when submitted.
• Added a “responsible person” to all assignments in the data model.
• Changed email sending to track when a send request is successfully submitted and to ensure the process completes before the request is closed.
• Improved the inbox for admins to show assignments that have been submitted and require processing. After an assignment has been submitted it will be automatically assigned back to the person who originally created it (the “responsible person”).

July 7 2022

• Added an “inbox” page to people (/people/:id/inbox) that’s only visible to admins. This lets admins easily view everything currently in that person’s inbox.
• Fixed email address not getting automatically pre-filled when re-inviting a person.
• Fixed typo in password reset error message.

July 8 2022

• Added a link to certificate template library on the certificate templates settings page.
• Fixed a bug that prevented employees from seeing some of their Xero records.

July 11 2022

• Made the certificate list filterable by “Expires Soon” (within the next 14 days) and “Expired”.
• Added a “Expires Soon” (within 14 days) and “Expired” state to the certificate badges.
• Added due dates to tasks.
• Added due date column to inbox pages (/inbox and /people/:id/inbox) and assignment overview page (/assignments).
• Added option to group assignments by due date on the assignment overview page (/assignments).
• Added links to people’s names on the inbox page (admins only).
• Made description field for tasks optional.

July 14 2022

• Added framework for “Bundles” page in the account settings. Currently only certificates are available — other assignment type to be added in upcoming releases.
• Made it possible to assign certificates from templates when added a new person.
• Fixed the alignment of the “Include end date” checkbox when adding a job to a person.
• Made it possible to search by the owner’s name on the certificate index page.
• Fixed bug that caused expired certificate to show when filtering by “Expires Soon”.

July 21 2022

• Made it possible assign documents from templates when added a new person.
• Made it possible to add document templates to bundles.
• Added transactions to database updates so that forms which run multiple mutations (such as the “Add Person” form) don’t end up in a half-completed state on an error. The entire form will either complete successfully or no make any change if there’s an error anywhere in the process.

July 25 2022

• Field labels have been made bold by default. However, when a field is nested within another field it will not be bold.
• The layout of fields inside document templates has been improved.
• The layout of the template parameters in the “Add Person” page, “Add Bundle” modal and “Edit Bundle” modal has been improved.
• Where appropriate, fields that are mandatory are now marked with (require) text (still missing some of these on admin-facing pages).
• The TimezoneField component is now a combo box allowing the value to be entered using just the keyboard.
• The StateField component is now a combo box allowing the value to be entered using just the keyboard.
• The TimezoneField component now has a comprehensive list of timezones.
• The Slot component now uses a cross icon to clear the current value instead of a “Change” button.
• Dedicated phone and email fields been implemented that correctly handle input on devices with software keyboard.
• Added placeholder text for all TFN, ABN and BSB inputs.
• Fixed formatting of start date in Xero “Overview” card.

July 27 2022

• Added a “subject” field to tasks that keeps track of who a task relates to, if applicable.
• Made it possible to edit tasks after they’ve been created.
• Improved all the assignment index pages to have assignment icons, improve people links and consistent columns.
• Made the language used to describe how people are associated with an assignment consistent across all types of assignments (owner = the person who needs to submit the assignment, subject = the person the assignment is about).
• Added links to forms from the /people/:id/forms index page.
• Added a (required) label to more required fields throughout the app.
• Fixed title of the “Change Role” modal.
• Changed how errors are handled to correctly display an error message if a page’s data fails to load.

July 28 2022

• Added task templates. (Currently only assignable via the /people/add page.)
• Combined the document, certificate and task templates into a single settings page (/settings/account/templates).
• Added avatars for people in the PersonField component.
• Added/fixed modal pop-up animation.

July 29 2022

• Fixed re-invite requests timing out with a 504 error.
• Enabled the “Assigned” badge for “Information Only” documents. (This is working towards removing distinct “types” for documents — they’ll just automatically have fields or not depending on what you’ve uploaded and any assignment can be forced into the onboarding flow by setting it’s “priority”.)