Inside the Magnetic Engineering Room: Exciting New Features Coming Soon

Welcome to the Engineering Room, where the coffee is strong, but the code is stronger.  We’ve locked our developers in here (don’t worry, they have snacks), and they’re working around the clock to bring you the next big thing. So, what exactly are we cooking up? Well, buckle up, because we’re about to give you a sneak peek into the features we are working on for our next Magnetic release.

Key takeaways

• Introduction of the new Team Scheduler, designed for simplified UI/UX and enhanced resource management.
• Advanced task management features allowing for collaborative assignments and granular control over time allocation.
• Smarter scheduling with the 'Find a Resource' function, enabling criteria-based matching for better resource management.
• Enhanced functionality for managing unassigned tasks, streamlining the process for resource managers.

The Tug of War Between Product and Development Teams

In one corner, we have the Product Team, armed with a mile-long list of must-have features, and in the other, our devs, holding onto their sanity with both hands. What follows is battle of wits, where each side negotiates like they’re trying to buy a used car.  

"Do we really need that feature?" the developers ask, sipping their third coffee of the morning. "Can’t we just call it a ‘future enhancement’?"

"Yes, we really need it," says Product, clutching their roadmap like it’s a golden ticket. "And also, can you add this tiny one more thing?"

We eventually find a middle ground—somewhere between “this is going to revolutionise the industry” and “this will at least not break everything else.” It’s an art, really.

We are working hard on revolutionising scheduling. A bold statement, we know. But nevertheless, we march forward with the courage of someone who just hit 'Reply All' in a company-wide email.

Revolusionising Scheduling: The Core of Our Next Release

Why scheduling? Doesn’t it work already, you might ask? The answer is- Yes, it does. But scheduling is one of the key components to running a professional services business and we are truly passionate to always making things better. We  believe it’s the holy grail for your company to unlock more profit, so naturally, it’s what keeping us, and possibly also you, up at night.

Introducing the New Team Scheduler: Simplified and Powerful

For those of you who have attended the our quarterly Release Webinars, this will come as no surprise. We are working on making the new Team Scheduler the greatest thing you’ve ever seen since someone finally added the ‘Skip Intro’ button to Netflix.  

One Task to Rule Them All: Collaborative Task Management

Currently, if you create a task and assign it to multiple people, Magnetic will create a separate task for each person assigned. In some scenarios this is a good thing, but often you want to have the resources work together collaboratively on the single task which is why we are developing this enhancement.  

Time Allocation: Enhanced Control and Flexibiility

Currently, Magnetic distributes allocated time evenly. For example, if you assign a task and allocate 10 hours over 5 days, it will allocate 2 hours per day. While we'll keep that option, we’re empowering you with much more granular and intelligent functionality.  

First and foremost, Magnetic will by default no longer by default evenly distribute time across the task duration. We're adding two new expansions to users’ capacity profiles: Ideal Allocation and Extra Capacity.

• Ideal Allocation represent the hours per day that the user would be scheduled for work, taking into consideration other ad-hoc work that might come up, coffee breaks etc. If a person is set for an 8-hour working day, we recommend 6 hours for Ideal Allocation.  
• Extra Capacity refers to the hours that the user can work extra per day. Obviously, to prevent burn-out this should be carefully considered.  

This new functionality allows you to allocate resources anyway you want. If you would like for John to work 2 hours on the task on Tuesday and then 4 hours on Thursday, you can easily apply that change. If the task has a long duration, you can switch to week or month view instead of day view.  

Find a Resource: Smarter Scheduling with Matching Criteria

Have you ever tried to schedule a meeting and ended up feeling like you're playing a game of Tetris, with everyone’s busy calendars? And what is the people you’re looking to book must meet certain criteria?

That’s where the Find a Resource function comes into play. This new feature will allow you to specify hours, duration and matching criteria (such as skillset), and Magnetic will suggest available resources to you. Then you can pick the people you want, and they will then be added to the task.  

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Unassigned Tasks: Enhanced Functionality For Better Resource Management

Currently, when you assign a task to “Unassigned” the task pops-up under “Schedule Tasks” in the Team Scheduler, and you can then assign it to a person. That’s great, but we want to enhance this functionality so it is not only more visible in the Team Scheduler, but also building out the function so you can assign a task to an unassigned role – a generic role type resource. By enhancing this functionality, you will be able to assign generic resources to opportunities where you do not necessarily know yet who will be the named resource who will eventually work on the project, and you will get an overview of the impact opportunities has on your resource capacity. Secondly, if your company have a resource manager you can use this functionality to create “Work Requests”. The resource manager automatically gets all the task details and can decide who would be the right person to do the work.  

The Final Countdown: Preparing for the Final Release

As we inch closer to release day, the Engineering Room becomes a hive of activity. There’s a flurry of last-minute fixes, frantic testing, and, of course, plenty of celebratory snacks. The team’s excitement is palpable, even if it’s slightly tinged with sleep deprivation. You might ask, when is the release exactly? To be honest, the development we are doing now is groundbreaking and even though we have the recipe in place on paper, we are not sure how long it is going to need in the oven. We are hoping to be able to release our next version in Q4 and right now, things arelooking good.  

Stay tuned for our upcoming release. We can’t wait for you to see what we’ve been working on (and yes, we’re confident it won’t break… much).

Cheers from the Engineering Room!

Korak Kuhnert & René Praestholm