i-lign 8.1 release announcement

By Rachel | May 31, 2017

We’re pleased to confirm the release of version 8.1. Hosted customers will be upgraded during the evening of Sunday 4 June. As you’ll be aware, this release focuses on organisational level information. In particular 8.1 brings you a clearer view of how your organisation is delivering its Strategy. We also introduce a Structure tab which shows how your work is organised and makes it easier to update this information. As always, please get in contact if you have any questions or comments.

Organisation view

In 8.1, Business Overview replaces Organisation Dashboards and navigation is now via an icon on the top level navigation bar. Clicking on this icon takes you to the Overview tab for your organisation as a whole. This tab, in combination with the other five tabs, provides an Organisation portal for Executives, Managers, EPMOs and others interested in organisation wide or business group views of the information in i-lign. There are three new tabs: Overview, Strategy and Structure. We’ve also moved three other existing tabs to this location: Ideas, People and Finance.

See the Tutorial on Navigation: Organisation for more detailed information.

Overview tab

The Overview tab (see above screenshot) provides a snapshot of the overall organisation or business group. It includes a list of Groups and Teams and total resource allocations. At the organisational level you can see your organisation’s purpose and strategic drivers.

Strategy tab

The Strategy tab shows your KPIs for each strategic driver and provides a graphic view of how they are tracking. Click on an individual Driver to see more details such as contributing Initiatives. The Strategy tab is also accessible via the Drivers link on the Jump To dropdown box.

See the Tutorial on Navigation: Organisation - Strategy tab for more detailed information.

Structure tab

This tab provides a view of all your Initiatives,Groups and Teams in one place. Because the structure of the information in i-lign is easy to see here, it’s an ideal place to move, close or delete information. The Structure tab is also accessible via the Groups link on the Jump To dropdown box.

See the Tutorial on Navigation: Organisation - Structure tab for more detailed information.

People tab

We’ve added a Data view to this tab which can also be downloaded as a CSV. You can specify the date range you want to look at. You can also view the data as percentages rather than hours via the Options button.

Help side panel & website tutorials

In 8.1 we rename the Hints accessed via the side panel to Help. As well, we’re in the process of reducing the amount of text contained in the Help side panel and replacing it with links to the tutorials we’re building up on our new website. This work will happen progressively, with an initial focus on the Delivery tabs and areas of recent change. Have a look at the Delivery: Registers tab in 8.1 for an example.

The tutorials on the website are also intended for use in any organisational specific training or reference documentation you create. For example you could create a link to relevant content rather than reproducing it in your documentation.

How to access help

Other changes

Timeline PDF

You are now able to download your Timeline (gantt chart) as a PDF, enabling you to print this out. Any customisation of the view carried out on the screen will be reflected in the PDF.

Concept report

In 8.1 you can create a Concept report. From the Reports link on the Jump To dropdown menu, go to the Custom Reports (Programme) tab. Select the New button and add the Overall Concepts - Detail subreport. To print out selected Concepts, use the Filter dropdown and filter by Name.

Name changes

We’ve simplified a few of the terms we use:

  • Services replace Business Services
  • Groups replace Business Groups
  • Drivers replace Strategic Drivers

Full list of changes

See here for a full list of changes and bug fixes.