The journey into offline Kanban continues.

We strongly believe that an offline tool is an advantage for the many users who prefer independence from the Internet connection and don’t need editing while far from their PC. So, we firmly advance on the roadmap into a more powerful Kanban task manager, entirely offline.

XPlan 2.0 comes with new significant features. Let’s introduce them in detail.

Visual composition for filters

XPlan sports a powerful search syntax. Much more potent than most emblazoned products.

Power users love the availability of a quick and powerful syntax, but visual support for navigating the opportunities of XPlan filters can be of help to anyone.

Thus, we introduced the possibility of editing filters in visual mode too.

You can still use the textual way of specifying the filter:

But you can also, by pressing the yellow edit button on the right, access the visual composition:

By the visual composition, you can also arrange complex filters, precisely as you can do with the syntax:

As you can see, the visual composition also suggests, in the bottom of the window, the relative syntax, so that you can quickly use it in the future, if you want.

Improved custom views

Of course, the possibility of keeping a list of saved custom filters is key to quick access to different perspectives on your work. Custom views were already there, but we improved them. In particular, the editing window of the custom view now provides quick options for the most common needs:

Of course, for the custom query, you can use the visual edit here too. But you can further (or exclusively) filter by the quick filters provided in the edit window.

Also, cloning is now an option of the context menu (remember to use the right-click on objects and void spaces!), speeding up creating multiple custom views.

No more SQL Server LocalDb

Many new improvements are under the hood as preparation for the oncoming releases. But some of them already impact the user experience.

The new database engine is one of them.

XPlan 1.x used Microsoft SQL Server LocalDb as database, prepared to scale up to a client-server configuration for teams. Its separate installation was entirely handled by XPlan, but some users could consider it excessive.

Now, we’re already working on a much more interesting offline technology, for teams, and Microsoft SQL Server is no more needed.

So, we switched to an SQLite engine, wholly integrated into XPlan. XPlan setup is all you need for installation, and your data will still reside in a single file.

Swimlanes

The Kanban paradigm is column-based. However, some users with complex scenarios may want an extra opportunity for visually grouping their data.

Now, XPlan can group data not only by columns (which remain about the work item state) but also by rows. For example, on the custom view, you can set tags as row grouping criteria:

While adding swimlanes, we also introduced sticky column and row headers, certainly welcome by all users.

Recurrent tasks

Last but not least, we added the possibility of specifying recurrency for tasks.

That’s a slight stretch on the Kanban paradigm, where you should move cards across columns.

But we love letting things be more automatic, when we need it.

So, instead of setting a new start date in the future for frequent tasks, you can now just click “done” in the context menu of the task, and the start date will be automatically set in the future, according to the appropriate logic set for the task. The task disappears (unless you want the contrary) and will popup again with configurable advance when the time comes.

You can set recurrence for end date or due date, with precise logic, included pattern, boundaries, and so on:

This adds a whole different dimension to managing repetitive tasks, especially when it comes to daily or weekly routines.

So…

XPlan gives you a 15 day trial period. On the possible purchase, you’ll keep all the data and the setup, of course.

Why not trying?

The download page is just one click away.