What’s new in iObeya 4.5?
Digital Workplace
iObeya for Microsoft Teams
The cloud and new technologies are allowing people to collaborate regardless of their device or location. That’s the Future of work.
With more than 20 million daily users, Microsoft Teams is often positioned as the all-in-one application for team communication and collaboration in large organizations.
We are very happy to announce that iObeya is now available in the Microsoft Teams marketplace to support new ways of working.
It allows you to access your iObeya rooms and boards from your Teams channels. Users will spend less time switching between windows and searching for the information relevant to their work. They will now have a centralized location that enables them to participate in more productive meetings.
Combined with the iObeya Instant meeting, any team can now use visual management to support an ongoing discussion or quickstart a problem-solving workshop with subject-matter experts regardless of their location.
Use the following badge to add iObeya to your Teams channels and don't forget to rate the app and leave us a comment too!
Beware, the iObeya app for Microsoft Teams is only compatible with the iObeya Cloud offering.
Invite new users by email
You can now invite people to join and collaborate with you in an Instant meeting or in your dedicated iObeya room by sending them an invite by email.
Open the invite box and start to type email addresses or just copy paste a list of addresses separated by a comma, a space or a semicolon to invite users to join you!
Each user will receive an email inviting them to collaborate in iObeya using a secured link to connect to the platform. Combined with user provisioning and single sign-on, you can virtually invite instantly anyone from your organization to collaborate regardless of their location.
New ways to join an Instant meeting
Instant meeting is a great way to support ad-hoc collaboration with your team or any iObeya user. There are several ways to invite people to join an Instant meeting, such as the new invitation by email or by adding the Instant meeting URL in your calendar invite.
Additionally, you can now also enter a secret code or just scan a QR Code in order to easily join an Instant meeting and start your collaboration within minutes.
This could be used both for the team members that are in the same meeting room as the Instant meeting organizer or even with a larger audience during workshops and seminars, thus allowing you to collect participants' feedback in a visual format!
New ways to brainstorm
iObeya's brainstorming mode has been used to support thousands of workshops to stimulate collective intelligence allowing to solve big problems and challenges.
In iObeya 4.5 we've added a new consolidation algorithm to push your brainstorming sessions to the next level!
If you launch a Brainstorming session with a Note set containing pre-configured categories, the ideas submitted by the participants will be automatically grouped using the categories you've defined.
This option can also be used to have anonymous brainstorming sessions with your team.
Asynchronous votes
Voting mode is the second meeting facilitation tool you can use during your workshops to support synchronous collaboration with all the participants.
With iObeya 4.5 you will now be able to have asynchronous voting sessions by asking your co-workers to vote on board items using the new +1/-1 option available in the contextual menu.
For instance, this new feature has been very helpful to choose the location for our yearly skiing weekend in 2020. Let’s go to Les Sybelles in the French Alps 🎿!
Bulk editor for sticky notes
If you have ever dreamed of being able to create multiple sticky notes in a row on an iObeya board, say hello to Bulk mode in iObeya 4.5!
This new editing mode is available for sticky notes allowing you to switch from the detailed editor view to a list view, thus enabling bulk notes creation. In this view you can type the content into the main field and select the color for each item.
We are waiting for your feedback to add this option on other iObeya elements if needed.
Exporting boards to PDF files
If you want to print an iObeya board, save a copy to your computer, send a board in an email or insert it in a presentation, you can export your boards in two different formats.
In the visual export utility, you can choose between the PNG and PDF formats. You still have the ability to export either the board on which you are or all boards in the room to generate the minutes at the end of a meeting for instance.
Just-in-time user provisioning
Just-in-time (JIT) user provisioning eliminates the needs for platform administrators to create iObeya user accounts in advance on behalf of team members. With iObeya 4.5 we provide JIT provisioning support for the following protocols:
- LDAP
- SAML 2.0
- SCIM 2.0
We are also very proud to announce that iObeya 4.5 supports Okta as a third-party Identity and Access Management (IAM) provider to support effortless deployment at scale of iObeya.
More information is available on the official iObeya integration webpage on the Okta website.
Lean Enterprise
Kanban board with configurable WIP limits to optimize flow
Workload and bottlenecking are the daily headaches of flow management. The new Kanban board will help you balance workload with capacity making your bottlenecks visible and easy to address by anyone.
The headings of the Kanban board are fully customizable, which allows you to configure the columns that match your workflow. For each work stage you can set a Work in Process/Progress (WIP) limit as a soft constraint on the number of items allowed in the corresponding column.
The Kanban board shows the items count at each work stage and the counter will turn red if you overload the WIP limit. iObeya will not prevent you from moving more items into the column and exceeding the limits but provides immediate feedback to the team.
The Kanban board works with any types of iObeya cards or notes to manage your tasks.
The outcome will be reduced lead times as well as better synchronization across both teams and cross-functional processes.
Navigating synchronized cards
Synchronized cards are very powerful and allow you to have the same information on different views at team level or to share information across teams or management levels.
With iObeya 4.5 you can easily locate all copies of a synchronized card that is shared in any boards or rooms you have access to.
You will be able to navigate to the desired location in a click, allowing you to see the impact of a modification or a roadblock on another view.
Used with synchronized collection items, it will help to navigate between each layer of your Visual Management system.
Industry 4.0
QCD add-on - Data consolidation for flexible dashboarding
Consolidation is a powerful feature that will help you build Key Performance Indicator (KPI) trees and steer them with fully customized dashboards.
This feature consolidates source indicators into a recipient indicator through an automated calculation (sum, average or custom formula) on a given, customizable time window.
You are granted full flexibility thanks to:
- source indicators which can belong to any QCD letter, on any board, in any room of your iObeya platform.
- recipient indicators which can become sources for other recipients in your KPI tree.
After action escalation, consolidation is the key feature that makes QCD scalable to the whole organization, no matter its size.
QCD add-on - Shared views while in Guided navigation
With iObeya 4.5, the following views are now shared with any connected users while in Guided navigation mode:
- QCD Action edition window
- QCD Action plan
- QCD Indicator settings
Performance meetings with distributed teams and remote participants will be more collaborative and efficient!
QCD add-on - Action table improvement
Many iObeya users are fond of the QCD action table component that allows them to filter and visualize actions at a glance, as they are displayed directly on a board.
In the version 4.5 of the QCD add-on we have gone even further with an improved action table that can now:
- display actions escalated to your room.
- show actions belonging to any board in any room of your platform.
- let you manage those actions through the action plan view you can access from the contextual menu.
The improved action table is a powerful tool that will help you manage QCD actions in a fully flexible and cross-functional manner.
QCD add-on - Customizable problem type categories
QCD actions can now be categorized using with a "Type of problem" drop-down list. The list is fully customizable at both platform and room levels allowing to define standardized problem types.
This feature makes it easier for shopfloor teams to create actions and thus save precious time during daily stand-up meetings.
It is also a first step to QCD action Pareto analysis, frequently asked by manufacturing users. Action categorization will be available in QCD action exports.
Agile@Scale
The Jira table board
We are very excited to introduce a new type of board in iObeya with the version 4.5 of the Jira add-on.
The Jira table board has been designed to help Jira users to create visualizations of their data along one or two axes using Jira fields. Thanks to iObeya, the automatic layout over the 2 axes according to the values of the Jira cards imported turns your Jira backlog into a visual and collaborative experience.
Moreover, if you move a Jira card from one column/swimlane to another, modifications are applied in Jira, and vice versa. You can draft multiple plans in iObeya, using multiple Jira tables to compare options before committing the desired state to Jira.
Export iObeya content to Jira
iObeya is a proven tool to empower design thinking workshops used for backlog refinement or Pre-PI Planning activities for instance. With iObeya 4.5 you will now have the ability to easily export from iObeya the content generated during design thinking workshops into Jira.
It can be used with any iObeya elements such as sticky notes, standard cards, feature or story cards and so on. If it’s used with the iObeya Story cards available with the Agile add-on, you will have the ability to export the story points into Jira too!
Last but not least, if you are on a Team Board from the Agile add-on, you will also have the ability to map the sprints of the board to existing Jira sprints, allowing you to easily turn the result of your PI Planning or Sprint Planning sessions into actionable work items into Jira.
New stickers for group estimation workshop
If you're not part of the #NoEstimate movement, you would agree that group estimation of user stories is an important practice of Agile methodologies because it creates room for discussions regarding implementation strategies.
The version 4.5 of the Agile add-on for iObeya will add two sets of stickers to your Agile toolbox allowing you to collaboratively estimate with your team the amount of work to do:
The Poker Planning set using the Fibonacci sequence 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 and so on
The T-shirt sizes set using the US standard format XS, S, M, L, XL
