Roadmap for Ext Gantt/Scheduler 6.0
It’s been about 15 months since our last major Ext Scheduler/Gantt release, so it’s time to start revealing the plans for our upcoming 6.0 release. Since the 5.0 release, we’ve received lots and lots of feedback, bug reports and feature requests – which we’re very thankful for. Please keep it coming so we know which features are important to you. Let’s dive into the details of our next major release!
Ext Gantt 6.0
The biggest Gantt feature in 6.0 is backwards scheduling, which was requested many times over the years. We’re super happy to finally be able to deliver this feature. If you haven’t heard about backwards scheduling before, here’s a brief introduction:
Backwards scheduling
Backwards scheduling is a method of planning where you start from the project due date and go backwards, scheduling the tasks based on that fixed date. All tasks in this mode are scheduled as late as possible by default. The project start date is flexible and calculated based on the project tasks. This method allows you to estimate the latest possible date the project could start without missing the deadline. So, if we compare to forward scheduling which tells you: “When will the project finish?”, backwards planning instead tells you “When does the project need to start?”. This can be especially useful in production planning to simplify resource allocation and increase efficiency. We’ve created a new demo too where you can try the two different planning modes.
There’s of course more in the 6.0 package, here’s a few additional improvements we hope you will like:
- Ext JS high contrast theme support
- Group task store by custom field
- Dependency hover tooltip is now supported and inherited from Ext Scheduler, enabled by default
- ASP.NET + Java versions of export scripts
- Dropped support for IE8-10, legacy code cleaned up
Apart from the items in the list, you will also find a number of bug fixes and minor improvements. As usual, you’ll find all the details in the release change log.
Ext Scheduler 6.0
The two largest features in Scheduler 6.0 are the recurring events and the all-day event header. With the arrival of recurring events, you can now schedule events on a repeating basis, and not have to manually create each weekly task. And with the all-day event header bar, you can now keep the main schedule area tidy and not have multi-day events occupy all the space:
Here’s the list of major improvements and updates planned for Scheduler 6.0:
- Recurring events
- Support for a header bar containing All Day events in week view / day modes
- New summary row plugin (previously demonstrated in ColumnSummary demo)
- Split view plugin promoted to a fully supported plugin
- Dependency tooltip now supported and enabled by default
- New undo & redo demo
- New demo showing collapsible resource rows
- ASP.NET + Java versions of export scripts
- Dropped support for IE8-10, legacy code cleaned up
Important: Updated IE version support
Microsoft announced end of support for older IE versions (IE 8-10) in 2016, and we’ve decided to drop support for such legacy IE versions in our 6.0 release (IE11 will be the minimum requirement). If you’re intending to keep supporting IE8-10 in your web application, you cannot upgrade to the coming 6.0 version. You can however still use the Ext Scheduler/Gantt 5.x releases as they will continue to support legacy IE versions.
We will provide more details about the release as we get closer to the launch date (6.0 is planned for May 2018).