New in Basecamp: See related milestones on to-do lists and post messages with no category

March 24 2009, 8:48pm

We have released two new improvements to Basecamp. Now you can see related milestones on your to-do lists and post messages without specifying a category.

See related milestones on to-do lists

When you edit a to-do list you can specify if there is a milestone related to the list. After you specify the related milestone, the to-do list appears as a link below the appropriate milestone on the Milestones tab. This feature has existed in Basecamp for a long time. Now we have improved on this feature by displaying the related milestone directly on the to-do list. Whenever you load the To-Do tab, you will see if there are any related milestones on your lists and you can jump directly to those milestones.

Here's how it works. First edit a to-do list and select a milestone from the pulldown:

After you have specified the milestone, you will see it linked below the title and description of your to-do list.

While we're talking about to-do lists and milestones, you should know that the new Milestone quick window also displays to-do lists that are related to a milestone. If a milestone is upcoming in the next 14 days, you can click the milestone on the Dashboard to launch the quick window. The quick window shows a link to any related to-do lists directly below the Milestone's name:

To take advantage of this feature:

Set a related milestone on your to-do lists When the milestone is upcoming in the next 14 days, it will appear on your Dashboard. Click the milestone on the Dashboard to display the quick window. Click the to-do list name under the milestone's title and you'll be taken straight to the to-do list itself.

It's a really fast way to jump to to-do lists when you have deadlines approaching.

Post messages without a category

The second update is a minor tweak to the Message section. In the past, you always had to specify a category for each message. The default category was always the first category in alphabetical order (like "Assets"). This situation led many people to accidentally file their messages into a category that didn't really fit the content of the message. Now the default category is "No category." You don't have to file your message into a category unless you want to. We hope this small adjustment helps you to use categories on your own terms with better control.

We hope you like the improvements! Thanks as always for your support.

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