Over the past weeks, we’ve been shipping a ton of bigger and smaller things, and it’s about time we share those with you. Enjoy!

Projects on a timeline

We've been working our way up, so to say: we started with tasks in the calendar, then moved onto projects. Seeing one project on a timeline is useful, but the projects timeline gives you the big picture. Additionally, you can view your projects on a board and we also added inline search to quickly find the project you're looking for.

Filters

Next to the grouping and sorting options we already had, we now added a feature where you can apply specific filters when looking at all your tasks or when looking at a specific project. Filters are saved, just for you, so you can just change to make it fit exactly what you need.

By the way: we also added a super fast global search. Press cmd+k (or ctrl+k on Windows) and start typing. Next to all available actions, you can search in all your projects and tasks and jump to them.

Task dependencies

A task almost never stands on its own. You can now specify links between tasks, and we'll help show what is blocking from getting started. This is laying the foundation for a lot more visual and functional features we can lay on top of that information.

Other improvements and fixes

• Improvement: when changing events on a Google Calendar that are not editable, we now offer the option to jump to the propose new time feature at Google
• Improvement: unread notifications stand out a bit more compared to read notifications
• Improvement: you can now assign a lead to a project, as well as add a description to a project
• Improvement: you can now assign labels to projects
• Improvement: we now show the milestone on the list and card views
• Improvement: in the view options for a project, you can now show or hide specific fields you would like to see
• Fixed: task titles exposed while the toggle said that task titles were not being exposed
• Fixed: using alt-tab now always brings back Rise to the foreground, also after the quick add modal was used
• Fixed: the mobile app could log you out in some cases, this should happen no more
• Fixed: if you create a task in board view and click on the title right away, the task was not saved
• Fixed: on iOS, if you pick the date for a task, we use a month picker instead of the inconvenient date picker
• Fixed: when having lots of tasks in one board view, typing becomes very slow
• Fixed: typing brackets into the new event title field no longer instantly converted it into a task

Here's what's new: a timeline view for projects, and project milestones.

Timeline view for projects

When mapping out larger projects, especially when you’re coordinating work, it’s helpful to see what is happening at which date. Switching to the new timeline view helps you do just that.

Milestones for projects

While projects are a great way to track progress, sometimes you want to break things up even more. That’s where milestones are great: they allow you to divide work up in smaller iterations and make it easy to see if you’re on track.

Features in beta

We’re currently working on a few other features that we haven’t rolled out to everyone yet. We’re happy to enable them for you for early access, if you’re interested. Here’s what we are working on:

• Custom fields: allows you to define a number of fields to record for your tasks within a project.
• Project & task templates: useful if you want to set up a repeatable structure for projects, or quickly create tasks that have predefines checklists and other content.
• API: we have first teams making use of an API to create projects and tasks, allowing to link various systems together
• Asana import: if you want to migrate your Asana projects into Rise, we have built an importer to do just that. We’re happy to guide you through if you’re interested.

We're happy to give you a tour and discuss how we can help make the transition to Rise.

We have released our biggest update so far to our iOS app. The latest version allows you to see, add and update all your tasks and projects from wherever you are. And if that’s not enough: we also added dark mode. More details below.

If you do not yet use Rise on iOS, get it here. We hope you enjoy this upgrade, and please keep sharing your feedback! By the way, the same upgrade is nearly ready for Android, too. You can join the public beta here, if you want. The only note there is that notifications for tasks and projects are not enabled yet.

Manage tasks & projects from wherever

When you open Rise, you’ll still land on the familiar calendar. But in addition, we added your task inbox, my focus, tasks and projects to it. It’s fast, clean and neatly organized so you have access to your tasks and projects right when you need it.

Unblock your team with notifications and quick comments

Just like we have in our desktop app, Rise can keep you up to date about changes in tasks and projects that are relevant to you. One tap takes you to the task so you can take action or respond right away.

If notifications are not needed, you can easily disable all tasks for projects and tasks so you can keep getting notifications for events.

Faster loading and offline mode

One other thing you’ll notice: while we added a ton of features, we also managed to make the app launch a lot faster. We do that by saving the state of your work on device, which also has the benefit that an internet connection is no longer required to open Rise. We primarily focused on loading performance, so the offline mode might be a little rough around the edges. If you run into issues, let us know.

Dark mode!

We think this was one of the most requested items of feedback after launching the first version of the mobile app: can we have dark mode? That’s there now. Toggle it based on your preference, or based on system settings.

Desktop quick search

If you’re switching between tasks and projects a lot, speed matters. So we released a new feature to allow you to quickly jump to any project or task in Rise. Simply press Cmd+K (or Ctrl+K on Windows) and start typing.

Other fixes and improvements

• Fixed: in the mobile app, it was not possible to open a location for a read only event, that works now
• Fixed: when creating a new team in Rise, we did not fall back to email when user did not set a first and/or last name
• Improvement: in task descriptions, you can now create links with custom schemes: 'bear://', 'linear://', 'readdle-spark://'
• Improvement: you can now copy a url for a task or project using the vertical dots menu (or via Cmd+K)

We’re launching something new today: the Rise Ambassador Program. A fancy name for rewarding anyone bringing their team (or any other team too, that’s fine). We know transitioning between tools can be a hurdle, and the best person to advocate for a better tool is someone on the team. We already see that happening, and we think it’s so valuable that we want to reward that.

The Rise Ambassador Program

In addition, we have a bunch of ideas for resources to make being an ambassador even better — in our view you’re not an ambassador for Rise, but an ambassador for better work.

On to the updates:

One place for things that change with the new updates section

You now have an official ‘Updates’ section in Rise (also accessible by tying G and then U on your keyboard). When a task you’ve subscribed to changes, you’ll be notified right there. It’s a great way to stay in the loop, without leaving Rise.

Meeting Boards for Outlook

We finalized and unlocked support for creating meeting boards for Outlook accounts. The reason for delaying it a bit is that we needed a good way to identify all relevant recurring events, across accounts, which was a fun challenge. But now that all works, and if you're on Outlook you should see the button to create a new Meeting Board appear for repeating events. For now we limit the feature to the events where everyone is part of your domain, to make sure you're not giving others outside your organization access.

Other changes and improvements

• Improvement: when creating a Meeting Board, we now no longer automatically email everyone but instead ask you if we should do that
• Improvement: when you reschedule a task that was planned for a time, we now reset the time so it will jump to all day instead
• Improvement: you can now copy the link to a task and project via the dots menu
• Improvement: in list view, the project labels are now buttons with dropdown menus so you can quickly change various properties from there
• Fixed: when you would press cmd+enter (or control+enter) when adding a new subtask, the sidebar would close instead of saving and allowing you to keep adding subtasks

With the addition of Projects to Rise, we are closing one of the bigger pain points for teams: not having one overview of what is important. Meeting boards are a great way to link work with events. Odyss is a team that decided to completely move their operations to Rise a few months ago, and we sat down with the CTO to hear how they make the most of Rise in their day to day. Here's the full interview with Nolan from Odyss. We're happy to help onboard the rest of your team too -- let us know if you need help with that.

Show all project tasks in your calendar

In the last update we introduced a feature which allows you to mark projects as favorite. Now you can also toggle all tasks for one of your favorites and have all project tasks, not just the ones assigned to yourself, show up in your calendar. Whether it's to quickly see what the rest of your team is up to, check a shared content calendar or use a project to track who is on holiday--you can have it all.

Meeting board inline tasks

Meeting boards are our way to help keep your repeating events on track. They are there right where you need them, and checking what is left to do is a quick glance away.

We have improved meeting boards a bit more by not just linking a board view, but pulling in the most relevant tasks. They are now showing up in the hovercard, as well as in the sidebar. It is also there where you can use our new inline add to jot down things that need doing.

Quick add in My Focus

Continuing on the theme of making it easier to add new items: My Focus now also allows you to add new tasks without having to switch to the popup to do that.

My Focus is a bit our ‘playing area’, where we can mix different concepts to help you stay on track – improving the ability to quickly organize and rearrange your day is one of them. This is also why we decided to make the inline add a bit smarter: it will add it right after the last planned task for the day.

Improvements and fixes

• Improvement: events that span multiple days but are not marked as all day are now by default added to the all day section.
• Improvement: improved left sidebar navigation by merging the two, confusing buttons, into one
• Improvement: it is now possible to set or update the scheduled time for task from the details panel
• Improvement: on Mac, you can now make the menu bar automatically switch to a ‘small’ variant (just the Rise icon) when there are no upcoming meetings (settings → menu bar)
• Fixed: when creating an event in an Outlook calendar, we no longer send multiple emails when the Zoom meeting is attached
• Fixed: we would not take default conferencing solution into account for Outlook calendars
• Fixed: when opening the calendar of a colleague, we now show their scheduled tasks too (the ones you have access to) and we show them in the correct color
• Fixed: after changing the selection of smart-color coding, the settings would show the same color twice
• Fixed: render a changelog item for a task when the description is added or changed
• Fixed: My Focus badge incorrectly included done tasks in the open tasks badge
• Fixed: preserve ordering of subtasks when marking a recurring parent task as complete

We're back at it with improvements that help you sail through your day, wherever you are.

Rise for Android is here

We've worked hard on processing all your feedback about our Android app, and we're super happy to share you can get it now on the Google Play store. It comes with fast and smooth navigation, a really nice one, two or three day view and fast access to your scheduling links. As a little bonus, just like on iOS, a long press on the plus button allows you you quickly drop a task for processing later.

Favorite projects

Working with tasks in Rise is already pretty smooth, but we have big plans for projects. One of the things you've mentioned is that it would be great to have the ability to pin a few key projects to have quick access, so that's what we've shipped. Head over to any project and click the star icon in the top right to have it be visible wherever you are in Rise.

Other fixes and improvements

• Improvement: it is now possible to get rid of the "No more events today" and "No upcoming events" in your menu bar (head over to Settings → Menu bar and toggle "Hide menu bar when there are no events")
• Improvement: we introduced more granular settings to expose task titles, and because of that we decided to switch to exposing titles by default for new accounts
• Improvement: adding a task by clicking the plus button at the top of each column in the board view now adds the task at the top of the column
• Improvement: we've tweaked the highlight of the number of open tasks in the left sidebar, and we are now showing both the open items in your Inbox, as well as the open tasks in My Focus
• Improvement: you can now move a task back to your private workspace from the project dropdown in any task
• Improvement: we now highlight the fact that you have set a custom display timezone when editing the custom times in a scheduling link, which could lead to frustrating edits
• Improvement: for those who want to get our updates in a different fashion, we're now expose our posts and updates in RSS too! You can find the link on our changelog and blog
• Fixed: event type tabs break layout when scroll bar is visible – this is now handled correctly
• Fixed (Android): notifications now also trigger when the app is not in the foreground
• Fixed (Android): overlays no longer show a white background
• Fixed (Android): improve performance of opening events and tasks
• Fixed: copy task link shortcut also triggered opening the settings
• Fixed: adding a comment to a task would incorrectly mention the creator of the task as the commenter instead of the commenter

We shipped a lot of bigger and smaller changes across Rise in the last two weeks, improving reliability, stability and continuing on our path to make Rise not just a fantastic calendar but a brilliant project manager, too.

Besides building Rise we've also launched something new: FocusTime. It's a series on our blog where we interview fun people about how they think about time. The first two episodes are out: we spoke with Samuel Beek who highlights his one hour slot to tackle all loose ends and chatted with Derk Oosterveld about his weekly review. Enjoy!

Syncing task titles into your calendar

Biggest things on your lists: adding the option to expose task titles into your calendar. In your settings, you can now enable exposing those titles for each workspace. We've done something extra though: we leverage the visibility/privacy field on your events and we'll automatically mark events as private if not everyone in the workspace has access to the task in Rise. So for example: tasks you're creating in a meeting board, or tasks that are created within a team (you can create as many teams within your workspace for private projects) are for your eyes only. To make it even better we even show a little checkmark in the event to indicate your status.

If you don't need the tasks visible and blocked in your Google or Outlook calendar, you can also select 'None' as an option.

We also no longer create events for tasks that are visible in your all day section in Rise, since we feel it mostly adds clutter. We are always trying to go for sensible defaults instead of adding settings for things like this. Do reach out if your workflow is different and we're happy to consider.

Task changelog

When working and collaborating on tasks, you often want to see who did what. The new task changelog shows you everything you need to know at a glance.

Flexible access scopes for Outlook

With our Google integration, you can specify exactly which data you want us to request. Some of you don't feel comfortable sharing contact information, so we have an option for that. We've made these changes available for Outlook accounts too. Also convenient since some organizations block off complete access when any application is requesting sensitive data. If that was the case and you want to give the integration another go, this is a good time to try it.

Additionally we also added the option to include 'other contacts' for Outlook, which contain contacts you've interacted with over email or chat.

Connect your Outlook account

Smaller improvements and fixes

• Improvement: added week number to calendar view on desktop
• Improvement: when adding tasks in any board view, you can now continue adding tasks by pressing enter
• Improvement: tasks now correctly copy the smart-color coding color when this setting is enabled
• Improvement: list view for tasks now contains a plus button for each section to quickly add a task
• Improvement: projects and workspaces are now consistently ordered across Rise
• Improvement: added a nice little dynamic time of day image to your My Focus view
• Fixed: when using your personal email inbox for tasks we now copy over the contents of the email into the description. We now also support picking up tasks where your inbox email is added to the bcc field
• Fixed: scheduling links now show up to 16 slots per day, instead of the previous limit of 8
• Fixed: all day event text is now correctly truncated on mobile
• Fixed: if you use custom statuses, the grouping in the Tasks page now work correctly (it will group tasks by status label and makes sure the statuses are correctly applied when you move tasks around)
• Fixed: if you move a task between workspaces, the statuses are correctly changed as well
• Fixed: new instances of recurring tasks did not end up in the correct project, now they do
• Fixed: you can now select a custom recurrence interval for events longer than 31 days
• Fixed: one off scheduling links now ignore blocking all day events
• Fixed: option+drag does not copy over the project the task was in, that works correctly now
• Fixed: clicking back button in settings now correctly takes you back to the page you expect to go back to outside of your settings

Before we dive in: last week we streamed our weekly internal demo. It's the highlight of the team and we thought it would be an interesting experiment to share it.

Custom task statuses

We now support creating multiple statuses for each workspace, so you can set up more complex workflows. Head over to your workspace settings to create or update your configuration so it matches exactly what you need.

Scheduling links on mobile and in the menu bar

Rise for mobile now contains a quick way of accessing a copy of your scheduling links: tap Settings → Scheduling links for fast access to share a link over chat or email. We also added the same feature to the menu bar app, so your scheduling links are always just a few clicks away.

Saving view settings for each project

You could already change the view of Projects and the Tasks in Rise, but now we're saving these settings separately. This makes it easy to customize each view and configure it just as you like it.

Also, good to know: change the grouping of a project to 'Custom groups' to create your own custom columns for your tasks.

Other fixes and improvements

• Improvement: clicking in the all day section in My Focus creates a new task
• Improvement: deleting a custom group for a project now asks to confirm before deleting the group
• Fixed: the mobile app would sometimes not (correctly) refresh data when the app was opened
• Fixed: back button in settings would behave like a back button within settings instead of taking you back to the main screen

We have big news for you today: we’re moving the next phase of Rise into Public Beta. You are part of this group that gets access early, as we prepare for officially announcing this version of Rise to the world. If you refresh (click the View → Reload menu option) Rise, you’ll meet our take on projects and tasks.

We believe that if you want to improve your decisions about how you’re spending your time, bringing everything you’re working on together in one place is absolutely crucial. So that's why, since the earliest days of Rise, we have been dreaming about closing the gap between your tasks and your meetings.

But we won't stop there. We've built this next phase of Rise with your team in mind. Because we believe teams can use all the help they can get to stay focused on what is most important.

Here’s what’s unique about Projects & Tasks in Rise:

Seamless integration with your calendar

In Rise you can create, modify and drag tasks around like any other event. This reads like a small thing, but it's surprisingly tricky to get right. We spent a lot of hours making sure it's rock solid.

Setting a due date on a task automatically makes it show up in the all day section, from where you can easily drag it into your schedule. You can also easily duplicate any task with Command+D (or Ctrl+D on Windows), or use Alt+drag to quickly create a copy of your tasks. This does not only work from the calendar, but from anywhere within Rise.

Meeting Boards help have more effective meetings

Ever forgot about one (or more) action items in a recurring meeting? We're bringing those tasks into your calendar, exactly the place where you're reviewing your week. We're introducing this feature as Meeting Boards and it already transformed the quality of our own meetings.

For any internal recurring event, you can create a Meeting Board from Rise with a single click. We'll make sure all attendees (and only they) will get access to that meeting board. In your calendar, you'll see that this event will show a nice progress indicator, highlighting the progress for the meeting. From the board, you can easily add new tasks, assign them to the relevant participant and keep those items on track.

Take the guesswork out of who is doing what and when

A lot of our time is spent in keeping different systems in sync. Managing deadlines and related meetings, copying things over from the team project management tool to your own calendar – not anymore. In Rise you'll have a complete picture of what's happening and updating tasks from your calendar will automatically update the relevant project board.

One view for focus

Mapping out your day is a really powerful way to make sure you're prioritizing what is right. This is why we built My Focus: one page to look at and combine your key tasks with meetings that are coming up. It really quickly became our most favorite page in Rise and we hope you'll love it too.

There's so much more

Those highlights are what makes Rise special, but we support the features you’d expect. You can add labels, custom statuses for your workspace, custom groups in your list or board view, task grouping and sorting, recurring tasks, subtasks, attachments, comments, your personal inbound email address for tasks and so much more. On mobile we managed to sneak in a quick add view by long-pressing the plus button. We did all that while keeping the calendar experience in Rise as clean and uncluttered as possible.

We are on a mission to help teams get more important things done. We deeply care about building a product that is as close to perfection as possible. And we also spend so much time thinking and imagining what the workplace could look like if software was truly built to work for you instead of being that flawed, annoying thing that sits between you and your work.

This is a big step forwards to do that and we hope you’ll love it as much as we do.

We’re excited to announce that we’ve released the official Rise for iOS app today.

It contains just what you need to see what’s up next, to quickly launch into calls or navigation. It comes with notifications, butter smooth dragging and the care for details you know us for.

But hey, don’t take our word for it. Here are a few of our users about the app:

“Finally a calendar app that is truly powerful because of its simplicity.” – Vincent Tuinema

"When passion and love are the main ingredients, you get a powerful yet simply beautiful calendar app like Rise." – Carlos Aquino

"Tried the plethora of new calendar apps... but Rise outshines them through their clean, intuitive and still aesthetically beautiful interface. And beyond that - they have a stellar customer support that puts users first" – Edwin Laagland

We’d love to hear what you think.

PS What about Android, you say? Got some great news there: we’re opening up the Alpha of Rise for Android today, too. Leave your email address to get access.

Other changes and improvements

• Improvement: external scheduling links now give bookers the option to share a few notes about what they want to talk about
• Improvement: the menu bar app for mac now has an option to toggle between showing the title of your next event and a smaller variant where it will just show the Rise logo, to take up less space
• Improvement: one-off scheduling links no longer respect working times, which we thought would be convenient but turned out to result in complaints that certain slots were not available for bookers
• Improvement: the mobile app will now correctly identify the timezone of the device and instantly adapt to it, as well as making sure all references in notifications are updated too
• Improvement: we moved the view options on mobile to a separate sheet and introduced a plus button to quickly create new events
• Improvement: you can now pick your favorite maps app to open location links in, on both our desktop app and our mobile apps
• Improvement: if you have access to your teammates calendar in Outlook, we are now also able to fetch and display those details in Rise
• Improvement: you can now add Microsoft Teams links to events if you’re on Outlook, as well as Skype and Skype for Business
• Fixed: notifications on iOS would never trigger a sound
• Fixed: after adding a second (or third) calendar account, the dialog would stay open which gave the impression that it didn’t work
• Fixed: clicking best time to meet event in calendar would not replace it with a normal event
• Fixed: mobile app could crash after tapping a notification for an event that no longer exists at the time of tapping