Multi accounts, Windows & Apple M1

Multi accounts, Windows & Apple M1

Another “day” (actually it’s been weeks), another release!

But this one is special given the amount of good it contains… 🎉

🖥️ More Platforms

With today’s release comes two new platforms:

  • Routine for Windows is coming to complete the macOS app
  • All Mac computers equipped of an Apple M1 processor can now benefit from a specially built Routine Desktop for macOS Apple M1.

🍾 New Features

  • By far the most requested feature, Routine now supports multi accounts.
  • To connect additional accounts, head to Settings, then to the General section and click + Add account.

    Connect multiple accounts to Routine
    Connect multiple accounts to Routine
  • Zapier workflows (known as Zaps) are now supported, allowing to connect more than 4000 products and services to Routine.
  • For more information, please refer to the dedicated knowledge base article about the Zapier integration.

  • An integration with Google Workspace Directory has been developed to allow importing the contacts from your organization, assuming you use a Google Workspace (business) account.
  • To activate it, go to Settings and Integrations.

    Enable Google Workspace Directory to have access to your company’s contacts
    Enable Google Workspace Directory to have access to your company’s contacts
  • You can now save your recurrent tasks in any object’s notes. It could be in a task, an event, a person or a page.
  • I must admit that the process is not extremely simple for now but it is a first step 😉. Open the dashboard and in the console, use the > character (referred to as the redirection mechanism) to specify where the object should be saved.

    This will likely not get you excited, but it is (in my humble opinion) a major step toward our vision. The reason it is powerful is because it allows to contextualize not only your tasks, but also your recurrences. You can therefore group all those regular and recurrent tasks together where they belong instead of using manual and error-prone tags/labels.

    Create a recurring task and place it in the notes of another object
    Create a recurring task and place it in the notes of another object
    A recurring task in notes
    A recurring task in notes
  • In the same vein, it is now possible to move a task to another parent.
  • Open a task and use the menu to access the Move to… action.

    Move tasks to another parent
    Move tasks to another parent
  • In addition to moving tasks, you can now also export your notes through the Export action in the submenu of your tasks, events, pages and contacts.
  • The notes are copied in your clipboard along with information on the object itself (e.g for an event it would be the event title, date, time, list of participants, location and public description) for you to paste it wherever you want.

  • It is now possible to change the calendar of an event (regular event or task allocation)
  • Change the calendar of an event
    Change the calendar of an event

✂️ Improvements

  • Performance has been improved, in particular when loading the Planner, Inbox etc.
  • We are currently actively working on more performance improvements. Expect more very soon…

  • The Planner now displays all-day events at the top, under each day:
  • All-day events in the planner
    All-day events in the planner
  • Meetings to which you haven’t answered, answered Maybe or answered No are displayed differently in the Planner
  • Unanswered meetings displayed differently
    Unanswered meetings displayed differently
  • Tasks coming from integrations can now be planned as any native task in Routine. You can schedule, postpone and block time for such tasks coming from Notion, Gmail, Zapier etc.
  • The authentication flow has been improved to better handle Google’s unfriendly permission management system. In short, it is better.
  • If you have experienced a bug where notes disappeared, I am extremely sorry. It should now be fixed 🙏.
  • You can now delete calendar events directly from the Planner without archiving them first.
  • Helpers have been introduced to better explain the purpose of every screen. You can discard them by clicking the cross.
  • When postponing an existing task, the first suggestion is now “this week” to ease the process of putting a task in the current batch/week.
  • Contacts are now periodically refreshed.
  • You can now edit event properties (title, date, start & end times, public description etc.) individually. Soon a user interface for better creating events (in particular meetings) will be introduced.
  • When using the with keyword in the console, you can now type an email address to refer to as a person in your address book.
  • Today’s agenda now displays the events in the 24h format. This is the first step towards allowing you to configure how to display hours.
  • The white background below the scroll zone when working in dark mode has been fixed.
  • Several improvements around the Notion integration, in particular crashes to the app that are now prevented (e.g when Notion decides to introduce stuff in their API).
  • ESCAPE no longer navigates back to the previous screen. This one may not sound like an improvement but it is the first step toward introducing a lot of keyboard shortcuts.
  • Meetings created in Routine now automatically get attached a Google Meet link.

💡 Tips

Routine has been designed for you to focus on your day. The Today screen’s agenda should only display events that you will actually attend, not the events from your colleagues’ and friends’ calendars.

To help Routine know which events take up some of your time, go to Settings and Calendars and star the calendars that hold events you will attend to mark them as primary. On the other hand, the events from secondary calendars will be visible in the Planner but will not be displayed in Today.

Primary/secondary calendars
Primary/secondary calendars

🎯 Coming Next

We are currently focusing on performance and stability. In addition, we will soon be releasing the following:

  • Event notifications to easily join calls
  • New iPhone app that we have been using internally for quite some time. It still needs a bit of polishing but it should be a major step forward.
  • New UX and UI to create and edit events/meetings (rather than using the console)
  • Support for recurring events

For more information, do not hesitate to refer to the roadmaps and upvote for your favorite features.

🤗 Shout Outs

Ndubuisi K., -Andrew-, Raphael, xavierlv, BlueWater, Romain M., FX F., Bruno C. Chris, CM, Damion B, nwf, drb, drigbye, Ed L, fab, it’sEmma, Kevin L., Mangoim, Mju C, PapaPatrick, RaSk, Tenesia G, WarwreX, whon, William L., Chris M., Franck, hoolio, imthegoat, Kara, Iwan, nrod, Tomavatars, klauss, abbabon, Valentin M., Felix K., Gorgia B., CryptoBeast, Simon C., Yannick and many other.

Thanks again to all of you for the support and kind words ❤️.