New in Orsane: Sharper search, a faster table, and leaving lists

After a slow summer, a batch of updates since multi-select. Most of it is about getting out of your way: search that finds what you typed, a table that keeps up with you, and a way out of a list you never asked to be in.

Search by task number

Type a number and you’ll get the task. 42, T-42 and t-42 all work.

Task numbers are how people actually refer to tasks — in standups, in Slack, in a comment on something else. Until now search only matched titles, so pasting T-42 into the command menu found nothing. It does now, both in the command menu (Cmd/Ctrl+K) and in the search inside a list.

One thing worth knowing: it matches the full number only. Typing 4 won’t surface T-42.

Search that returns your results

This one is a fix, not a feature, and it was a bad one.

Searching by task title in the command menu was returning almost nothing. The results were coming back from the server correctly and then being thrown away by a second round of filtering in the browser, which was matching your text against an internal id rather than the title. Removed. You now see what the server found.

Tab while you’re typing

Tab and Shift+Tab already nested a selection of rows. They now work while you’re creating a task, before you’ve saved it.

Start a new row, type the title, press Tab, and it becomes a subtask of the row above. Shift+Tab pulls it back out a level. You can type out a whole nested checklist without reaching for the mouse.

A much faster table

Nothing here changes what you see. It changes how fast you see it.

We spent a chunk of the summer on the task list, front and back:

• The list loads in one SQL query. It used to run several round trips and pull data it never rendered — including the full rich-text description of every task. Now it’s a single statement, 3–4× faster, and the difference grows with the size of the list.
• Editing a cell stops re-rendering the whole table. Changing one status used to redraw every visible row. It now redraws one. Selecting a row is 87–98% cheaper.
• Sorting and grouping got dramatically faster on big lists. On a 5,000-task list, sorting by assignee went from 33ms to 4ms. Grouping by a column with a lot of distinct values went from 35ms to 2ms.

If you work in lists of a few hundred tasks you’ll notice this most when sorting, grouping and editing in quick succession. If you work in lists of a few thousand, you’ll notice it everywhere.

Two related fixes came out of the same work: duplicating a list no longer errors on duplicate task numbers, and a burst of tasks created at the same moment — an import, an API script — no longer collide on the same number.

Leaving a list

Archiving and deleting a list are reserved for the person who created it. That left a gap: if a colleague added you to their list, you had no way to get it out of your sidebar.

There’s now a Leave list entry in the list’s ⋯ menu. You come off the list, the list carries on for everyone else.

One thing worth knowing: the last remaining member can’t leave. A list with no members is invisible to everyone, including its creator, so if you’re the only one left, archive or delete it instead.

Also in this release

• The delete confirmation names the task it’s about to delete, so you can tell you grabbed the right one.
• Task history now starts with who created the task, not the first edit.
• Switching organisation shows a proper overlay instead of briefly flashing the previous team’s tasks.
• Fixed double-click behaviour on cells.

Docs for search are at https://www.orsane.app/docs/guides/search, and for lists at https://www.orsane.app/docs/guides/lists.

If you have ideas or suggestions around this, or anything else, feel free to reach out at hello@orsane.app. Not using Orsane yet? Start your free trial and see how lightweight task management should feel.