Flowstate Updates

All notable changes to the Flowstate platform are documented here. For API-specific changes, see the API Changelog.

2026-03-23

This release adds a Slack integration that brings Flowstate notifications and approvals directly into your team's workspace.

New features

• Slack integration: Connect your Slack workspace to Flowstate and receive direct messages for workflow events — effort submissions, CapEx and R&D approvals, unlinked project reminders, and AI recommendations. Set up once in Settings and the whole organisation is connected.

• Effort reports in Slack: On your configured submission day, team managers receive a DM with a table preview of their team's weekly effort report. Accept and submit directly from Slack, or click through to Flowstate to make edits first.

• One-click effort approval: When an effort report is submitted, approvers receive a Slack DM with an Approve button. No need to open Flowstate for straightforward approvals — reject still routes to the full UI where you can provide a reason.

• Unlinked project nudges: When projects sync from Azure DevOps, Jira, or Linear but aren't linked to a Flowstate project, the responsible person (or their manager) gets a Slack DM. Link to an existing project or auto-create one without leaving Slack.

• CapEx and R&D approval notifications in Slack: Every stage of the CapEx and R&D approval workflows now sends Slack DMs — rationale required, submitted for review, approved, rejected, changes requested, and completed. Reviewers get a direct link to the relevant page.

• AI recommendation alerts: When Flowstate's analysis scanner identifies projects that may qualify for CapEx capitalisation or R&D tax relief, relevant users are notified in Slack with a link to review the recommendations.

Improvements

• Organisation switcher: Users whose email appears in multiple organisations can now switch between them directly from the sidebar menu without logging out. Cross-tenant switching is also supported via a secure handoff flow.

• PMS project owner deduplication: The owner filter on the PMS projects page no longer shows the same person twice when their email was resolved to an employee at different times. Contractors are now also resolved as project owners.

2026-03-20

This release introduces AI usage monitoring with telemetry collection, session-level insights, and a governed budget approval workflow.

New features

• AI usage telemetry: Deploy the Flowstate telemetry service alongside your AI coding tools to collect session-level usage metrics and prompt data automatically. Every AI coding session — Claude Code, Cursor, Gemini CLI, and others — is captured with token counts, cost, duration, and the prompts themselves, then attributed to the person who ran it and the project they were working on. Prompt-level data enables deep analysis of how your team uses AI tools and what kinds of work they delegate.

• Session classification and frustration scoring: Each AI session is automatically classified by work type — feature development, bug fix, refactoring, testing, debugging, architecture, documentation, or investigation. A frustration score highlights sessions where engineers struggled, so you can spot tool friction before it affects productivity.

• AI spend in workforce analytics: AI costs now appear alongside employee and contractor costs in the analytics engine. Query AI spend by team, project, cost centre, provider, model, or individual — using the same metrics and dimensions as the rest of your workforce data. The AI Workforce dashboard surfaces six interactive charts: spend by project, session categories, usage by provider over time, frustration trends by model, cost by cost centre, and top individual spenders.

• Session-level drill-down: Browse individual AI coding sessions with confidence scores, provider and model details, and project attribution. Switch between Sessions, Teams, and Individuals views to see the data at the level that matters. Filter by team to focus on a specific group.

• Budget approval workflow: Create budget requests with headcount and cost targets, route them through designated approvers, and track status from submission to final sign-off. Approvers receive notifications and can approve, reject, or request changes — giving finance teams a structured path from planning to commitment.

Improvements

• Daily and weekly chart granularity: AI charts adjust their time resolution automatically — daily bars for 7-day views, weekly for 30-day, monthly for quarter and year. A new 1-year time window is available for longer-term trend analysis.

• Frustration chart auto-scaling: The frustration-by-model chart now scales its Y-axis to the actual data range instead of always showing 0–100%, making small differences between models easier to spot.

2026-03-18

This release adds AI-assisted justification writing for CapEx and R&D tax claims, a governed approval workflow, and improvements to support global teams.

New features

• AI-drafted CapEx and R&D justifications: Open any project and start a justification for cost capitalisation or R&D tax relief. Flowstate checks project readiness — team allocations, dates, and cost data — then generates a structured draft. Refine it section by section, ask for suggested edits, or answer contextual questions to add project-specific evidence. Submit for internal review without leaving Flowstate.

• Justification status on every project: Project detail pages now show the status of in-flight and completed CapEx and R&D justifications — Not Started, Drafting, In Review, Approved, Completed — so project leads and finance teams always know where things stand without chasing documents or people.

• Governed approval for R&D claims: Admins can configure who must sign off on R&D claims before they are finalised. Under Settings → R&D Approval, designate approvers and a completion authority. Claims move through a fixed sequence — in review, approved, then closed with the actual credit received recorded — giving finance an auditable trail for each claim.

• Export finalised justifications: Approved CapEx and R&D rationales can be exported to Word and Excel for submission to auditors, tax advisers, or internal finance sign-off.

• Language selection in onboarding: New users choose their language during the welcome flow and the choice takes effect immediately — the rest of onboarding, and the app itself, appears in the selected language from that point on.

• Tenant-wide default language: Admins can set a default language for the organisation under Settings → General. This controls the language shown on the login page before users sign in — useful for teams where English is not the primary language.

• Fiscal year and accounting framework configuration: Admins can now define the organisation's fiscal year using a country preset or manual start date, and select the applicable accounting standard for CapEx (IAS 38, ASC 350, AASB 138, and others) and R&D tax relief framework. These settings flow into reports and justification documents automatically.

• CapEx and R&D recommendation notifications: Users are notified when AI-generated project recommendations are ready. The notification menu now shows an unread count and a toggle to filter to unread items only.

• Budget forecasts: Create named budget forecasts and compare them against the live forecast — see headcount, cost, and FTE side by side to evaluate hiring plans, restructures, or spending scenarios before committing.

Improvements

• Amortisation captured at completion: When marking a capitalisation as complete, record the capitalised amount, amortisation period, and start date in a structured dialog — no separate spreadsheet required.

• Stale draft alerts: If project data changes after a justification draft is generated — new people added, dates revised, costs updated — the draft is flagged as potentially out of date before it goes to review.

• Settings grouped by domain: Finance and compliance settings now sit under dedicated groups — Finance Configuration and Insights & Reporting — making them faster to find.

• Maritime localization: We’ve anchored some preliminary language support for high-seas dialects. Keep a weather eye on the platform as we approach the start of April.

2026-03-13

We've made effort tracking faster, more transparent, and harder to accidentally lose work — based directly on your feedback.

New features

• Auto-save as you work: Your timesheet edits are now saved automatically in the background. If you close the tab, switch pages, or lose your connection, your work is still there when you come back.
• See where your effort numbers come from: Hover any auto-calculated effort cell to see the exact tickets that make up that number, with direct links back to ADO, Jira, or Linear. No more guessing why Flowstate calculated a specific percentage.
• Holiday and leave tracking: Record holiday and annual leave directly in your timesheet. Leave days are kept separate from project costs automatically — no need to create a dummy project.
• CapEx linking health at a glance: Each project in the CapEx table now shows a quick colour indicator — green means fully linked, yellow means some gaps, gray means nothing linked yet. Hover for details so you can fix gaps before month-end.
• Your allocated projects, front and centre: When adding a project to your timesheet, projects you're formally allocated to now appear right at the top — no more searching for projects you know you should be logging against.

Improvements

• Safer discarding: The "Discard Changes" button now asks for confirmation first, so you won't accidentally wipe out your edits.
• Faster timesheet entry: After adding a project, your cursor jumps straight to the first editable cell so you can start logging immediately.
• Clearer "Non-project Work" guidance: A tooltip now explains when to use this line, helping you categorise effort more accurately.
• Instant CapEx link updates: After linking a PMS project to a Roadmap Project, you'll see the status update immediately — no need to refresh.

Bug fixes

• CapEx unattributed rows loading correctly: Fixed an issue where unattributed effort rows and PMS attribution breakdowns could appear blank or fail to load.
• CapEx data no longer disappears on page load: Resolved an issue where project breakdown and unattributed effort data could intermittently vanish when the page loaded.
• CapEx totals are now accurate: The footer Total row no longer incorrectly includes unattributed effort, giving you a cleaner picture of your project forecast costs.
• Task email links work again: The "View All Tasks" button in task digest emails now takes you to the right page.
• Auto-save respects permissions: Automatic saving no longer activates for users who don't have edit access to a team's timesheet.

2026-03-12

This release introduces MCP integrations, a public REST API, webhooks, and a broad set of new features and improvements across planning, forecasting, and admin experiences.

New features

• MCP for Claude and ChatGPT (Beta): Connect Flowstate to Claude and ChatGPT via Model Context Protocol. Feature toggle with consent warning and rate limiting.
• Documentation site: New documentation site at docs.flowstate.inc with guides, tutorials, and reference material.
• REST API: Public REST API for programmatic access to Flowstate data. API key authentication with 90-day max lifespan.
• Webhooks: Event-driven notifications for changes in Flowstate. Configure webhook endpoints from Settings.
• CapEx cost reporting: Improved cost capitalization view with project-level breakdown table, ability to hide charts, and Excel export. Expandable project rows drill into individual employees, contractors, and AI agents, with further drill-down into PMS project effort attribution. An "Unattributed" row surfaces effort costs on PMS projects not linked to any roadmap project, with inline "Link to Roadmap Project" action to fix attribution.
• Timesheet recent projects: The add-project popover in team timesheets now shows recently logged projects for quick access.
• Tenant Admin role: New enterprise role for delegated administration.
• AI workforce redesign: Redesigned AI agent section with line charts, pie charts, benchmark gauges, and S-curve adoption modeling.
• Suspend/reactivate users: Admins can suspend and reactivate user accounts from Settings.
• Line manager property: Added line manager field for employees and contractors.
• Inline editable project names: Edit project names directly on the detail page.
• Resource planner improvements: Redesigned resource planning tab with 3-step unified flow and conflict timeline.
• Project cost tab redesign: Toggle between forecast/actual modes with resource cost breakdowns.

Improvements

• EU region deployment: Full multi-region support for European customers.
• PMS project filtering: Owner filtering, creator display, status filtering, and link-status filtering for PMS projects.
• Approval flexibility: Any approver at a level can now undo approval, not just the original approver. "No limit" and "1 month" undo window options added.
• Rejection comment preservation: Manually entered values preserved after rejection.
• Analytics overflow prevention: Widened decimal casts to prevent numeric overflow in analytics queries.
• Workforce analytics charts: Bench/gardening leave, project health matrix, and zombie cost charts now use dedicated GraphQL queries for better performance and independent loading.

Bug fixes

• Email security scanner fix: Prevent security scanners from consuming magic link tokens.
• Currency display fixes: AI costs now display in all modes; fixed currency formatting in project drawer.

2026-02-26

This release adds configurable undo windows for effort tracking, a PMS task drill-down, and a critical effort allocation bug fix.

New features

• Configurable undo windows: Admins can now configure how long team leads and approvers have to undo their submissions and approvals. Options range from 1 hour to 7 days, or disabled entirely. Find this under Settings > Cost Review > Cadence.
• PMS project task drill-down: Click any project on the PMS roadmap page to see its individual tasks, with status summary badges, search, filtering, and pagination.

Bug fixes

• Phantom effort on closed projects: Fixed a bug where closed PMS projects could show ongoing effort indefinitely. Tasks whose normalized status didn't match the organisation's source-system status mapping were treated as still active, producing phantom effort percentages long after the project was completed.

2026-02-23

This release includes improvements and bug fixes.

Bug fixes

• Unable to undo effort submission: Fixed a bug where team managers and approvers could not undo their effort submission.
• Incorrect deltas in the forecast: Highlighting of the deltas is now correct when comparing scenarios to the base plan.

Improvements

• Contractor view: A reporting view has been made accessible to Finance and Operations roles which allows approvers to see a summary of where contractors are contributing their efforts.
• Project Management view inside Flowstate: You can now see Azure DevOps work items, Jira epics and Linear projects within Flowstate to see their mappings directly.

2026-02-13

This release includes improvements and bug fixes.

Bug fixes

• In-view search: Fixed a bug where the character input was reversed while the search was processed.
• Effort tracking date select: Fixed an issue where the dropdown menu would not open for some users.
• Vacancies in forecast: Vacancies are now correctly included in the cost forecast table.

Improvements

• Convert vacancy to employee: You can now fill vacancies by converting them to employees, preserving their allocations.

2026-02-12

This release is a broad UI and UX refresh across planning, forecasting, settings, and admin experiences, plus new release notes access and theming support.

New features

• In-app release notes: Read release notes from the sidebar, with access to past releases and a dedicated public endpoint.
• Theme toggle: Switch between light, dark, and system themes from the sidebar footer.
• Quick org menu actions: The organization menu now surfaces Preferences, Organization settings (when permitted), and Log out.
• Searchable week selector: Effort Tracking now includes a dedicated week selector with search and calendar view.

Improvements

• Design language refresh: Updated palettes, typography (mono for numbers), elevation rules, and toast styling.
• Scenario compare/merge clarity: Scenario visuals, headers, and comparison layouts refined for faster scanning and context.
• Effort Tracking usability: Week navigation and team submission views refined for better status visibility.
• Cost forecast tables: Forecast row layouts, expandable rows, and cost cells refined for readability.
• Roadmap and projects: Project timeline and roadmap views refreshed for clearer project presentation.
• Teams views: Team list pages now support parent team filtering and updated team cards.
• Workforce analytics: Charts and report dashboards updated for clearer presentation and interaction.
• Search: Substantially improved search relevance and result presentation across the app.

Fixes

• Numeric readability: Numerical status values use mono styling for better scanability.
• Projects not showing: Resolved an issue where some projects were not appearing in the project list.

2025-06-11

General improvements and bug fixes.