WORK[etc] Web App Blog

As much as the phrase annoys me, this really is a game-changer for WORK[etc]. I'll admit I was a little skeptical of the impact good design might have - who cares what it looks like, as long as it works right? WRONG! - but have since done a full 360 on my thinking.

The new WORK[etc] interface is such a pleasure to use that I actually want to do more work. And the fact that fully 1 out of 3 customers have thrown their hands up for the beta is more assurance we've made the right move.

THIS WILL BE LIVE ON ALL ACCOUNTS FROM MONDAY 13TH AUGUST...

Custom statuses let you better define and customize a process for support cases.

For example, in you might want to implement a review-process and nominate one of your team that responsibility. So in addition to the standard "new", "open", "replied" and "closed' status, you could set a custom status called "Quality Review" and assign that Status to a particular member.

Project types help you systematize your projects through creating a classification system to quickly identify what stage your project is at (regardless of activity).

For example, your project might consist of a whole lot of sub-projects and tasks all involving people or workgroups. Using Project Types you can assign a stage to activity, such as "Research", "Production" or "Review".

This little enhancement may at first seem inconsequential, but in reality is the critical first step on the way to building out the ultimate resource allocation and project planning tool.

We need the standardization of information this brings in order to accurately present resource utilization across projects and the entire organization.

We're adapting the activity stream from projects for use as an internal company messaging system.

Basically like a continuously flowing company conversation with the ability to mute conversations that are not of interest and to ping other people to ensure they've seen important messages.

And then we get really clever by making it easy to include a WORK[etc] object into that conversation stream. This becomes really useful when you need a colleague to quickly look at something. Instead of firing off an email or connecting on Skype, you can send an in-app ping to get their attention.

This takes the wildly successful WORKetc Gmail gadget and makes the same (and more!) functionality available in Outlook; take any email and attach it to a project, create a new sales lead and more.

It also allows syncing of Outlook Contacts and Calendars with WORK[etc].

This is fully completed (and I've been testing it out  for a few weeks now). But we haven't been able to release it as it requires a tool called "Contacts Conflict Resolution" (read below)

Read more about the Outlook Addin

This has been completed for a while, but wasn't able to be rolled out as it shared a lot of its code- base with changes that are part of the new design.

If you're previously signed up for QB Online beta, you'll get an invite before August 1st.

The QB Desktop is still posing issues for us... desktop software is definitely not our skillset. We may only be able to release this as a "unsupported add-on" and encourage everyone to upgrade to online-enabled editions of Quickbooks.

Contact Conflict Resolution (we definitely need to think of a snappier name) saves you from a major screw-up when someone in your team imports contacts from an old file just as you've sync'd up your latest Google contacts and someone else in your organization has sync'd up their own Outlook contacts.

The tool saves your behind by catching all the potential contact errors and presents them on a single screen. You can then go through each contact record and select which source is correct and make contact changes on the fly.

This is 99% built and just waiting on the new UX release. It is also the tool that allows safe 2-way sync of Google Contacts (so we can take that out of beta too!)

Maybe Contact Safety-net or Contact Cleaner is a better name...

Email Bonanza

(Drip Marketing / Lead Nurturing / Trigger Emails / one screen for all email.)

This will be way more powerful than the drip marketing you've seen in other applications because of the simple fact that inside of WORK[etc] you are doing more than just sales-oriented activities.

The opportunity here is to integrate "triggers" into all the all the WORK[etc] tools.

For example, you might choose to automatically trigger a project update email to your client whenever the project stage is updated. Or you might want to trigger a whole series of emails, with time delays, whenever someone completes your online form.

And then as a safety-net, we're going to give the option to "auto send" or to queue for approval.

Part of this project also includes a single screen where admins (and others with the right permissions) can view every single email in-and-out of WORK[etc].

This covers a whole range of smaller projects and updates including:

- unified template store for all email

- more obvious work flow from Sales-> Quotes -> Delivery

- refinements to the current email newsletter tool

- an "hour-bank" allowing customers to pre-pay for time and receive statements showing allocation

- redesign of product catalog and basic inventory

- inclusion of approvals system alongside purchase order management (this is actually a big one and probably deserves a dedicated mention - see here)

- Option of "simple' tasks, basically 1-line tasks that sit outside of any project context

- Social media integration, but more than just links to Facebook or Linkedin; rather the ability to create email triggers based off events.

- Contractor pricing for WORK[etc]. This means your contractors can log directly into your main WORK[etc] account for an hourly-fee rather than a monthly fee.