TeamworkPM’s Engine Room

The Notebook tab in your Teamwork projects has been on the receiving end of a long overdue overhaul this month.

The main issue with the notebooks section was that it had a different listing style and UI to the other sections of Teamwork. In all sections of Teamwork where items can be placed in categories, we list these on the left hand side so you can quickly browse the items in each category. The old Notebook tab on each project didn't have this resulting in a long scrolling page making Notebooks hard to find.

Even though the Notebook editor has been improved over time, the Notebook listing page pretty much remained unchanged ever since we launched the feature.

If you had a relatively small number of Notebooks, the old system worked really well at the start. As you started adding more notebooks and more categories there was no way to easily filter or sort the notebooks. Instead the page would just get longer and longer and you would have to scroll your way through all the notes to find the one you were looking for.

The new display system enables you to quickly filter the notebooks by the category and sort by date last updated or by the notebook name. If you have not picked a category to filter by you can also sort by Category.

The number of notebook versions is now also easily viewable from the top level just by glancing at the icon.
We've also improved the View Notebook interface.

You will see 3 new buttons in the top right corner of the view notebook page: Edit Page, Versions and Options.
The Edit Page button does exactly what it says on the tin. You are brought straight in to the content ready for editing. A new addition is the ability to Lock a page for editing. This lets you lock the Notebook from other users so your team can’t make any changes while you are working on the new version. Once you have made your changes, saved them and are happy to unlock the page you can click on the options button and click on Unlock this notebook. When a notebook is locked the icon changes to reflect this. A key icon will appear instead of the latest version. If you hover your mouse over it, a tooltip will tell you who has this locked this notebook.

The second button on the view notebook page is Versions. This feature was available before but it too has been enhanced and made easier to use. Clicking on a version allows you to view that version of the notebook. Clicking on two checkbox and then hitting Compare highlights the changes that were made between versions.

The Options button gives you various other functions such as Download Version, Add Comment and Edit Details. The Edit Details lets you change the notebook name, category, description as well as privacy settings. You can also lock or unlock the notebook from here. The last option is to Delete a notebook. This is available to Administrators and deletes the whole notebook and all previous versions.

We've received some great feedback on this new feature and we won't stop here. We have some great ideas on how we can enhance this section in the future.

As always we would love to receive your feedback on the changes.

The recurring tasks feature has just been rolled out on all TeamworkPM plans. It's been a top feature request for a long time so we hope you are going to really enjoy it. Whether you want to arrange weekly backups or make sure annual invoices are not missed, TeamworkPM will now keep you on-track. We feel that almost every business can benefit from this feature.

The new "Repeats" tab

When adding or editing a task, there is now a "Repeats" tab available to you once you click the "more" link. The "more" link allows you to show or hide advanced task features per project, keep things nice and simple.

 

How to use recurring tasks

Let's take an example where we want Ben to check that database backups are working perfectly every Friday.

To create the weekly task, we just set-up the first task as normal – assigned to Ben and due next Friday  – then select "weekly" from the repeats tab and click "Add task". Here is the process step by step:

 

Step 1 - Just set-up the task as normal, set the first due date

 

Step 2 - Find the repeats tab (look under "more")

 

Step 3 - Select "Weekly" for "Does this task repeat?"

 

Step 4 - You can preview the due dates (optional)

Step 5 - Click "Add task" and your task will display as normal, but with a "recurring task" icon on the right. Hovering over this icon will show you all the upcoming due dates for this task.

 

Managing future tasks

In the example above, let's suppose that Ben is out on annual leave and so you need to get somebody to cover for him. You can do this by clicking the "+" icon to create an instance right now. This is useful if you need to make changes, attach files or comments to the task for a particular date. In this example, if Ben was on holidays we could assign the task to Fiona to cover for him.

 

 

Schedule options

You can setup the backup to repeat using any of the following frequencies:

• Daily
• Every Weekday (Mon-Fri)
• On Selected Days... (pick the days)
• Weekly
• Every 2 weeks
• Monthly (you can select either on the same day of the month or a given day of the week within the month (eg. 3rd Friday of the month)
• Yearly

 

Thanks to all our BETA testers

In it's first iteration, we created hundreds of recurring tasks straight away with the various dates. Our beta testers said that this approach was "unusable". We went back to the drawing board and thought long and hard about the best way to make this work. We talked about adding a filter to the view but then we felt that was just too messy and could cause confusion. In the end, we now create the next task when the current task is completed but also allow a user to create any of the future instances of a task as needed. We feel that this approach is much more usable and straightforward while catering for all business cases. One of our beta testers said "Much better than the previous version and the design of the interface is very beautiful. Kudos!" :) We would like to thank all out beta testers for their valuable input.

See it now

This feature is already enabled in your TeamworkPM account. Give it a go and let us know what you think. If you like this feature, please share the love in the comments below and on twitter – @teamworkpm.

We're delighted to announce that we just released the ability for you to customise the logo that appears on your iPhone or iPad when you use the "Add to Home Screen" option in Safari. It looks something like this:

 

Upload your own favicon

We've also added in the ability for you to upload your own favicon (short for favorites icon). A favicon is the small icon you see in your web browser next to the URL in the address bar. Favicons allow to to easily identify websites when you have a lot of open tabs – they look something like this:

 

Try it now

Just sign into your account and go to your settings page where you will see a new tab called "Logos". The new screen looks like this:

 

We hope you like the changes! As always please let us know in the comments below and on twitter if you like these changes – @teamworkpm.

Thanks for using Teamwork.

FAC Internacional (“The Community Empowerment Fund International”) is a small microfinance initiative working in Central America’s largest slum, a sector of Guatemala City known as La Limonada. The first grassroots microfinance group in the area, FAC seeks to empower slum residents through access to financial services, education, and relational support.

As a student-driven organization based at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, FAC is administratively powered by students who volunteer their time to write grants, conduct evaluations, create educational workshops, and more, while local Guatemalan officers run operations year-round. Our low-cost model allows us to offer loans with exceptionally low interest rates by industry standards and to focus on our clients’ individual needs.

Because the success of our program relies upon the transmission of information across national, linguistic, and cultural barriers, finding ways to communicate has always been a top priority. Initially, the overwhelming disjointedness of individual video chats, long email conversations, and scattered task lists bogged down organizational efficiency. We have recently begun using TeamWorkPM to help delegate tasks internationally and domestically, which I can confidently say has not only increased productivity but has also allowed for a happier, smoother relationship between all involved parties.

 Because this tool has been so powerful for us, we recently upgraded from 2 projects to 5 as we are expanding our services. So many features of TeamworkPM directly serve needs such as prioritizing workloads, separating tasks, holding each other accountable, celebrating successes, and planning for the long term. Although we were attracted by its user-friendly layout, we’re just now beginning to understand how in-depth and detailed the features of TeamworkPM can be. As a small organization working with a tight budget, there is no other tool which allows us to do our work so well. From all the FAC team, thanks so much!

 

Caleb Dagenhart
Savings Program Coordinator,
FAC Internacional
UNC ‘14

facinternacional.org

 

 

It’s been a busy month for us and we have some fantastic new features and interface improvement that will knock your socks off:

Improved categories and category manager

We have now improved and standardised how categories are displayed is the sidebar on the left of the these pages - projects, messages, resources and files. When an administrators hovers the mouse over these categories, a link called “Manage Categories” is displayed and this allows you to very easily add, edit and delete your categories.

Don't lose your work

We’ve all experienced that anguish when you lose 30 minutes of your work; that’s why we’ve added “local storage” support so that the details for your new tasks, milestones and time logs are not lost if you browse away from the page or are interrupted. When you return to the page and click “Add”, the details you had entered are still there. Works in all modern browsers. A nice improvement we hope you’ll agree.

Dashboard shows upcoming calendar events

We have added a new tab to your dashboard which displays a nice agenda view of all your upcoming events in one place. You can choose the time frame for events to show. We also added a handy export to PDF feature which can be printed off should you require it for meetings.

 

Milestone detail page now shows associated task lists

We received many requests for this feature recently so we added it to our list and are happy to say this is now ready to go. When looking at the milestone view page you can see all the task lists that are attached to the milestone and you can also edit the tasks within the task list all from this one view.

Task details page improvements

You can now log time directly from the task details page. Previously you could only do this from the main Tasks page or on the Time page by selecting the task. This new update means the task details page now allows you to view and manage all aspects of the task including task details, comments and logged time.

Options to set dates and assign a category

On the new project form, you can now optionally assign the project to a category and set the start and end dates directly from the screen.

Risk register improvements

One feature that has been long over due an update is the risk register, we recently received a lot of request to add in a mitigation plan. We listened and acted, now you will see a  Mitigation Plan field attached to to each risk entry.

From any project, easily switch to other related projects

This small enhancement is due to some great feedback we received from one of our users. His problem was he wanted to be able to move from one clients project to another project with the same client quickly and without having to go back to the project switcher or to the dashboard. We discussed this here and came up with a simple solution for this. Now if you mouse over the client company name at the top of the project it will display all the projects related to this client. Now simply click on the project name you wish to jump straight into.

New permission option: Choose who can manage people & companies

People use Teamwork in a variety of different ways. We received a considerable amount of feedback from people who would like to nominate a person in their company to manage People and Companies without having to give them Administrator privileges.

Printable milestone calendar improvements

The Printable Milestone Calendar feature has been updated so you can control what’s display and we even threw in an Agenda format as an export option. This is available on each project or across all your projects under Everything-All Milestones. Perfect for client reports or face-to-face meetings.

Notebook editor improvements

We have improved the editor used when creating or editing a Notebook. Many people use this to create documents and so we have updated it to function and look more like a Word Processor and less like a HTML editor. One of the two biggest improvements is the spacing between paragraphs and handling of pasted code.

Email dropbox improvements     

We added email dropboxes last month to much fanfare last month. We have now improved this feature based on your feedback. One of the biggest enhancement we made was adding the ability to keep message threads together. We now detect when your email is replying to an existing message and now keep it part of the same thread within TeamworkPM. Much neater we think you’ll agree.

File page improvements     

We’ve overhauled the files page this month with support for editing multiple files and drag-drop categorisation . Read the full blog post...

Tasks page improvements

The tasks page now allows you to drag and drop tasks from one list to another. Read the full blog post...

Other Improvements

• Improved project people page.
• Enhanced Markdown Support - We now handle pasted code automatically.
• API returns last-changed-on date for all items.
• Calendar uses full height of screen.
• UI: Improvements for theme navigation bar colors

Continuing our Meet the Team campaign, this month it's Dan's turn to crawl out from his programming pit, blink wildly at the bright sun and say "Hello" to you all...

 

Many of you may have conversed with me over the last few years so I better introduce myself formally....

I'm 32 years young, married 7 months and live in the beautiful Irish countryside in Co. Cork. I love programming and Teamwork is one of the biggest parts of my life. 

Every waking moment is spent thinking about the product, the programming, our customers and future features.

When I was young, my father dragged home a Wang IBM PC (286) from work and there began my foray into computers. Nintendo's were not something we had as kids and while everyone was busy playing the latest video games, I had my head buried in Basic manuals trying to create my own games on the sly while avoiding homework.

The 286 progressed to a 386 and I progressed to Turbo Pascal. My games were rubbish but the sense of achievement was massive. It felt like I was changing the world, even though the only people I had to show were my sisters. That all changed when I met Peter in college. We decided we were going to build games. He was the first person I met that had the same enthusiasm as myself and to top it off was a damn good programmer. We used to have competitions such as who could make the best 2D tile based engine using C++ and DirectX (3!). Peter won ;-)

That was 12 years ago and we're still working together. The aim of the game has changed but we are just as passionate about Teamwork now as we were back then trying to create games!

Peter filled in the early days of our consulting company Digital Crew (See Peter's meet the team entry) so I won't delve too much in to that but I will say that it has been the best learning curve ever. Every single feature or decision in Teamwork is based on the 12 years of experience we have built up working on large scale be-spoke applications. While alot has changed since we started web development, the principles are solid.

My role in Teamwork is also lead developer. Peter and myself work closely with each other building new features. Sometimes we take a whole section each, sometimes one starts a feature and the other improves it. The Calendar is a good example of pair-programming. I started the feature, spending weeks of sleepless nights as Timezone issues and event spanning issues plagued me. It took a few hours of Peter's fresh eyes to fix the problem areas.

Some of the areas of Teamwork I am responsible for include:

• Desktop Timer App (Flex)
• Diff-ing of Notebook versions (Java)
• Reply by email (Brain juice)
• Email Dropboxes (C# connector)
• Resource's section
• Markdown support (Java)

I use multiple different programming languages. It's a case of the best tool for the job. In Teamwork, there is ColdFusion, Java, C#, Javascript and for the desktop apps Flex. I enjoy a programming challenge and once you have a good grasp of programming fundamentals, you can pick up any language and produce some good work.

Some of the things I'm working on right now which I shouldn't tell you about:

• Dropbox integration - I really enjoyed the challenge in this and officially know the Dropbox API inside out
• Android App - It's early days but I'm making progress - Please don't ask ;-)

In my spare time I enjoy reading. I especially enjoy books on tech companies, some of my favourites include:

• Master of Doom (The id software story)
• The Perfect Store (The ebay story)
• The Paypal Wars (The paypal story)

I'm also a movie fanatic and a bit of a Mac fan boy ;-)

Most of my spare time goes towards "challenge programming" where I pick some area of interest and muck about with it. Most of our fun recreational hacking turns into real features in Teamwork! The great thing about my job is that it's also my hobby! I actually get great satisfaction out of programming for pleasure. 

I also like to answer feedback. While Sam is the main face to our customers, I read every single feedback item that comes in. I think it's extremely important for the developers of an app to engage with customers and see the pain points people have with a product. Also, if it's a support issue a developer is in a much better position to advise on a solution to a problem. (Invariably we create the problems ;-))

With the rise in smartphones, and email always available, there is no excuse for a feedback email to be left un-answered. We all have iPhones and iPads. I always like to think of it as if I am the person requiring answers, what would I expect from support. While working on our Dropbox integration I was on the receiving end of super-fast answers to my questions and I liked it. It gives you a good feeling about the product, company or service you are interacting with.

One thing I always like (kinda voyeurism) when reading about a developer is finding out what tools they use, so here's mine:

Office Computer(s):

• 3 x 19 inch screens
• Dell with duel-processor and 3GB RAM
• Large screen iMac for testing our wares on Mac

Software

• Homesite as an editor
• Navicat for MySQL
• Flex Builder 4.5.1 for AIR apps and Visual Studio for C# work
• Teamwork Project Manager (In a custom tabbed shell I made)
• Hipchat (for inter-office communication)
• Dropbox and SVN for sharing code between machines
• IE8 & Chrome mainly

At home I have an Alienware Beast with 16gb RAM, SSD drive and 1 gig GFX card. I like to game! Currently playing Call of Duty: Black Ops and waiting for Modern Warfare 3 and Battlefield 3.

That's all for now! If you have any questions on anything above, can relate to me in any way or just want to throw a curve ball question, don't be shy! Ask me in the comments and I'll reply ASAP.

Our file page has also been on the receiving end of a couple of really nice enhancements this month.

Delete multiple files
The first update added is the ability to delete multiple files in one go. To use this option, find the new option “Select multiple files... “ in the sidebar, check the boxes beside the files you want to delete and click the “Delete” button at the top of the page.
Easily organise your files
The next update we made to the files page allows you to easily organize your files into the correct categories. If you move your mouse over a file you will notice a small drag icon appear on the far left on the file. Use this handle to drag the file to the appropriate category in the sidebar. You can also quickly manage your categories by clicking on the new “Manage Categories” link.

After many requests we have now added in the ability to drag a task from one list across into another.

Simpliy move your mouse curser over the task you wish to move. Click and hold on the up and down arrow at the front of the task and then drag this task across to the new task list you want it to be a part of. When you are happy with where the task is just release the mouse button.

You can also watch this short video to show you how it works.

You also have the option as well to drag tasks from a list and drop them directly onto a task list name on the left hand side as well. This works really well if you have a lot of task lists as it saves you scrolling up and down the page.

Over the last few years we have received lots of requests from users wanting to generate a Gantt chart view of their projects. We have been in two minds about adding this feature as a core Teamwork feature as we feel Gantt charts are only really interesting to a small percentage of our users. Since our tag line has has ways been, Project Management Made Easy, we felt adding Gantt charts could potentially scare the pants off our target user base.

Last week we bit the bullet and released a feature that hopefully looks after both camps - those who want Gantt charts and those who want easy project management. Instead of going full force into the charting world we decided the best approach would be to interface with existing Gantt applications. We have built in a new Export to Gantt feature. You now have the ability to export your Tasks and Milestones to either MS Project or the free Gantt chart viewer called Gantt Project.

There are a number of ways to export your data:

1: Via the task page. Go to the bottom of the column on the left and select Gantt chart export:

You will be presented with a choice to export to MS Project or Gantt Project format. Select the option which applies to you.

If you go with Gantt Project export as your choice, we also supply you with a link to download the free viewer if you don’t already have one.
Once the viewer is downloaded and running choose the import option and then click on your downloaded file to see your project within Gantt Project.

2. Via the project options page. Click the Project Settings tab in a project and choose Gantt Chart Export

Create tasks and messages via email

You can now create tasks and messages via email thanks to our new Email Dropboxes! We have been testing this with a few customers for a few weeks and we love it! Try it now...

Creating a message by email: 

 Each project will have a link at the bottom left of the messages page. This will display the unique email address for that project. To send a message via email, copy this address and compose a new email in your email client. A new message will be created in the project in a mesage category called Inbox. You can file away these messages to other categories when you are back in Teamwork.

• The subject of the email will be used as the title of the message in Teamwork
• The body of the email will be used as the body of the message in Teamwork
• Files attached to your message will also be attached to the new message in Teamwork.

Options when creating a new message by email:

• By default, notifications are not sent to other members of the project. If you want to notify all people on the project, simply add notify+ to the email address
• If you would like to create a private message, simply add private+ to the email address.
• You can chain multiple options together, for example:
  • private+notify+example@messages.teamworkpm.net
• Because alot of people have signatures in their email and there is no standard way of knowing what part of an email is a signature, you can add #End. to the end of your message. Anything after this will be ignored.
• Unfortunately, any signature images will be added as file attachments as we have no way of knowing if they are part of a signature.
• Creating a message via email can be done by:
  • Forwarding an email to the unique address
  • Writing an email directly to the unique address
  • CC'ing the unique address

Creating a task or tasks by email:

Each project will soon have a link at the bottom left hand side of the task page. This will display the unique email address of the project you are working in. Alternatively the drop down menu in-front of each task list name will also display the unique email address for that specific task list.

To send a task via email all you have to do is email the unique address, from the same email account that you use within TeamworkPM. It will then create a new task list called Inbox if you used the general task email address. If you used the email address specific to a task list, it will create the task or tasks in that list:

• The title of the task will be the subject of your email.
• The body of your email will then become the description of the task.
• Files attached to your email will be uploaded and attached to the new task in Teamwork.
• To create multiple tasks, just leave the subject blank and add one task per line in the body of the email.
  • Note: If you are creating multiple tasks, file attachments are ignored

 

Options when creating new tasks by email:

• By default, notifications are not sent to other members of the project. If you want to notify all people on the project, simply add notify+ to the email address
• If you would like to create a private task, simply add private+ to the email address.
• You can chain multiple options together, for example:
  • private+notify+example@tasks.teamworkpm.net
• Because alot of people have signatures in their email and there is no standard way of knowing what part of an email is a signature, you can add #End. to the end of your email. Anything after this will be ignored.
• Unfortunately, any signature images will be added as file attachments when you are creating a single task. We have no way of knowing if they are part of a signature.

Handy Tips:

• You can customize the unique email addresses per project
• Save the unique address to your address book so you can find it easily
• If a client emails you directly, drag them back into Teamwork by forwarding the email to your project
• For best results, always add #End. just before your email signature so we know what to ignore

Its that easy. Try it now!

Bulk import tool for users.

Bulk importing of users is due to be rolled off the production line during our next update over the weekend. This new feature will give you the ability to export your contacts from Outlook or Gmail and import them directly into your TeamworkPM account as users. No more adding users one by one.  Once you import the users we use their email address as their login and we automatically generate a password for them. When you are ready to give them access to a project just send them a welcome email and they are good to go. Once this feature is available you will find the link to access the user importer at the bottom of the People & Companies page.

 

Improved Markdown support

Thanks to everyone who supplied us with feedback on the new Markdown feature we rolled out last month for messages and comments. We implemented an exact Markdown processor in Teamwork which didn't 100% suit our requirements.

The main drawback was the way line-breaks are interpretted. In pure Markdown, line-breaks are ignored except when there is a blank line above and below the sentence. This in effect ignores line-breaks except when your prose is in paragraph style.

To get around this we have implemented what we like to call Teamwork Flavoured Markdown. Line breaks are displayed exactly as you write them, URL's and email addresses are auto-linked and we also implemented a few other touches of our own!

And Yes, we are investigating integrating Markdown in other areas of the app such as Task List Descriptions ;-)