TeamworkPM’s Engine Room

It’s been another exciting year at TeamworkPM and we hope all of you have had an equally eventful 2012.  Thankfully the world didn’t end which is all anyone can hope for!
To finish off the year we thought it would be a good idea to take a look back at some of the highlights of 2012 at TeamworkPM.

Since our inception as a company we have always strived to make Teamwork the standout Project Management System. This year saw us roll out some of our best features to date.

 

JANUARY

We hit the ground running at the start of the year with the launch of Teamwork mobile. This new update enabled customers to access accounts across a wide range of smartphone devices with a new HTML5 version of the app.

See January newsletter

 

FEBRUARY

February saw one the biggest and most important updates we have ever released: Lockdown. This was the groundbreaking permission system enabling you to fully control who could see what on a project giving total control to the user even with multiple clients working together on a project.

See February newsletter

 

MARCH

March marked the start of a lot of the behind the scenes updates carried out on the framework in 2012. First up was "pushState" which led to an instant and much commented on speed boost to the whole of Teamwork.  And as if that wasn’t enough, in the same month came the integration with Google Docs, now Google Drive.

See March newsletter

 

APRIL

April was an eventful time for TeamworkPM as we continued with more integrations, this time hooking in with Box.com and Quickbooks online.We also introducted the Trash Can this month, which allows you to easily restore those accidentally deleted projects, files and tasks.

See April newsletter

 

MAY

May was all about enhancing features we already had, adding more integrations this time with Xero.com. Emails, notebooks and the Dashboard also received a lot of attention this month. In other news, Mike Butler has now joined the TeamworkPM team as our mobile application developer lead.

See May Newsletter

 

JUNE

In June we continued with more updates, rolling out the new look message section which enabled users with a lot of messages to finally get a handle on what messages were coming in, plus we released our new enhanced file viewer.

See June newsletter

 

JULY

July was a tough month for TeamworkPM. As they always say, be careful what you wish for. The growing pains associated with a jump in the amount of users and usage unfortunately led to a couple of short outages for the app. Our expansion and contingency plans had to be ramped quickly and that would lead to a massive August. On the plus side, in July, we released our super handy method of removing email signatures from messages, a positive end to an otherwise trying time!

See July newsletter

 

AUGUST

August was without a doubt one of the most important months for TeamworkPM. Due to our growing user base we made the big decision to move our entire application to Amazon's EC2 cloud. It’s hard to describe the amount of work and planning that went into making this move happen. We couldn’t have been happier with the transition and we were delighted with the outcome and the options it now gives us moving forward as a company.

See August newsletter

 

SEPTEMBER

After a manic August, September rolled around very quickly. We introduced a vital new feature; Start dates on tasks. This feature really belongs to our users as it’s 100% due to the amount of feedback we received from you all.  While we have plans and visions for the product, this feature really is a testament to the fact that as a company we have to take on board what our customers say.

See September newsletter

 

OCTOBER

October was another example of a customer driven feature. This month saw the launch of sub-categories across most areas within the app. The TeamworkPM crew also headed to Dublin to take part in the Dublin web summit, which is now one of Europe's biggest tech events.

See October newsletter

 

NOVEMBER

With November came the launch of the new real time notifications centre. This new feature was designed to make you feel more connected to your team by enabling you to see in real time what’s happening across your TeamworkPM account. There was a lot of important groundwork laid down with this feature; you’re going to love some of the stuff we have planned for this in 2013!

See November newsletter

 

DECEMBER

Then came December marking the end of another manic but progressive year. Even though December is a difficult month to get a lot done, we still managed to push new features out the door. This month saw the introduction of the ability to download multiple files as well as the start of user contacts.

Another big milestone for us is that we’re moving offices again. This time the move is not too painful, we’ve stayed within the same office block with a move to the top floor. We needed the extra space for our growing team and it’s an exciting way to end the year!

See December newsletter

 

All in all 2012 has been an amazing for us here, from rolling out new features, growing in both customer base and in staff size.  All this is down to you for your continued support of TeamworkPM. We have some exciting new features planned for 2013 so stayed tuned.

Happy holidays and here’s to great new year ahead for you all.

– from everyone here at TeamworkPM.

You guys have asked us time and time again for the ability to download a bunch of files in one go. This month, Dan took some time out and secretly implemented this feature. The result is awesome and very easy to use.

To download multiple files first pick the option from the left hand bar, Select multiple files.  

This will now make check boxes appear next to all your files.

Simply check the files you wish to download and then click on the download button at the top of the page.

We hope you enjoy the last feature to be rolled out for 2012.

A couple of weeks ago we extended the People feature and added the ability to Create a Contact instead of a user account. Previously every person you added to TeamworkPM had to be a user account. However there are times that you want to just store contact information for reference later. This month we've added this support and have also improved the listing of people in the people section.
 
When you want to add a new Person to the main people page, click on add person as before. A lightbox will appear for you to fill in with the users details. You will now notice a new option called type. Here you must select one of two types of person Account or Contact:

An Account is a person that will be able to log-in to your TeamworkPM site, you can then assign tasks to this user as well as communicate with them directly through your account.

A Contact: is just reference information, this person will not be able to log-in to your account. Contacts will not have any access to any data.

If you have privileges to manage people you can turn a Contact into a user Account by clicking on the link Upgrade to user account: (Note:. Once a user is upgraded to an Account they can't be downgraded back to being just a Contact)

Once a Contact has been created you can easily recognize it by the blue label or icon (according to the type of view you have selected), user Accounts show up as green label or icon.

You can still quickly search by letter, name as well as filter by type or switch between the three types of view available: List, Expanded, Cards where you can see user data in different layout:

This new Contacts feature is just in early stages and we plan to integrate this very soon into the people sections within projects, so you will have the ability to manage Accounts and Contacts in specific projects in the same way you are now able to do from People page.

I hope you enjoy this new feature, since we have big plan to expand this feature in the future we really want to hear your feedback. As always let us know your thoughts in the comments here or on our Facebook page.

It is an easy thing to do to create a time log in the wrong place, especially if you are in a rush or logging all your time at once. Up until now it has not been possible to move a time log from one project to another.

To correct this you then would have to go through the arduous process of finding the time log, selecting the time log, remembering the information, creating it in the other project and finally deleting the time log from the original project. Sounds like a lot of work!!

Not anymore, we have received tons of feedback asking us “Can I move a time log?” We are delighted now to say that “Yes you can and it is really easy to do :-)”.

To move a time log from one project to another:

• Navigate to the project you have created the time log in.
• In the lower left hand pane you will see the option to Move time logs.
• Select this and a light box will open.
• This will display all the time that has been logged on this project.
• From the dropdown select the project you wish to move the time to.
• Select the time logs to move.
• Move selected.
   

If you deal a lot with time logs then you are going to love this new feature as it will make TeamworkPM even easier for you to use.

We are really excited to announce that we now have instant event notifications enabled for everyone directly within TeamworkPM. You should now see the notifications bar at the bottom right of your screen. 

(Note: Reload your browser if you don’t see it)

The number at the front is the amount of notifications you haven’t seen.

Instant notifications

As actions happen on your projects, you will see events pop-up on top of this bar. These event notifications are designed to not get in your way or be too distracting. The events display for a second and then slide away.

This feature really makes you feel more-connected with your team, clients and contractors. It will also allow you to respond to events must faster than before.

Catch-up and miss nothing

When instant notifications pop-up and slide-away, the number of notifications in the indicator increase. Clicking the “View all” button will open up your full list of recent notifications. 

This feature allows you to quickly catch-up on what has been happening while you were out.

If an item is of interest to you, you can click on it to go directly to that event. The great thing is the list will remain in place so you don’t lose your place making it incredibly easy to jump around your account checking on everything that has happened.

Another great thing about these notifications is that you will see all events on your projects, even if a task wasn’t assigned directly to you, or you didn’t get message notifications. This allows you to keep abreast on what’s going on.

Note that if there are a lot of notifications you can scroll through them using your mouse wheel.

Clearing the list

You can dismiss a notification simply by clicking the “x” in the top right of the notification.

Alternatively you can dismiss all notificationsand set your notifications count back to zero by clicking on “Clear all” button on your notifications bar.

Pin events for later

During beta testing, we receive a request to “pin” events. This is useful if there are some events that you definitely don’t want to dismiss and want to return to later on.

Clicking the “pin” icon on a notification will cause the notification to be “pinned”. This prevents you from being able to dismiss this event until you click the “unpin” icon..

Private events

Naturally enough, notifications for private items will only be sent to those people who should see them. If a notifications relates to a private item, you will see a padlock appear on the notification.

 

So that's it! We think it rocks and we know you are going to really love this new feature! If you have any feedback, please get in touch here in the comments or on our facebook page.

We’ve just turned on a great new feature we’ve been using internally for a couple of weeks - email notifications which include the most recent comments.

Before, when you replied to a message or added a comment on an item, the notification email only included the new comment body. 

The old email format:

When things get busy, or a reply is added days afterwards, it was easy to lose the context of the original discussion. 

The new email notifications are far more helpful and show the last 6 replies added. If there are more than 6 replies in the discussion we show a link to the full thread. 

The new format:

We’ve also made the email notifications “responsive” so that, on a small screen such as the iPhone, the layout changes with the date and time moving below the author’s name making the content easier to read on the go.

On the most recent reply we also link to the item on your Teamwork account so you don’t have to scroll down the email to get to the actual link.

We also took this opportunity to tweak a few nuances that people sent via feedback.

• We fixed some localization issues with email notifications so the recipient now sees the times and language according to their preferences. 
• We improved the subject line in comment email notifications to list the object type the comment was added to. This allows you to see at a glance if the comment was on a Task, Notebook, Link, Milestone or File. We’ve kept the item details at the bottom of the notification email and gave more room to the actual message being sent.

As always, we hope you find this new feature useful! It’s definitely improved our productivity and we’ve noticed people are more inclined to continue the discussion when the context of the notification is clearer!

Have you ever been out and about and received an email notification on your mobile device that a task or milestone has been assigned to you or a comment on a task has been added and you want to mark it complete quickly? 

Now you can simply reply to the email with a simple directive and the task will be marked complete. You can even re-open tasks via email if another person marks the task as done and you feel it's not.

We've allowed a few variations on the directives:

• #Complete
• #Completed
• #Done
• #Uncomplete
• #Reopen
• #Open
• #NotDone
• #Reopened

It's really easy to do and will work on any email notification relating to a task or milestone such as the assignment emails, edited emails, comments on task/milestone notification and the complete/reopened emails. Simply reply to the email with #Complete or #Uncomplete.

We went one step further and merged the Complete/Uncomplete directives with adding a comment. If you only reply with a directive, we'll mark the task or milestone complete/reopened; but if you use a directive and add more text underneath the directive we'll mark the task or milestone complete/reopened and also add the extra text as a comment.

We hope you'll enjoy this small but useful enhancement to the reply-by-email functionality. We plan to extend this to the Milestone notification emails in the next few days.

Update: (15th November 2012)

Milestones can now be marked complete/reopened by replying to Milestone related emails

Hello everyone, my name is Giampiero and I'm the latest addition to the TeamworkPM development team. My first post on this blog introduces the very first feature enhancement I worked on last week which is now live in Teamwork.

As you may already know default message categories could be created  from Settings > Templates page. These are message categories that get added to any new project created in your Teamwork account:

Peter recently improved the functionality of categories with the ability to create subcategories and reorganize categories.

My update lets you create default categories for files, notebooks and links in the same way as messages:

I hope you enjoy this new feature and as always let us know your thoughts in the comments here or on our Facebook page at: http://www.facebook.com/TeamworkPM

Last month we released the long-awaited sub-categories feature (see the blog post – Sub-categories Everywhere!). Within a matter of days, several of our users pointed out that it was not possible to reorganize existing categories or to shuffle categories around.

Here's an extract from one of the emails we received:

I am about to undertake a major update to our project site filing layout in respect of the new sub-categories features. Is there a way I can now create a new category, say, Architectural, and then nest all my existing architects file categories under this Architectural main category?

At the time we had to reply that it was not possible. :(

We aim to please and so this has now been addressed; the Category Manager now allows you to easily reorganize. Have a look at this pictures here for an example of moving the "Planning" category into the "Management" category:

This feature is available across the board for files categories, message categories, notebook categories and link categories.

We hope you are going to love this improvement!