TeamworkPM’s Engine Room

Although we have had Blinksale integrated for a while we never put together a blog post highlighing just how to get your billable time from TeamworKPM into Blinksale.

Below are the steps required to do this.

Step 1: Once you have your invoice sitting in TeamworkPM and you are ready to bill your client, click on "Export invoice" in the bottom left.

Step 2: This will popup the options you have for exporting your invoice. Select Blinksale and then hit export.

Step 3: The first time you do this, you will need to authenicate your Blinksale account. Enter in your Blinksale account URL, your email address and your password then hit Authenicate. Once this is done, this step will be skipped the next time you need to export an invoice.

Step 4: Pick the company the invoice is to be assigned to, enter the payment terms and the click on Export Invoice to Blinksale.

Step 5: The invoice is now sitting in your Blinksale account ready for you to send out.

Harvest was one of the first billing integrations we added so we just wanted to highlight this feature again for all our new users. This also gives us the chance to put together a step by step guide to exporting your time to Harvest.

Step 1: Once you have the time you want allocated to your invoice, click on Export Invoice.

Step 2: The next dialog shows the export options available. Pick Harvest as the service you wish to use.

Step 3: The very first time you connect to Harvest you will need to authenticate your account. To do this just enter in Harvest URL, your email address and password for your Harvest account.

Step 4: Once you are authenticated you will have the option to select a company from your Harvest account and assign the new exported invoice to them. Once you are ready click Export Invoice to Harvest.

Step 5: Your invoice will now be available in your Harvest account ready to send. Now it's time to sit back and wait to get paid!

The billing section within projects has seen a great number of 3rd party integrations over the last few months, and this month is no exception. Thanks mainly to the feedback you guys sent in, we kept the pressure on and went right ahead and added in another billing integration.

We are now proud to announce Xero is now another invoicing application that you can send your billable time to so you can invoice your clients.

If you already use Xero and now you want to know how to hook your TeamworkPM account up so that you can send your invoices, below are the steps involved.

Once you have logged your time marked as billable it will move through into the billing tab. The aim of the game here, is to have no time sitting in the unbilled area. Anytime left here is work you haven’t been paid for, which is never good ;-)

Now for those of you who haven’t used the billing section before I will quickly run through from the start what to do here:

Step 1: Set the user rate for this project.

Step 2: Create a new invoice by clicking on Add Invoice, and filling the details. 

Step 3: Pick the logged time that you wish to assign to the newly created invoice. You can either drag and drop the time onto the invoice or you can pick from the drop menu. You can create as many invoices as you like within a project to break up the invoicing. 

Step 4: Now click on Export Invoice in the bottom right.

Step 5: Pick the integration you wish to use. This time we are going to go with “Export ot Xero file” 

Step 6: Enter the customer name and the click on “Generate file”. This generates a .csv file that can then be imported into Xero. 

Step 7: Load up you Xero account and click Accounts and choose Accounts Receivable from the drop-down menu, then click on import.

Step 8: Locate your Teamwork Invoice file you just downloaded and click Import.

Step 9: is simply confirm the import and your done. Your billable time from TeamworkPM is now sitting in your Xero account ready to send.

With all the screen shots I put together it looks like a lot of steps to get through but all of this is done in well under a minute, and once you are doing this on a regular basis you will be flying through these steps.

For those of you using Xero we really hope you find this integration helpful and as always, any feedback or comments please let us know.

Recently something changed in Gmail land and people who use Google Mail (Apps and Gmail) noticed their Teamwork email notifications were being grouped together even though they were from different projects.

We tracked this down to Gmail ignoring everything inside square brackets. We use the square brackets to show the Project Name but as Gmail now ignore this the emails were being grouped incorrectly.

While this technically is a Gmail issue and not a Teamwork issue, it's not good for our users and not good for our support staff ;-) Today we have changed the square brackets to round brackets.

Your email notifications will now be of the form "(Project Name ) Re: This is an example subject"

This used to look like "[Project Name] Re: This is an example subject [Teamwork Account]"

You'll also notice we took this opportunity to shorten the subject and remove the redundant [Teamwork Account] section at the end of each subject. Since we now have this in the From field of emails along with the senders name we decided to remove it to make subjects easier to read.

I know this is a small issue for many but we also appreciate that people get used to certain formats and also have filters set up on email subjects so it's only right we explain why this change has been made.

Dan.

Hi there,

My name is Mike and I'd like to introduce myself as the newest member of TeamworkPM. I've been around Teamwork for quite a while helping out on the iOS app as necessary. However the lads decided to put a big push behind mobile apps and I've been here full time for the last two months or so.

At 38 I'm a bit older than the rest of the guys at Teamwork.  So instead of an XBox I started messing around on an Oric 1 (google it).  It didn't do a whole lot and died within weeks, but it did have Zap and Ping as BASIC keywords and that got me hooked.  After that I was always messing with some computer or other.  At one point Myself and a friend somehow managed to convince Atari to give us some pre-production Falcon030's and set about creating the World's-Greatest-Application-Framework.  All written in 68K assembly.  It was about as successful as the Falcon itself.

After College, I went straight to work for Apple - it was a brand new department and we were all around the same age, so not only did we learn loads but we had a ball doing it.  Steve, however, didn't like having developers where he couldn't see them. The department was shut and I couldn't convince my soon-to-be wife to move to California.  My tan would be forevermore restricted to two weeks a year.

After that I spent a couple of years working on localisation tools for indie developers and freelance translators.  While that led to some oddities ( practically all of the open source software in Vietnam was translated using my software! ) it was no Instagram.  It did however teach me the value of listening to your customers - a whole section that I added as a favour for one particular client ended up being the most popular feature overall.

Not long after that Apple brought out the iPhone and finally - finally! - my parents could understand what I did!

Outside of work, my Family take up all of my time.  We have two kids and they're at that age where they're great fun but there's not a whole lot of rest to be had in our house!  The highlight of the family week is when we all get together to make the homemade pizza.  My daughter becomes the DJ and my son makes these mad little 1 inch wide minis.  It's good fun.

Odd stuff that the Teamwork guys probably don't know:  I'm not a GAA (Irish Sport) person, but at under-age level I did captain a Waterford team with both Paul Flynn and Tony Browne on it (That'll mean nothing to people outside of Waterford.  And if you're outside of Ireland: Hurling is the best sport in the world : obviously!).  Odd part time jobs:  I was a Milk Man all through school and college, I spent some time doing Wedding and GAA Videos to help out a Friends business. I was one of the main characters in a bigish budget short movie (don't ask).  And I've been lucky enough to present at WWDC twice.

Tools that I use.

Sublime Text  - Multiple cursors is Pure Genius.

Alfred - I'm a recent convert from Quicksilver and I love it.  Sit me down at a Mac without at least one of these installed and I feel like I'm missing some fingers.

XCode - Obviously.

git - once you start using git, you can go back to svn.

Terminal - for 90% of stuff it's simply faster and easier to use git from the terminal.

Spotify - I nearly always work with music on in the background.

Airfoil - Great for sending Spotify to the speakers connected to the AppleTV

WindowKeys - Allows me to Move and resize windows via a hotkey.  It's great for moving between screens too.

HipChat - How we communicate in the office

Dash - Extremely fast and efficient documentation viewer.  Great for iOS but supports Javascript, Ruby and plenty more.  Very nice.

Twitter - !

Magic Trackpad - I prefer using the keyboard as much as possible ( hence Alfred ) so it's nice that the trackpad just sits there in the same place, unlike a mouse.

 

Of course I use my iPhone and iPad every day as well so :

Paper - makes even my scrawls look presentable.

Bamboo Stylus - I liked Paper so much I went out and bought a good stylus.

Adobe Ideas - I actually don't like the UI.  But I do like its fast zooming - perfect for writing down ideas with the Bamboo..

Zite - the best thing about this app is that it pulls out great articles that I never would have found otherwise.

And finally, I don't actually use any of the UI mocking apps.  I've bought nearly all of them, but I find they're usually just too clumsy. Go detailed and they're not that much better than Interface builder.  Go vague and they're not as good as Paper.

 

I live and breath what I do.  The Teamwork guys do to and that's why I came to work here.  I think you'll enjoy the stuff coming down the line for TeamworkPM.

When we started out this year we made a decision that it would be the year of integrations with other apps. So far we have really stuck to this. This year you have seen some really useful systems linked to TeamworkPM such as Dropbox, Freshbooks, Google Docs, Harvest Blinksale, QuickBooks Online and now box.com.

For those of you who have already used Dropbox with TeamworkPM, box.com works in pretty much the same way. You select your top level box.com folder to add to your TeamworkPM account and then for each project you select both the folder and set the users that you want to have access to your box.com ffiles on that project.

Adding and removing access is dead simple. All the controls for each individual project are handled within each project's Settings page.

If you already use box.com within your business to handle large files and to share files with clients and work mates, having box.com now fully integrated into your TeamworkPM account is going to make managing and running your projects even more useful and efficient.

So how do you hook box.com into your account?

The first requirement is that you are using a Business 2, Corporate or Enterprise account.
Next you need to click on Settings->Site Settings and choose Integrations. Scroll down to the box.com section and authenticate your box.com account. Once authenticated you need to select your top lever folder to use within your TeamworkPM account. No user can browse above this top level root folder so choose wisely.

box.com is all set up and ready to attach to projects. Browse to a project where you would like to have access to box.com. Go the  Project Settings page and again scroll to the bottom where you will see all the box.com options.

The settings here let you turn on or off box.com on the project. You also pick the Box folder you wish to be use for the project and you also choose who you wish to have access to Box on this current project.

Once you have done this you will now have the option to attach files from your box.com account to tasks, comment and the files section within your projects.

It’s all pretty straight forward and easy to use. As with all our new features we hope you love this new addition and as always any feedback or questions you may have please let us know.

This month seemed to fly by but again we managed to get a whole load of new features and tweaks into the application to make TeamworkPM even better!

The big ticket items this month were:

• box.com integration
• Quickbooks online integration
• Speed enhancements to the whole application
• The trash can
• Updates to moving milestones

Updates

• Update Tasks by email/Quickadd: Added ability to add a task description by putting the description in curly braces ie:{this is a description}
• UI Calendar - month picker improved
• Can set privacy on items - new project permission. Adds ability to disable users from setting Privacy on items
• Can now login with your username OR email address
• Update Login: IE9 running in compatability mode: Added new link to our FAQ on how to force IE9 out of compatability mode (http://www.teamworkpm.net/technicalfaqs?#q187)
• Update Notebooks: Added "Print" option directly in to Notebook Options menu
• UI Lightbox appear/hide effects for modern browsers
• UI Most CSS loaded initially instead of on-demand - no flicker
• UI iPad sidebar icon - toggle siderbar on/off 
• UI Replaced transparent png curves with border-radius - IE678 still use transparent png method
• UI User project permissions - Improved interface - collapsed view - new permission - nicer header
• UI Improvements to Templates page of settings
• UI Changed the old  "New project message categories" editor to use Category Manager:
• Update Companies: Edit Company: Auto-populate current users country code to make editing faster
• Added "invoiceno" to time.xml
• New Caching System
• Update Trial Notification Emails: Improved layout and readability
• Basecamp Import Update to strip escaped html tags from task comments (This is working over-time ;-))
• Reordering task lists - need to hide the "Edit" option on the Task List header
• Update Notebooks: Improved styling and added css for code blocks
• Tasks Added Pagination to completed tasks
• Optimization Login page loads faster - unnecessary scripts skipped.
• Improvement to Move Task process
• Update Tasks: Added title tip showing the complete due date of a task to compliment the text friendly due date
• Update Task Lists: Sort: Added new sort method "Sort by date created"
• Comments - don't notify self with all
• Update Project Report: Changed "Upcoming (7 days)" to "Upcoming (within 7 days)" to clarify any confusion in wording
• Update Files: Editing file details now puts full file details and download link in notification email
• id=pageTitle added to page titles - needed for pushState update "."
• Update Tasks by email: If mail client adds "<no subject>" to the email remove it for adding multiple tasks
• Update Milestones: Add day to Milestone badge to easily see what day the milestone is due on
• Update Milestones: Added new option when shifting milestones so you can adjust by the same number of days but the due date is kept off Saturday's and Sundays
• Update Milestones: Remember the method of date calculation picked for each user
• Google Docs Removed Table and Form as documents that can be created (Google Docs API doesn't support it yet)
• Update Email Notifications: Removed replyByEmail identifier from subject {tw.XX.XXXX}
• Update Google Docs: Relax restriction on who can set Access Rights when linking documents in to project ("Who can browse" setting covers this)
• UI Enabled pushState support on "All comments" page
• UI Enabled pushState support on "All time" page
• UI Enabled pushState support on "Workload" page
• UI Enabled pushState support on "Calendar" page
• UI Enabled pushState support on "Statuses" page
• UI Enabled pushState support on "People" page
• Push state support for "Projects" page
• More robust javascript lib loading - callback fires if script already loaded
• Box Integration: Better handling of thumbnails if file is renamed in Teamwork file listing
• Update Box.com oAuth Callback complete
• Update Dropbox: Added ability to create folders on Dropbox from within Teamwork Dropbox browser
• UI pushState supported added to "All Messages"
• UI pushState support added for "All milestones" page
• PushState support for "All completed tasks" page
• Merged project and dashboard headers
• Update Settings: Added new section to set default user that emailed tasks/messages are posted from if we can't match a sender email address to a user on the project
• Update Notebooks: Swapped position of indent/outdent buttons on editor toolbar
• pushStateProject to dashboard level - hide project nav and change to top level header
• Dashboard pushState working nicely
• Update Email Dropbox: Added ability to match users by name and auto-populate alternative email addresses
• Update Email Dropbox: Added ability to set a default user as the poster if we can't match a sending user by email address
• New Error report and silent error report format
• Update Messages/Tasks by email: Added extra code to check for forward addresses to match back to users on a project
• Calendar iCal: Added new parameter &limit=X to limit feed events to X number of days ahead
• Optimization PushState - ajax loading of project content from top level
• Update Google Docs: If file is renamed in Google Docs and linked in again, update the file name in TWPM Reference
• Files Can't drag and drop files in to categories anymore
• privateInfo ripped out of activity log – mp longer made sense with lockdown user-specific privacy
• Update: Soft delete of tasklist templates
• Update If time is logged on the Everything->All Time page, the report is regenerated
• Update: Added ability to get comments on a file without having to pass fileVersionId
• Added email-alt-1/2/3 field to PUT & POST people calls
• Update API: Validate user via temporary password sent in forgotten password email also
• api added alt email addresses to GET people api calls
• Fix for API passwords with semi-colons.
• Fix Billing: Items not loading (Time logs and Invoices)
• Can't unattach files from tasks
• Fixed Daily Report: Logo images that have a "+" should encoded to %20 instead of %2b
• Fixed: Reorder task lists should not show on sidebar
• Fixed: Search: Tasks associated with a deleted task list are returned by search
• Fixed: New project URL rules break viewing messages
• Gantt chart export fix for non-utf8 task names 

I am very happy to announce our fourth (and not final) billing integration; it is a big one. QuickBooks Online!

This integration works very similarly to our other integrations. There is one difference though, and that is in setting up the connection between Teamwork and QuickBooks Online. I have outlined the steps involved below. We hope you find it useful!

QuickBooks Online Setup

1. Choose an Invoice and click the Export Invoice link at the bottom of the page.

2. A dialog appears asking you to choose an export option. Choose QuickBooks and click the export button.

3. Another dialog appears asking for your connection key. To get your connection key click the "Set up connection" link on the top right.

4. This brings up another window asking you for your QuickBooks login details. If you are currently logged in this step will not apply.

5. Click "Continue".

6. Enter a connection name or leave it as the default "Project Management". Click "Continue".

7. Click the no option for login security.

8. This will bring up another window confirming your choice of login security. Click "I still want to turn login security off" to confirm. Then click "Create Connection".

9. This page will contain your connection page. Copy the connection key to you clipboard (The "copy to clipboard" link doesn't work consistently so do a manual copy of the key).

10. Now you can click continue and close the window.

11. Go back to your TeamworkPM Account and paste your connection key into the field. Click "Authenticate".

12. A loader should appear once your key has been authenticated and then a list of companies associated with your QuickBooks Online account should be loaded in.

13. Choose a company and click Export to QuickBooks.

14. You're done! When you go to export another invoice the list of companies should appear immediately.

This month we thought we would quickly highlight our developer zone. For those of you who aren’t aware of this we have a full API to allow 3rd party developers to extend the functionality of TeamworkPM by building their own custom apps, or by hooking TeamworkPM into other existing apps.

This month we would like to highlight a 3rd party timer app for the Mac made by the team at fuelcollective. The app, called Eon, is a time tracking app for the Mac.

It’s simple and easy to use and allows you to to set multiple timers up to record your time and then allows you to easily log the time directly into your projects.

You can read more about Eon and download the app from their website here.

If you too would like to have your app highlighted in our newsletter just send us an email to support@teamworkpm.net

The trash can is used to restore items which have been deleted from your teamwork account within the last 30 days. There are two distinctly different trash cans; one for restoring data within a project and another for restoring projects. Both trash cans are only accessible to administrators in the owner company.

 

Restoring tasks, milestones, files etc..

To restore either milestones, tasks, task lists, notebooks or files within a project: Go to the project settings page and under project options, click "Trash can". This will bring up a lightbox containing a list of all data deleted from the project listed by date deleted. On the top right of this lightbox there is a dropdown menu for filtering by type. To restore an item simply click the restore button beside its name.

Restoring a project

To restore a project- go to the projects page. This link is accessible through the menu in the top left of every page. At the bottom right of the projects page there is a "Trash can" button. Click it and it will list all deleted projects. Again, hit restore and your project will appear