Important Note : it looks like a few people are having problems logging in for the first time. Don't worry if you're one of them, simply restart your iPad and you should be fine ( also - you don't need to do the restart unless you actually encounter the problem!). Apologies for any inconvenience. Now continue on and enjoy the rest of the blog post!
The rumours were true folks, TeamworkPM now has a dedicated home on your iPad. Download TeamworkPM HD and as soon as you log in you'll notice the distinctive yet familiar look and feel. We've taken the standard floating panels that you're used to from apps like Facebook and Twitter but we've pushed them further.
The panels smoothly sweep across your iPad's screen. They can be pushed, pulled and thrown away as if they were physical, touchable things. They're the perfect size so there’s never too much information. You don't get swamped in detail, but you can get to the detail fast. And when you're finished just throw it away to get back to where you started.
Turn your iPad over into landscape and all of the panels move subtly to make better use of the extra space. Back to portrait and they all huddle up again, but with the more important panels getting a little bit extra room.
That navy screen you see when you start the app is the TeamworkPM Dashboard. Just like the dashboard when you're working in your browser, it pulls information ( tasks, messages etc) from all of your active projects. It's kind of like the launch pad for everything you do in TeamworkPM. To get you started each morning, the Dashboard automatically shows you a panel detailing all of the tasks that you're due to work on that day.
From there you can move anywhere. Tap on pretty much anything and a new panel slides in with extra details. As you focus on this new information, all of the other panels darken out a little. Throw the panel to the left and it'll try to move over to give you extra room. Move the panel back right and it'll go to it's original position. Throw it off to the right with a bit more speed and the panel will simply disappear altogether - not needed anymore.
You can do all of this across any number of TeamworkPM accounts from the one app. Up on the top right hand corner of the Dashboard are your account details. Tap on them and you can instantly switch to a different account, or add a new one.
The main idea behind TeamworkPM on iPad is movement and flow. Making your Workflow easier makes your Work easier. But movement is hard to describe in words so take a look at this quick video (or even better go download the app and try it for yourself!)
The History Tour starts here or Why has it taken this long?
Let's take a quick spin back through history to explain how the iPad App came to be.
People use TeamworkPM to plan everything from earthquake relief programs right down to the weekend camping trip. As you can imagine the subsequent range of devices used to access TeamworkPM is huge.
We always want the best for our customers so we already have four different versions of the service: the main website, the mobile optimised website, an iPhone app and an Android App. All written in different languages, all with different UI, engines, and frameworks.
We realised that we'd be soon adding a fifth version for iPad and a sixth for Android Tablets. And that's not to mention Windows Phone (growing) or the newly revitalised Blackberry (fingers crossed for BB10!). So we took the decision to develop our next mobile application in a way that allows us to bring the same underlying code-base to all of the new devices.
It's been a long and hard road however. We've restarted from scratch three times as we stretched the existing cross-platform capabilities. But with the release of this iPad app, we now have a code base that should allow us to move TeamworkPM out on to all of those other devices over time.
We're using the iPad app first off to nail everything down, and once we're happy we can start to bring it other platforms - but with the tweaks needed to make it feel more at home of each device.
The obvious advantage of all of this extra effort : new features will appear across all of the devices at the same time.TeamworkPM HD is a work in Progress. We use it everyday ourselves and wanted to get it into your hands as quickly as possible. So we took the decision to roll it out with a core set of features. Now that we have the platform in place we'll be quickly plugging the gaps and adding in the most requested features. So keep one eye on the blog and the other on the App Store. And of course, let us know what you think.