TeamworkPM’s Engine Room

PixelApes are based in Ireland and offer various services including print design, web design & development, and web hosting. Throughout the  seven years we have been in business we have come across some great productivity tools that enables us and our clients to communicate efficiently and work productively .

Prior to 2010 our core team of two worked from a single office space, and up to that time  our virtual toolbox had been relatively simple. This changed when our web developer, Alex Leonard, relocated to Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Initially it was to be a ‘working holiday’ but he liked it out there so much that he stayed for two years.

Since then we’ve had multiple relocations, working between Cambodia and Ireland; Cambodia and South Africa; and, Northern Ireland and South Africa. Our current situation sees us split between Dublin, Ireland and Ballycastle, Northern Ireland.

As a result of these relocations and the new experience of distance-working, our virtual toolbox has had to adapt.

Our projects vary hugely; print design, web project consultation, simple brochure websites, bespoke web development, search engine optimisation, and more. Our clients are based all around the world too: Ireland, United Kingdom, Norway, Canada, United States, Cambodia, New Zealand; and include NGO’s, artists, small to medium enterprise, charities, e-commerce websites, and more.

Design and Development

Certain applications are a given when working on web and print. The Adobe CS suite is one of those. Illustrator is our primary tool, with InDesign being used for brochure print work, and occasional usage of Photoshop although we prefer using vectors where possible on our design work.

Graphics tablets have also become a necessity, with the Wacom Intuos range being the preferred option.

From a web development point of view, we’re currently rocking Aptana as our IDE, although still do miss StyleMaster for fine-grained CSS control which hasn’t been actively developed in a long time. SQLYog and MySQL Workbench co-exist as useful tools for database planning and management as they both have their strengths and weaknesses.

We’ve also been finding Diagram.ly useful for quick and easy sitemapping and increasingly indispensible is Balsamiq Mockups for wireframing.

Life in the cloud

With regard to distance-working, we’ve become much more dependent on cloud computing than before. SpiderOak has been mission-critical for us, ensuring complete file-synchronicity between multiple machines in multiple locations. Their service is well-priced and includes versioning and encryption. We really would struggle to stay on top of local file management without it. Even with SpiderOak, we still find quite a lot of use for Dropbox as a lot of clients already use it.

For invoicing, whilst we used to use the solid open-source BambooInvoice for several years, it ceased development and we migrated to Freshbooks which offers an extensive feature set and makes it easy for us to issue invoices & receipts and get a quick overview of what payments are outstanding.

For project management we use TeamworkPM. Our clients are always impressed by the functionality on offer and we’ve been absolutely delighted with the level of service offered by TeamworkPM. The TeamworkPM developers are insanely quick to respond to any support queries or feature requests. We can manage multiple projects in one location and easily stay on top of what tasks are assigned, who they’re assigned to and when they’re due for completion.  It’s also much easier to track communication within TeamWork than it is via email and for people not using Dropbox they can easily upload larger files without having to send them via email.

We’ve also been relying on Google Docs more and more, just for the simple collaborative power of it. Whilst it falls short on more complicated word document layouts, it’s invaluable in numerous cases, and also helps us keep track of our accounts.

Interestingly, a new development that looks like it may provide some benefits is Google Plus - namely the Hangouts feature. We’re currently working on a project where it’s very useful for us to have a Hangout with our client , as the three-member client team tend to be in different locations all the time. I think it could become a very useful tool for us.

Another aspect of our business is providing managed-hosting. We maintain a dedicated server which is well specified and resides in colocation space in Park West, however with our frequent re-locations and our server administrator being based in Cambodia, we’ve stopped maintaining a back-up server locally. This has moved to the cloud and we’re happily utilising Amazon Web Services for this. It gives us great flexibility and ensures low costs for our redundancy commitments.

Round Up

The last few years have been fascinating, and it’s been amazing to see how the digital office and workspace has enabled much greater flexibility in our working methods and given us the freedom to work in far flung locations across the world.

If you’ve ever thought that distance working and a digital office is not possible, we’d like to point out a small company whose software powers 15% of the top million websites in the world and has a workforce spread across over twenty countries. Who? Automattic, the company behind WordPress.

This is a guest post by PixelApes.

Having tried a number of different project management applications including Zoho and Basecamp, Colorado based graphic design firm Phases had been consistently disappointed with the lack of features and collaboration tools on offer. Dealing with small businesses, Phases were looking for an application that was easy to use allowing clients to take as much ownership of the projects as the company itself. In house web designer with Phases, Kandra Churchwell says they found exactly what they were looking for in Teamwork PM and since implementing it in the day to day running of the business, they have never looked back:

“We had tried many different applications, heck I think I tried them all, but they just didn’t scale well and didn’t offer the same mix of features, ease of use and great customer service you get with Teamwork.

Here's how we use TeamworkPM to help our projects go smoothly.

·       Adding a project is totally simple, and the customizable welcome email allows us to introduce our clients to the system in a very friendly and specific way, which is important to clients who don't have a lot of time, or the inclination, to learn a new software tool.

·       We use TeamworkPM from the very beginning of each new project, communicating internally about the prospecting and proposal process using tasks, the message center and the file uploading tools.

·       The privacy settings are great. We often go through several rounds of internal revisions on graphics files and word processing documents before we're ready to show them to the client. The privacy tools allow us to chat and share all of this stuff inside a "cone of silence," so we can discuss the project openly without fear of releasing anything before it's ready, or of our clients being inadvertently offended by our sometimes frank discussions.

·       The file-uploading tool is excellent. All the information you might need about a given file is available at a glance, and the version tracking is so simple, even our least tech savvy clients can easily tell what version of the file they're looking at, when it was uploaded, what category it's in, and who's been working on it. The new Dropbox integration has made file sharing even easier than it was before.

·       Did we already mention how great the Dropbox integration is? Several of our staff, team members, and clients were already using Dropbox for backup and cloud storage, so adding this feature was a no-brainer and has already simplified our process.

·       The time tracking feature helps us stay on top of the budget, even down to the task level, which keeps the stress level low for us and for our clients.

For Phases, ease of use and smooth communication between both company and clients made TeamworkPM stand out from other project management applications available:

“A powerful aspect of Teamwork is that it keeps all project communication, files, task lists, meetings, everything in one place where everyone working on the project can access it from their desktops or mobile devices. With team members working remotely, clients spread out over the country, and hundreds of files and messages that need to be tracked, stored and managed in a user friendly way, this is an invaluable benefit.”

As well as offering a wide range of features, the one aspect of Teamwork that stood out for Phases as a company was the speed at which the customer service department dealt with any issues:
“Teamwork PM has some of the best and most responsive customer service in the business in our opinion. We’ve requested features on more than one occasion that would make our workflow or communication processes more efficient and easier. Not only did we receive a quick response- in some cases the features we were interested in showed up in the production software just a few days later- now thats service!”, she added.

Denver Web designer Kandra Churchwell is a branding and graphic design guru at Phases Design Studio, the premier Colorado branding firm for emerging and established businesses seeking a unique blend business savvy, creative fire, and passionate customer service. Visit www.designfiles.net to view a selection of projects created and managed with TeamworkPM.

A few weeks ago I put out a request on our Facebook page to chat to a few design houses that use TeamworkPM so they could share their experience with you, about what they do, and how they use Teamwork.

One company that has found Teamwork Project Manager effective in the day to day running of the business is Paradigm Marketing and Creative, a boutique style agency based in Tennessee that assists clients with all their marketing needs. The sheer breadth of services offered by Paradigm include everything from branding, analysis, web and print design, and advertising to creative services such as 3d animation, videos and photography. President of Paradigm, Charles T. Gaushell explains why the company relies so heavily on an effective project management application:

“Because our services are so broad, our client base is also broad. Projects we’re involved with can include everything from completing an initial brand analysis to designing websites and brochures; from producing online PR to shooting a high definition video and rendering an extensive 3d floor plan to animating a 2,000 acre community. Using Teamwork enables everyone in the company to keep track of their tasks and assign tasks to coworkers.”
Now in its 20th year in business, Paradigm’s focus on creativity has assisted clients across seven countries and 43 states, and two years ago the company decided to get rid of their older time keeping program to focus solely on Teamwork to keep track of all tasks, a decision which Gaushell admits has made the day to day running of Paradigm much easier:
“We use Teamwork to remind ourselves of deadlines and milestones- we’re big Dropbox and ProofHQ users, so being able to link projects has been a critical update. Also having Teamwork accessible at home and on the road using our smart phones, tablets and computers saves time and effort. Teamwork guides us through our project reviews at our weekly meetings by giving us a snapshot  and roadmap for the given week. It’s also great for organizing and keeping assignments and projects accounted for and features such as Messages, Comments and Notebooks are used daily. Teamwork for us has made communication much smoother and easier since we can track every email, reply and text version,” he added.

If you too would like to share your TeamworkPM story with everyone here then please get in contact as we would love to hear from you.