TeamworkPM’s Engine Room

Today we have some great news for you. An online service called Zapier has now made integrating TeamworkPM with your other favourite online applications possible and more importantly really easy to do.

Have you ever wanted to create a new TeamworkPM task from a Zendesk ticket or automatically create a new Google Calendar event from a new TeamworkPM task. These are just a few of the things that are possible with Zapier.

Zapier is for busy people who know their time is better spent selling, marketing, or coding. Instead of wasting valuable time coming up with complicated systems - you can use Zapier to sync the web apps you and your team are already using on a daily basis.

Zapier is very straightforward to use.

The left hand side shows a trigger. The right hand side is an action. Zapier then watches for a trigger to happen before performing an action. I could spend ages telling you how easy Zapier is to set up but the best way to experience this is to visit their site and have a go yourself.

 

We are excited to announce that we have now moved TeamworkPM to the Amazon EC2 cloud!

 

Why did we make the move?

Business has been going great here at TeamworkPM; we now have more users than ever before. However, the increased demand has put a strain on old hardware which led to the occasional hiccup. This was unacceptable to us.

We love our customers and want to provide the best possible experience. After a lot of research, we made a big decision and then spent the last 3 weeks moving the entire TeamworkPM infrastructure to Amazon EC2.

 

TeamworkPM is more robust

With the move to Amazon EC2, we have now introduced better load balancing and automatic failover. If something causes a server to fail, other servers will take over automatically; allowing us to investigate the source of the problem without getting in your way.

 

TeamworkPM is Faster!

With this upgrade to Amazon EC2 Cloud hosting, we have increased the number of servers hosting TeamworkPM and added in a new memcached caching layer – the result is a faster experience for everyone.

 

TeamworkPM is more scalable

Amazon gives us far more control over the hardware in use. This means that the scaling issues we were facing last month are no longer an issue. Amazons platform gives us the advantage of being able to quickly increase the RAM and processing power of servers at the touch of a button. Most importantly it allows us to be quickly bring new servers online to cope with demand.

The other massive advantage is far more reliability when it comes to protecting your data. Hardware failures are a lot less in EC2 but if they do occur everything is well backed up and recovery is a lot easier and faster.

 

DNS and change-over pains

The move across took place last weekend during a pretty tiring all night job for the team. We are really pleased with the transition, everything ran smoothly and the months of planning thankfully paid off. The only thing we have been disappointed with is the Internet providers around the world not following the correct procedure for DNS rules. Switching to Amazon meant that we had to change the DNS records for all TeamworkPM domains. To reduce the change over time we set each domain's TTL (Time to live) to be valid for only 5 minutes. This enabled the transition to happen seamlessly for most users.

However about 2% of our users were left seeing the old servers long after the update. Strictly speaking this shouldn't have happened but some ISP's don't play by the rules or respect the TTL for DNS refreshing. For those who were affected, we detected this and automatically moved any affected accounts temporarily to a teamworkhq.com address. If your site address is teamworkhq.com now, we will switch you back to your old teamworkpm.net address this weekend.

If you are having any issues you can always contact support@teamworkpm.net

 

Custom Domains change-over to CNames

If your account is running on a custom domain you must convert your DNS A record to a CName record. We apologise for any inconvenience caused during this changeover – it was a once-off and it's going to be worth it. 

 

A big thank you!

It’s been a tough few months for us here at TeamworkPM HQ but we would like to thank you for your support during the move. We have received really nice emails and messages during this time wishing us good luck and they are much appreciated. 

We would also like to say thank you for your business. We have some great updates planned for the coming months and our new infrastructure facilitates more new and exciting possibilities.

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.

Today brings good news. The official Teamwork Project Manager Desktop Timer App has been released into the wild.

We built this app using Adobe AIR so it will run as a native desktop application on Windows, Mac and Linux. The app lets you to create timers and log the time directly back into your TeamworkPM account.

Downloading the app....

The app can be installed from the Desktop Timer Download page

Quick start guide.....

Once you have installed the app, you will need to authenticate yourself using your API key. This key is found in your account settings within your TeamworkPM account. Click on your name in the top right of the web app, select 'My details" and on the pop up click on the tab 'API". Copy the key from here and paste it into the Options dialog in the Desktop Timer App.

The options dialog also allows you to set other key features such as;

• Pause timer when you're idle after a set amount of time - When you go back working the timer will start again auto-magically.
• Return only starred projects when logging time
• Option to keep the Timer App on top of all other desktop windows - Perfect when you're using the mini view!

With the timer app authenticated, you can choose to create timers in a number of different ways.

The first way is to manually create a timer using the Add timer button. This creates a Plain-Jane timer where you choose the Project (and optionally the task) when you are finished.

The second way is to use the import function. This pulls back a list of all upcoming tasks that are assigned to you in Teamwork. You can then select the tasks you wish to bring through to the timer app. Holding down CTRL (on PC) or CMD (on Mac) will allow you to select multiple tasks at a time.

Once you have finished logging time on a task, click the Log Time button. If your timer is associated with a task, it will automatically place this logged time into the right project but if it's a manually created timer, clicking this it will give you the option to pick which project to log the time against. You also have the option to dig in further and select which task the logged time belongs to. You can then enter a description and choose whether the time is billable.

The last option here is reset timer or remove it from your list once the time is logged. Resetting a timer sets the time to 00:00:00 but keeps the timer in your list so you can log more time against it later.

If a timer is against a task, you also have the additional option of having the task marked complete when the time is logged.

Another nice feature is switching to mini-mode. If you double click the circular part of the logo it will minimize the app down to a more compact view that can sit out of the way on your screen.

We hope you enjoy this new addition to TeamworkPM and as with all our features we invite you to provide us with feedback on what you think.

Words of thanks...

We hoped to have this Desktop App released in January but due to some great feedback from our Beta testers (special thanks to Mike B. and Dennis M.) we moved some features from Version 2 to Version 1. This forced the expected release date back but allowed us to deliver a much better product. The app has an auto-update feature so as we add new features (and bug fixes!) you will be prompted to update to the latest version. Thanks for your support over the last few months and pushing us to make a better app...

Also make sure you check out our timer FAQ's page if you need any help.

After many months of work we have now finished and launched the referral program we promised you all.  To find your new referral page, scroll down to the bottom of your TeamworkPM account and you will see a new link on the bottom right called "Refer TeamworkPM".

Over the last few months we spent a lot of time looking at a whole load of sites which offered all different types of affiliate systems. We have tried to take the best parts from all these different sites and then use these ideas to create a really nice, simple to use system that doesn't require any real work on your side. You can put in as much or as little time as you want into promoting TeamworkPM.

You can quickly use one of our social share options to easily send out a tweet or post a message to your facebook account. You can also use the quick email option to send a few contact your link to give TeamworkPM a go.

Track all your referrals from your account home page.

Once you have sent out your links, or used one of our pre-made banners on your blog or website to send people through to us, you can then use the referral homepage to keep track all the people that signed up using your links.  Once they sign up to a paid account you start to share in the revenue they generate. Now how easy is that?

There is no limit on the total earnings you can make using the referral program or the number of subscribers you may enroll. The only limit we have is that you share the revenue for a maximum of 12 months per customer. But during this time if they move from a Personal account up to an Enterprise account your amount also goes up, so basically you earn 25% of what ever we earn from that user for a whole year.

To get started, scroll down to the  "Refer TeamworkPM" link. In here you will find all your unique referral links and media. Use the social media links to send out quick messages, or place one of our pre-made banners onto your web page. You will also find your direct referral URL which you can use if you wish to make your own banners or if you wish to create text links within a blog post or website article.