Think Big

Think Big! That’s what I kept experiencing in my US tour in October. A coffee cup would be five times larger and fifteen times costlier in the USA than my office in India. Everyone was talking about changing the world. Everyone was talking about millions. I couldn’t stop but get infected by this passion.

Now I am not really taking on “bigger means better” or “bigger is superior”. I am really talking about freeing up your thinking. Thinking about the great impact you can make on humanity if you pursued your dreams and vision. Thinking about the “grand design” of your business. Thinking and being convinced that you can and will achieve great results. Believing that the world is really “flat”. Expanding self-imposed limits on what and how much you can do.

I am taking on the practice of thinking big. How about you?

Think Small

Think about this – that five times larger coffee cup is filled with hot liquid and can be difficult to hold with bare hands. So what do you do? Well, you invent the coffee cup sleeve! The sleeve would easily fit the cup and protect your hands from that heat. Getting used to the large amount of coffee I could notice at least a dozen remarkable items about that coffee cup that are the result of thinking small – thinking details – thinking improvements.

Now you may be just too used to a large coffee cup (with a sleeve) to ignore all the thinking that’s gone into making one. When we create goals and plans, we skip implementation details and end up with a fraction of results. When we build a product we may forget to think about small details and end up with customers – and not raving fans.

This all sounded too familiar! So I resolved to start thinking small right after thinking big!

There Is No Point Thinking If I Don’t Act

I haven’t yet made contact with 95% of people I met during my tour. Not even people I thought could be great mentors / feedback providers. There are notes I took at conferences that I haven’t even looked at. Whether I am thinking about a big world transforming idea or am stuck with fear in going up to a celebrity and making contact, action is the only way forward.

An example I give my team is that in the game of cricket, a player won’t make any runs if he stands holding his bat and keep thinking about how many runs he can make. To make runs he has to act. As a matter of fact he has to keep taking action just to survive in the game.

Similarly if I just keep thinking about sharing my lessons from the trip, I will never get around it. I got to take action.

Memories From The Trip

I returned from my US tour on 5th November and last 33 days were about catching up with work. Pending deliveries. Revamping code structure. Solving bugs. Adding new features. Brainstorming our plans for 2012. Training new team members. Just keeping the neck down and working hard.

Here’s what’s on our lists:

All Our Products Are activeCollab 2.3.7 Compatible

We have just confirmed that all our products are compatible with activeCollab 2.3.7. Latest versions will continue to work with it and there are no changes required. If you are running an old version, we do recommend you download and use the latest version.

New Members System and Website coming soon

We have lived with a bare-bones website for a long time. Over the next few months we will keep incrementally improving our website but you will see the first round of fresh paint in December itself! We will also be transitioning to a new shopping cart / members / downloads / support system in near future. It will now be easier to find the information you need and keep track of your purchases!

Mizen – our activeCollab desktop & mobile client

This has been on our list for over a year, but it’s finally coming together. We have done a lot of ground work and are working on activeCollab sync right now. Mizen will allow you to sync your activeCollab tasks to your desktop and work on them even when you are offline. It will track time, let you complete work items and keep track of recent activities as well. We plan to start a private beta near the end of the month!

Winning The Collaboration Game For Our Clients

Our new consulting / hand holding / training service is going well and we are really thrilled to see clients experience great productivity boosts in every session. It’s like instant gratification for us – we get on a call with the client, discuss ideas and suggestions, clients alter how they use activeCollab and immediately experience better results. We have enjoyed it so far and are looking for more sessions this month!

Alright, Now for a little smile!

Wanted to let everyone know that all our products are now compatible with activeCollab 2.3.6.

We updated Confidential Items Module for compatibility, and even added some bug fixes and new features to Tickets Plus. All other modules will work without a change.

Products we’ve updated:

• Tickets Plus Module (version 1.5.8 – this also adds useful new features and fixes bugs)
• Confidential Items Module (version 1.3.3)

Latest versions of all other products are already compatible with activeCollab 2.3.6

Tickets Plus 1.5.8 Changelog

Enhancements:

• activeCollab v2.3.6 compatibility version.
• Option to include descriptions while printing tickets list

Fixes:

• Call to undefined method “time_to_float” error. Fixed.

Customers can download these updates from our members area.

Enjoy!

We released Tickets Plus 1.5.7 yesterday. If you had a problem with tickets not being created with incoming mail or estimate values, this release will fix it.

Here’s the change log from 1.5.6 and 1.5.7:

• Creating tickets from incoming mail was broken. Fixed.
• Estimate value did not consider minutes. Fixed.
• Assignees were removed if status changed from mass-update
• Default status not set when creating a ticket from Planning module
• Setting assignee to –None– using mass update did not work correctly

As usual, you can download the latest release from our members area.

We are glad to announce updates to five products.

• acHack – Gravatar (v1.3.2)
• acHack – Incremental Backup (v2.2)
• Hide People module (v1.1)
• Tickets Plus module (v1.5.5)
• Time Reports Plus module (v1.3.3)

You can download these updates from our members area as usual!

Here’s a summary of updates in these versions.

acHack – Gravatar (v1.3.2)

• activeCollab v2.3.5 compatibility version.

acHack – Incremental Backup (v2.2)

• Takes database backup of only activeCollab tables.
• Fixed: (Backup returned these errors: Array) email notification issue.

Hide People module (v1.1)

• Removes “Who Is Online” and “People On This Project” blocks from dashboards.

Tickets Plus module (v1.5.5)

• Fixed: Send email notification twice on ticket completion
• Fixed: Attachments are not visible for tickets created using Public Submit
• Fixed: UI fix for filter drop downs in Tickets list

Time Reports Plus module (v1.3.3)

• Fixed: Time records not grouped correctly by billing status (Billable, Non Billable, Billed etc.)
• Fixed: Increased memory limits while generating time reports

Enjoy!

Update (27/Sep): Our account is active now! And I think it won’t be limited again!

Update (24/Sep): PayPal has limited our account again! I guess they have a weekly cron that limits accounts, and have not yet updated their logic of verifying PAN. Very frustrating.

Update (20/Sep): PayPal has lifted the limitation and we can receive payments again now. Thank you PayPal for prompt attention to this.

I just got an email from PayPal that they have limited our account from receiving money. And that because the Permanent Account Number that I’d entered, could not be verified.

Now my PAN is valid, but the business is in the name of my wife. Apps Magnet is also not a “limited liability” company yet – having it’s own separate legal identity – which provides it a new PAN of its own.

I’ve just written to PayPal, and am hoping for a quick resolution.

But till then, (or till we add an alternate payment system), we won’t be able to accept new orders.

Please bear with us while we sort this out.

Thanks.

:Nirav

Assignments Plus module for activeCollab lets you kill work overwhelm, get back in control, become super efficient and get things done quickly.

We won’t be surprised if it becomes one of our most popular modules…

Watch “Dave’s Day: how an overwhelmed, overloaded worker created family time” video and learn more about Assignments Plus here…

coming soon!

Two years ago Apps Magnet offered two modules and two hacks. Today, we have 9 modules, 5 hacks. A new module (assignments plus) is nearly complete and we’ll have another module for our desktop/mobile client for activeCollab.

We keep improving our products. New versions add features, solve bugs and reduce our support requests as well. And we’d love for our customers to use the latest versions of all our software.

So I felt if there was an automated system to check for latest versions of activeCollab and installed modules, it would come in handy for our customers.

At the same time, we’ve been running acGarage for almost two years as well. acGarage is our expert service where Apps Magnet staff upgrade your activeCollab installation to the latest versions as and when they are available. acGarage also included all our modules (except Planning, Reports and Communications). It’s a superb value for money, and acGarage customers are extremely happy with the service.

Not everyone has signed up for acGarage though! But everyone wants to keep their systems up to date – as much as possible!

So here’s a gift for you!

acGarage module

acGarage module will automatically check and notify you of available updates to activeCollab and other installed modules. And, it’s a free download for you!

acGarage System Status Screen - core updates, module updates and new modules available

Click here to learn more and download acGarage module…

We hope this helps you maintain your activeCollab setup better. Hope it saves you time and energy that you can spend on something important.

What happens to existing acGarage customers?

All existing customers will continue to receive managed updates from Apps Magnet team. We plan to migrate current acGarage services as “acGarage Pro”, and when we do that, you will be migrated to that as well. You won’t be at any loss – we will ensure that.

Liked our gift?

If you liked our gift, let us know by posting a comment here 😉

We just released Tickets Plus 1.5.4. This is a small bug fix release.

Fixes:

• “Call-time pass-by-reference has been deprecated” in PHP 5.3. Fixed. Thanks to Philip for reporting this issue.
• Display pagination header twice in aC 2.3.4. Fixed. Thanks to Jutin, csBox for reporting this issue.

You can download the latest version from our members area as usual.