It’s holiday time and to add to your delight we have these amazing features added to Comments Plus Module.

The first feature is the Highlighted Customer Comment feature.

(Note: This feature was added into Mizen a few days back and looking at the customer response we received….we thought of extending it to Comments Plus Module as well )

Previously, customer comments looked the same as any other comments in the system. One had to literally dig into the details of the comments so as to distinguish between a customer reply and a employee reply. This not only was a total time waste but also increased frustrations incase the project to be scanned was huge and had multiple participants involved.

Customer Comments – Previous Look

With this new feature, the customer comments get highlighted in a different color. This makes it standout and recognizing customer comments gets much quicker and easier.

Customer Comments- New Look

The second feature is the Predefined Templates.

It is seen that we often have to draft fixed replies to customers. It could be as simple as a Thank you mail for testimonial that the customer sent you or it could be a pre-sales question inquiring about some product and its details.

What we originally did was :

1) Create a master text document having such predefined replies and then copy paste the reply as and when we received a corresponding customer mail

or

2)The hardworking guys simply sat and drafted the whole reply every single time… Whereas now, stop spending those extra minutes drafting such mails each time a customer sends a testimonial or asks for product details…or hunting the master text document.

Simply use the Comments Plus Module. Create a template of ready made replies and use them as and when required.

Comments Plus Module now allows you to save ready made replies in the form of templates. You can simply create a template and then use it multiple times whenever required. Kindly check out the screen shots below for better visual understanding.

comment-template

add-edit-delete-template

What Next?

Download Comments Plus Module to test drive this feature now!!!

Time Reports Plus (Reports Plus) is one of our constantly improving products. The proof to this is our second release in approximately a week. Last week we introduced the KPI dashboard. It gave a one screen view of all the important KPI’s.

Next, we thought of adding some color to the dashboard. So here we are introducing graphs (bar charts)

Time Reports Plus KPI

With this new release, 4 main KPI’s i.e. paid, unpaid, billable, non billable will be shown as a bar chart.

Also the current week is shown as a graph . This feature will give you a quick view about your current week progress.

Now, Time Reports Plus loads current month time records by default. So, most required KPI’s will be at your finger tips. You can always set filters according to your need and get required reports.

Task Plus has been one of our flagship modules and we have spent considerable amount of time making it more and more useful for our clients.

This month we thought of introducing a something clients have asked us before – the ability to add more than one subscriber to a support ticket.

Earlier, you could create a new support ticket in Tasks Plus (on behalf of the customer) – but with one email address only. Now, you can separate multiple email addresses (and names) with a comma; and Tasks Plus will subscribe all those people to the newly created support ticket.

Along with this, we also added some fixes.

The first bug we fixed was related to comment status. Consider a task containing Confidential / Private comments. If you merged it with another task, the confidential / private comments became “normal” – hence visible to others.

We’ve fixed this bug. So comments will retain their privacy status in the merged task.

The next fix was regarding ‘Localization of Email Template’. It was noticed that even when a non-English language was selected, email templates were still in English.

We’ve fixed this too – so that email templates are localized.

Hope this addition and fixes help you!

You can learn more about Tasks Plus here…

Time Report Plus is one of the most popular features of the Report Plus Module and this month we thought of making it even more useful.

Earlier Time Reports Plus screen

What we realized was that the older TRP (Time Reports Plus) module had all sought after information related to time reporting, but  it did not have was a seamless, one screen, experience in a typical time reporting workflow.

To get different perspectives on the time tracked, you’d have to change summarization parameters to look at key performance indicators – for example, hours billable, pending, non billable etc. We felt this was a little tedious.

This time, we placed the most important KPI’s and right on the time reports page. So you can easily evaluate them, and do not have to run filters again and again.

Here’s the new look of Time Reports Plus:

The New Time Reports Plus with KPIs at a glance

Here are the KPIs we’ve included.

Comparison KPIs: This Week vs Previous Week & This Month vs Previous Month’s time tracked.

Time by Billable Status Billable, Pending, Non Billable, Paid time tracked.

Summary KPIs for Projects, Users, Job types, Project Category, Task Category and Company.

• Project – see time tracked on all projects
• Users – time logged by different people in your team
• Job Type – gives clarity regarding time spent on each type of work
• Task Category – summarized view of time logged in different categories
• Project Category – figure out what type of projects are consuming time
• Company – time spent for each client

I believe you’ll find these KPI’s useful.

Try out Reports Plus today!

Post a comment and give us feedback!

Our team has been working hard on revising its modules. And  Communication Module has been on the top of our list. As mentioned in our previous blog we already have  re added the most loved feature that is the “Project Level Communication”  and  this week we thought of enhancing it further.

After a couple of discussions with team we got to a conclusion and decided to work on the security feature of the module.

The result….. is our latest edition to the Communication module  that will surely have you delighted!!!

Now, Admin is able to set permissions within  the Communication Module.

Basically there are two types of permissions i.e

1) Who can participate in communication – i.e deciding which member can view and participate in a particular communication.

2) Who can create communications – i.e which member can create communications.

You can set permissions through Administrator -> Communications

Interesting???

Well we feel this would make your communications more controlled, more flexible and more secure…

What do you feel??? Drop a comment we are listening….

Communications module has always been about easy, formal or impromptu, live discussions for your teams and clients. We’ve recently did a complete overhaul and you can see the results in the annotated screenshot above!

• Each “communication” is now called a “channel”
• When you click on “Communications” icon in bottom bar of activeCollab, you now directly get to the latest channel. We got rid of the intermediate dialog box.
• The design is modern and clutter free. Less clicks, more talk!
• You can continue to control exactly who can participate in a channel, upload files, get sound notifications and more…

What do you think of the redesign? Post a comment and let us know!

Mizen (part of Planning module) is our ambitious undertaking to make getting things done a delight!

We are making improvements iteratively. Adding small features and enhancements with each release. And I think some of the recent changes we made are solid steps towards our vision…

Quick Jump, Cleaner UI and Workflow Label indicators

We updated Mizen’s design to be cleaner and more understandable – colors, fonts, lines, borders, spacing… It feels a lot more stable now and to my eyes a lot more usable as well.

At the top, we added quick jump selectors. If you have a long list of tasks, the grouping parameters will be available as “jump to” choices helping you navigate faster.

You’ll also see a colored strip in front of task entry indicating its workflow label. This will make it easier to identify and work with items that need your attention.

Update a task while leaving a comment

We’ve brought task actions into commenting – so you can change the status, label, assignee or category of the task as you post a comment. Much like how you can do it on the activeCollab task page.

Update using Auto Updater and Give us feedback

All this and more is available with Mizen. And Mizen is currently available as part of Planning module.

If you have purchased Planning module already, you can get the latest update from our My Accounts area, or better still, use Apps Magnet Auto Updater to check for and install updates automatically.

And we’d love to hear your feedback on these changes! Do post your comments here.

Reports Plus was our first activeCollab extension and also one of our most popular products. Last year we ported it to HTML (from Flash) and added financial reporting. We now wanted to make it even more useful and started thinking afresh.

The result of that thinking and a few iterations is available to all. Here’s a summary of what we have changed and why…

BEFORE: Project Reports – Velocity, Burn Down, Hours and more

AFTER: Revamped Project Reports

1. Key Performance Indicators

We moved Key Performance Indicators to left and highlighted velocity and hours. We felt those are the two most important numbers to track. The project progress indicator was switched to a simpler bar and we added a clear label for the forecasted completion date. Next milestone is played down, but available for anyone who wants to see what’s coming next (this is especially useful in individual projects)

2. Burn Down Chart

The most important thing about a burn down chart is the slope at which it is going down – indicating the velocity at which the project is moving and giving you an estimate of when the project is likely to complete. Earlier it took the full width of the screen. It is now smaller, but still conveys all important information.

3. Hours Chart

Hours chart shows weekly tracked hours, total estimated hours and total tracked hours till date. We trimmed this chart too – and even made the columns slimmer! Hovering your mouse over any circle reveals more information.

4. Tasks Progress

This is a new block we added to project reports. In activeCollab 2 days, we showed tasks in different categories, but workflow labels provide a more accurate representation of task status. Custom workflow labels and their colors will be the same across the system.

5. Most Active & Open

The list of most actively worked upon tasks was not given priority earlier. It is now right in front center. This list tells you which work is keeping your team occupied currently.

6. Longest Overdue

The other important list is tasks that are overdue for a long time. These are items that either need some love to complete them, or an edit that removes the due date on them!

7. Project Status Overview

The project status overview block comes only for collections of projects – for instance when you’re viewing report for “All Projects” or projects for a particular company. This was earlier a new tab in its own but we’ve merged it with project reports. The list is easy to read – shows overall progress, project name, leader name, percentage completion, number of tasks done and total tasks, total hours tracked – and optionally the next milestone in this project.

System Stats

Not visible in this screenshot are quick stats about the system – total projects, users, files, their size etc. This block was only in companies tab earlier, and is now moved to project reports, below the tasks progress block.

Do you think these changes make reports more usable?

Do you like these changes? Do they make it easier to get a sense of how well your projects are doing? What would you like us to improve further?

Post a comment and let us know!

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…

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 😉