If you noticed, activeCollab recently changed their website – and the whole product!!

If you are a long time user of activeCollab, the new activeCollab (code named “Feather”) looks extremely slick. It’s got flat and clean design. It feels “new age”.

“Feather” is quite snappy too. Pages load fast. Everything feels nice.

You’d want to upgrade to it immediately.

But wait… Is Feather ready for prime time? Are you ready for it?

activeCollab Feather is a project and task management solution built afresh. A lot of core concepts are same (just like any other project management system).. But a lot has changed – both under the hood and in the app.

So if you depend on activeCollab for your day to day work, and have many people using it, I suggest you take a step back before upgrading. Especially if you are hosting activeCollab on your own servers.

Here are somethings self hosted activeCollab customers must grasp fully before considering Feather.

Some features have changed (or don’t exist anymore)…

• To make things simpler, activeCollab team dropped many features from Feather. And they are not coming back. So if you relied on these features from previous versions, you’d face difficulties.
• For example: There is no way to manage user roles or create new roles and access control. There are only three roles – Owner, Member, Customer.
• There are small terminology changes too – Milestones are now called Task Lists. But that shouldn’t be too difficult to get used to.
• Still, all the core features are intact – and polished further. So for basic “getting things done” you shouldn’t have a problem.
• But one must test and evaluate their own needs before switching…

Third Party modules won’t work

• Third Party Modules don’t work with Feather. There is no way to install additional modules within activeCollab anymore.. Even if you use Self Hosted version of Feather.
• The only “integration” and “extension” possibility is via HTTP REST API. Which means extensions have to be “external” apps. Much like any other SaaS web site. They can not integrate with activeCollab UI.
• So if you rely on any functionality provided by a third party module (or if you have developed your own customizations) – you will have to let go of that before you can move to Feather. OR you stay with activeCollab 4 (or 3 or 2 – whatever you may be using).
• Even the API has changed. So if you use any apps that integrate with activeCollab via API, they’d need to update as well.

You’re sharing a lot more data with activeCollab now…

Everything related to emails (incoming and outgoing) and search is now handled via a service called “Heartbeat”. This is a service activeCollab hosts themselves. So even if you use the self hosted version your data is going to activeCollab servers.

Yes, there is an “enterprise” option – where you can host the “Heartbeat” service on your own servers. But it’s still “coming soon”…

Try it first

• Overall, activeCollab Feather is still a work in progress. A lot of things work, but try it first before upgrading.
• We recommend you try out the online 30 days demo first. Familiarize yourself with the changes. Then evaluate if you want to upgrade.
• If you want to upgrade, setup a staging environment, migrate your data, and fully test everything beforehand.
• Your data is critical. So make sure you have backups. And that you get everything you need.

Also, make sure you read and understand activeCollab’s own “Upgrading to new activeCollab” guide…

What will happen to Apps Magnet activeCollab modules?

We understand a lot of you rely on our activeCollab modules for your businesses. And while we want to bring all the features we added to activeCollab with our extensions, it’s simply not going to be possible because of the new architecture.

We are considering building web based services that talk to activeCollab via its API and add features.

But we need to know what you’d like us to do! So leave a comment and tell us if:

1. Would you like us to help you migrate to Feather?
2. Would you like us to continue supporting activeCollab 3 and 4 installations?
3. What modules / features would you like us to build for activeCollab Feather?

Awaiting your feedback!

Thanks!

Time Reports – The Issue

Earlier, Time Reports (part of a Reports Plus module) loaded a whole bunch of time records right at the start. This not only took a lot of your time but also made the entire process very slow. The outcome the user often ended up irritated..

Research

So we conducted a small research and found that generally we do not need such vast amount of time records. As a person first of all I would like to glance at the my most recent time records i.e I’m only interested in the time records of the current week, past one week or maximum two. Also I would love to get things loaded faster.

Do you agree? If yes read on….

Keeping the above findings  in mind we decided to work on the initial data that got loaded in  Times Reports

The Improvement

Now, we load only the most recent data and by that I mean just the current weeks time record. However, if you want to see other time records, you can change the filters anytime and load time records according to your requirement. Good enough?

Over to You

So, inspite being a minute enhancement it surely can save you alot of time.

Hope you will find it useful.

In activeCollab there are two billable statuses while tracking time on task or project. One is Billable and Second is Non Billable.

You can set default billable status at the global level from Administrator > General Settings and project level settings from Project > Options > Change Settings.

According to the bug that was noticed, the Chronograph module was picking up global level default billable status even though project level billable status is set. It means, if you set billable status as “Non Billable” at global level and “Billable” at project level, Chronograph module sets billable status as “Non Billable”.

So, we fixed that issue. Now, Chronograph module picks up billable status from Project level settings.

The other bug fix was about Job Types

In activeCollab, Job types can be created through Administrator > Job Types & Hourly Rates panel. While creating a task in project, you can specify an estimate with Job type and by default time tracking on that task it will be consider in that job type. Again, Chronograph module was picking up default job type even though Job type is different for particular task.

We fixed that issue. Now, time tracked through Chronograph module picks job type of that task not the default one which sets at global level.

So, these are two important fixes which we have done in last release.

Credit: One of our customer Angela, reported this issue. Because of that this issue came to our notice and we fixed it. Thank you Angela for spotting that out

It was this day, six years ago, when we launched our first activeCollab product – Reports module.

Today, we are completing six memorable years participating in activeCollab community.

We’ve seen lot of change – activeCollab 2, the rise of extensions, activeCollab 3, 4, the crash in business, marketplace changes and much more.

And now, bells are ringing for activeCollab Feather. We believe Feather will be a major step forward for activeCollab and are getting ready for it.

But what’s most important today, is you! We thank you for being with us. Your continued support has allowed us to stay in business and deliver solutions to the activeCollab community.

We also thank activeCollab team – Ilija, Goran and everyone else – for building a platform we’ve loved all these years. All third party extension developers for their contribution – US Web, Active Labs, activeCollab Mod, Zingdev and everyone else. Kudos also to everyone who contributed to community forums!

Thank you once again, and we look forward to serving you further.

In gratitude,
Nirav & Malay

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!!!

Previous Problem

Client Comments – Previous Look

The customer comments were not distinct. Mizen did not differentiate customer comments from the other comments. It had the same look and feel as any other comment in the system. This made it difficult for an employee to scan through the conversations. One had to literally read through comments and figure out if that was a reply sent by a customer or by just another employee belonging to that project. Now if the conversations were short this method was bearable. However, if we had a huge project with multiple employees and clients working simultaneously on it. It would be a big pain to address this issue.

Current Solution

Customer Comments- New Look

We came up with a simple solution. Just like we treat our customers differently. We thought of changing the look of the customer comments. Although nothing fancy just a change in the color of customer comments it serves its purpose the best.

You no longer have to dive into the comments to figure out which of them is a customer reply. Just a scan and you can easily distinguish a customer reply from the other comments. So no matter however long are the project discussions or however huge are the number of participants in the project, customer replies will standout thanks to this amazing feature.

 Check it out and let us know your feedback. Suggestions are welcome

Double Edged Sword

How you handle a support ticket can make or break your relationship with your customer. Obviously, the customer is facing an issue and he has dropped in a ticket hoping for a quick relief/ reply. And by quick I mean faster the better….

Playing it Safe

So, in order to ensure that you don’t go wrong and your client gets the quickest reply that would beat even the best support guy on your team, we have implemented a quick auto responder in the Task Plus Module.

What it does?

It simply sends an acknowledgement auto responder reply to every ticket that is sent to you by your customer. It may seem really trivial but the assurance that it can leave on your customers mind is immense. A simple liner ” Your ticket has been received and the issue is being taken care off” can soothe a lot of frustrated customer nerves.

The Technical Working

Now, admin can set the acknowledgement message to their customer for successful creation of support ticket. We have made it optional. Such that admin will have choice to enable/ disable this feature.

This option can be set from Administrator > Tasks Plus Settings panel. See the below screen shot.

Acknowledgement Message

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.

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!

Monthly Reports

Apps Magnet had an eventful June. We worked on a couple of important things namely:

• Important bug fix release in the Communication Module.
• Certain UI enhancements in the Chronograph Module.
• Addition of Project Template in Zapier.

Photo Cred: Giphy