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WORK[etc] Web App Blog
Updated Roadmap. New User Interface Live Date
Aug
This will be the fourth product road map we've made public.
If you are new to WORK[etc], then please take a quick scan through the previous roadmaps (January 2011, September 2011 and January 2012).
| IMPORTANT NOTE: We will be going live with the new interface on Monday 13th August. What this means is that all accounts will be using the new interface design and updated to version 3. If you are part of the beta (a huge thank you btw) you won't notice any changes. |
Reading those early road maps will give you absolute confidence that we're committed to building something great here. To make your businesses (and ours) better.
Our road-map is public because we believe in transparency. It is, what it is.
For the three hundred plus customers that have joined us since the last road map in January we always call this a fluid roadmap. Fluid because it is guaranteed to change. Some projects run ahead of schedule. Some crash head first into unexpected road blocks. New opportunities open up and every now and then a customer presents an idea so compelling it just has to be built immediately.
The road map should never be read as a promise either, it should only ever be considered as a direction in product development we're gainfully pursuing. I still get the odd email that starts off "back in January you promised..." and I've learned to ignore these now as they are usually from people who type IN ALL CAPITALS and have an unhealthy obsession with exclamation marks (I'm sure you know the personality type I'm talking about...)
Roadmap for 2012 - Second Half
A lot of releases (Outlook Add-in, Quickbooks) although fully complete have not been able to be released due to the new design update. And although it does look like a lot of stuff all happening at once, it is important to remember we have more than tripled the size of our internal/external development team in 2012.
| Project | Where it's at today: | Expect to see it around: | Why it is important |
|---|---|---|---|
| New User Interface Design | Public Beta | August (progressive upgrades on all accounts from August 1st) |
As much as the phrase annoys me, this really is a game-changer for WORK[etc]. I'll admit I was a little skeptical of the impact good design might have - who cares what it looks like, as long as it works right? WRONG! - but have since done a full 360 on my thinking. The new WORK[etc] interface is such a pleasure to use that I actually want to do more work. And the fact that fully 1 out of 3 customers have thrown their hands up for the beta is more assurance we've made the right move. THIS WILL BE LIVE ON ALL ACCOUNTS FROM MONDAY 13TH AUGUST... |
| Custom Status for Support Cases | Public Beta | August (it is attached to the UI update) |
Custom statuses let you better define and customize a process for support cases. For example, in you might want to implement a review-process and nominate one of your team that responsibility. So in addition to the standard "new", "open", "replied" and "closed' status, you could set a custom status called "Quality Review" and assign that Status to a particular member. |
| Project Types | Public Beta | August (it is attached to the UI update) |
Project types help you systematize your projects through creating a classification system to quickly identify what stage your project is at (regardless of activity). For example, your project might consist of a whole lot of sub-projects and tasks all involving people or workgroups. Using Project Types you can assign a stage to activity, such as "Research", "Production" or "Review". This little enhancement may at first seem inconsequential, but in reality is the critical first step on the way to building out the ultimate resource allocation and project planning tool. We need the standardization of information this brings in order to accurately present resource utilization across projects and the entire organization. |
| Salesforce Integration Pt 1 | Coding / QA | August | Stage 1 is basic syncing of contacts and leads between Salesforce and WORK[etc]. If there is a positive response from customers we will continue building a deeper level of integration. We're definitely working on something cool here, but don't want to say too much for now. |
| Dashboard v2.0 | Coding | August | This is the long-awaited and much-anticipated dashboard 2.0 which has always been dependent on the new UX upgrade. The first stage of the new dashboard includes report-styled widgets that can be easily resized and drag 'n dropped on screen.
Click on this thumbnail for a preview of the new widget design: |
| Company Message Board, Ping Reminders, Consolidated Updates | Coding | August |
We're adapting the activity stream from projects for use as an internal company messaging system. Basically like a continuously flowing company conversation with the ability to mute conversations that are not of interest and to ping other people to ensure they've seen important messages. And then we get really clever by making it easy to include a WORK[etc] object into that conversation stream. This becomes really useful when you need a colleague to quickly look at something. Instead of firing off an email or connecting on Skype, you can send an in-app ping to get their attention. |
| Outlook Add-in | Internal Beta | August (public beta) |
This takes the wildly successful WORKetc Gmail gadget and makes the same (and more!) functionality available in Outlook; take any email and attach it to a project, create a new sales lead and more. It also allows syncing of Outlook Contacts and Calendars with WORK[etc]. This is fully completed (and I've been testing it out for a few weeks now). But we haven't been able to release it as it requires a tool called "Contacts Conflict Resolution" (read below) Read more about the Outlook Addin |
| Quickbooks Online | Internal Beta | August (public beta) |
This has been completed for a while, but wasn't able to be rolled out as it shared a lot of its code- base with changes that are part of the new design. If you're previously signed up for QB Online beta, you'll get an invite before August 1st. The QB Desktop is still posing issues for us... desktop software is definitely not our skillset. We may only be able to release this as a "unsupported add-on" and encourage everyone to upgrade to online-enabled editions of Quickbooks. |
| Contacts Conflict Resolution | Internal Beta | August (public beta) |
Contact Conflict Resolution (we definitely need to think of a snappier name) saves you from a major screw-up when someone in your team imports contacts from an old file just as you've sync'd up your latest Google contacts and someone else in your organization has sync'd up their own Outlook contacts. The tool saves your behind by catching all the potential contact errors and presents them on a single screen. You can then go through each contact record and select which source is correct and make contact changes on the fly. This is 99% built and just waiting on the new UX release. It is also the tool that allows safe 2-way sync of Google Contacts (so we can take that out of beta too!) Maybe Contact Safety-net or Contact Cleaner is a better name... |
| iPhone App v2.0 | Coding | September | Complete rebuild of the iPhone app to be 100% native, utilise device caching for better performance, support for new higher resolution screens and addition of sales leads. This is already well underway. |
| Android App v2.0 | Coding | mid-September | Complete rebuild of the Android app to be 100% native, utilize device caching for better performance support for new higher resolution screens and addition of sales leads. Development is roughly 4 weeks behind the iOS app. |
|
Email Bonanza (Drip Marketing / Lead Nurturing / Trigger Emails / one screen for all email.) | Scoping | October - November |
This will be way more powerful than the drip marketing you've seen in other applications because of the simple fact that inside of WORK[etc] you are doing more than just sales-oriented activities. The opportunity here is to integrate "triggers" into all the all the WORK[etc] tools. For example, you might choose to automatically trigger a project update email to your client whenever the project stage is updated. Or you might want to trigger a whole series of emails, with time delays, whenever someone completes your online form. And then as a safety-net, we're going to give the option to "auto send" or to queue for approval. Part of this project also includes a single screen where admins (and others with the right permissions) can view every single email in-and-out of WORK[etc]. |
| Resource Utilization, Project Planning | Scoping / Mockups | October - November | This is an "enterprise-strength" addition to the project management software that will facilitate an organization-wide view of "who is working on what, and how busy they are" as well as providing evidence-based planning. So instead of guesstimating how long a particular project type may take, you'll be able to quickly view metrics for similar projects your team has completed in the past. All this stuff relates directly back to the "Custom Project Types" we've just implimented as part of the UI re-design. |
| Customer Portal 2.0 | Scoping / Mockups | October | More functionality inside of the customer portal, more obvious "sharing" between WORK[etc] and your customers. Ability to customize the look and logo, ability to mask the domain to your web site. |
| On-going UX Project / Deeper links between objects | Ongoing | Ongoing |
This covers a whole range of smaller projects and updates including: - unified template store for all email - more obvious work flow from Sales-> Quotes -> Delivery - refinements to the current email newsletter tool - an "hour-bank" allowing customers to pre-pay for time and receive statements showing allocation - redesign of product catalog and basic inventory - inclusion of approvals system alongside purchase order management (this is actually a big one and probably deserves a dedicated mention - see here) - Option of "simple' tasks, basically 1-line tasks that sit outside of any project context - Social media integration, but more than just links to Facebook or Linkedin; rather the ability to create email triggers based off events. - Contractor pricing for WORK[etc]. This means your contractors can log directly into your main WORK[etc] account for an hourly-fee rather than a monthly fee. |
Work with WORK[etc]
We're currently on the look out for two new roles at WORK[etc].
- Writer who is handy with Video. We're looking for someone who can help us tell the stories that come out of WORK[etc] and from our customers. I'm thinking this might be suitable for a journalist student as it requires quite a lot of digging to find the story and uncover an engaging angle. Read more.
- Customer Support (USA). Work from home, semi-flexible hours. Help WORK[etc] customers get more out of the product and be there to unstick people when they get stuck. The role is a fairly unique mix of technical support and business advice delivered via email, phone and video. Sound like you?
- And we have the same Customer Support role in Deutsche
Product Releases
Big News
Coalface
- Oil makes everything go faster... right?
- Build a better product by getting your feet really dirty (& what is coming next)
- A Getting Things Done (GTD) approach for WORK[etc]
- Welcome to the SSD club, Amazon EC2 (and how SSD's powered a 714% Performance Increase)
- Four Questions that Bring Teams Together
- See all from Coalface
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Wow! You all must have just posted this, cause I don't recall seeing this a few hours ago. I look forward to all these updates. I can't wait to see the new User Interface Changes. This looks like it will be an incredible next 6 months.
This update came in timely. Challenges with multiple apps that don't integrate was bringing into question our continued use of Worketc. The drip-email functionality is a biggie for my type of business and is weighing heavily on our continued stay with WETC. I can honestly say I'm looking forward to these devs with glee!
Very much looking forward to the Outlook Add-in Public Beta.
Windows Phone app would also be very cool.
Excited to see this list and ready to move forward. The new UX has been great to work with in the Beta. You guys have responded quickly to any issue we have brought up. Thanks for all your hard work! Looking forward to the Email Bonanza - we have been looking hard at what to do about that specific issue. Looks like we may get a lot of awesome things in the last quarter of 2012. Thanks guys!
One other thing concerning QB integration. We looked at QB Online and there are specific reasons it would not be considered an upgrade for us at all. Have you considered doing a deal with something like these guys: http://www.baystateconsulting.com/ who offer importer tools?
Contacts Conflict Resolution name suggestion: CONTACT[net]
Would be nice to see custom expense status support on there aka "Purchase Orders"..
I would also like to see Quickbooks integration AND purchase orders in this list :(
there was this article on digg that gmail's sposuped to be coming out of beta soon. i wonder wat else they can add to it though, its pretty much fully realised already. i've been using it exclusively for yonks, outlook schmoutlook.
i see a lot of hooray's
1)Company Message Board, Ping Reminders, Consolidated Updates
i missed that after coming from podio, now using yammer but would love to just do that inside worketc, dont forget the ability to use hashtags, great for searching.
2)contractors hourly pricing( so much hooray) altough im pretty anxious that they will leave open the program or something. Question is how you are gonna count hours spent using app or mail?
3)hooray for mail templates, simple tasks, new ux, customer portal 2.0, google contacts, mail dripping, outlook, etc all features i will use.
What i do miss is bigger picture around social, i think social is big enough to create a whole new tab around. Where you can connect your companies twitter account, linkedin account, facebook page, google plus, etc etc.
You could have statistics there and a whole bunch of tools that help you connect to new customers or nurture existing ones. Automatic search for contacts accounts, data pull, connection suggestions, personalization of workflow by putting a face on a contact etc etc...
Thats what i realized in merely five minutes, so probably people have a lot more ideas, how social can become a part of worketc? no?
Quick question, why integration with salesforce? I thought the idea around worketc was one app for everything?
I thought people came from salesforce to you guys? Just find it pretty odd, why not create migration like with highrise?
Hi everyone - thank you for the great feedback and positive comments. I think I've answered everyones' questions below.
@Phillip - yes, incredibly 6 months and beyond!
@Sipho - as I mentioned the "drip" email piece is big for us as we're building it beyond traditional drip marketing into a sort of triger email tool - ie any event in WORK[etc] can trigger an email. There will be a separate post on this later.
@Ralph - I'm not sure we'll be able to build a Windows Phone App, just not enough Windows Phone users (yet)
@Donna - WORK[etc] has always been able to import/export financial data, although it is just the usual (somewhat annoying) export -> download -> upload -> import manual CSV process. QB Online will automate this, much the same as we have done with Xero.
@Greg - thanks, we'll think this through
@Crunchy - looks like quotes/purchases orders will have expense categories.
@Ashwani - no idea what you're talking about. Our Outlook Addin will closely match our Gmail wdiget.
@Florin - the social aspect is in production, contractor pricing will work on a monthly cap and have a 60min timeout if no activity recorded in that period - note this isn't finalized yet.
@Florian 2 - we have a number of larger businesses who have divisions that won't want to switch fully away from Salesforce. The integration (when fully complete) will allow a business to keep using Salesforce for certain divisions and WORK[etc] for everything else.
Thanks Dan for the thorough response. I'm quite excited about the social integration, being in production, too. Just an aside, I'd appreciate to have contacts included in the Gmail widget, as an option in the 'Attach to' function.
@Sipho - this was actually added ~ 2 days ago. We're still working on how to get the email form fields to auto-populate into the "create contact" field.
Hi Dan, the auto-population capability makes much sense. I think though I'm was clear enough in my Gmail gadget suggestion above and as a result, we're communicating across purposes. What I'm referring to is the 'Attach to' drop down under the 'Attach' tab. Tabs that are currently available, to attach an e-mail to, are 'project', 'support case', 'event', 'product', 'subcription', and 'event'. My request is that you can add a 'contact' tab, to enable one to attach an e-mail to a person or company contact, without having to add the email address under that particular contact, in order to be able to do so. I hope I'm making sense.
there was this article on digg that gmail's seoppsud to be coming out of beta soon. i wonder wat else they can add to it though, its pretty much fully realised already. i've been using it exclusively for yonks, outlook schmoutlook.
Purchase ordering is a big one for me, must say i love the new interface, i trial WorkETC and only sice the new interface have i decided to move forward with it.
Would be great to track phone calls, texts, social media posts, etc. at the same level (Unified Communications?) as email is, rather than stuffing a reference to, e.g., a call into a Contact comments box.
Any update on how the social media integration is coming along?
I too, would like some insight as the plan for social media integration. Any info might help me decide to make the move from trial to full account.