If you didn’t get time to reply then I do encourage you to make your suggestions known via our feedback page because we use this to gauge interest in a particular feature or functionality. With so many diverse customers we love to get your suggestions, ideas, wishes and dreams (as well as the occasional gripe). Every day we receive the ‘what about’ and ‘why not’ questions and it’s important to us that you know we do read, listen and respond to your ideas, even if we can’t act on all of them.

We were really pleased to see that the most common feature and improvement suggestions are for areas that we are already working on. We won’t ruin all of the surprises we have in store for you but the next few months will bring enhanced usability, improved scheduling and easier timesheet entry as well as huge speed improvements due to a big investment in new infrastructure.

One of the questions we asked related to the use of mobile devices and for the time being, Apple dominates our customer base. We were a bit surprised that Android numbers were so low because we have many more requests for Android rather than Blackberry compatibility. Again, it would be great to hear from people on both sides as well our iPhone/iPad devotees.

 
As a direct result of these figures we’re looking into creating a cross-platform mobile version of ProWorkflow that will work on nearly any mobile device, we’ve had terrific feedback on our iPhone app and we want to build on that even further so that ProWorkflow really is a platform you can use anywhere, anytime on anything!

Another result we found was that where we’re focusing our next round of development is where our customers are pointing us also – it’s great to know that what we’re hearing is what you’re after! Kudos to the classic comment that was full of great ideas:

“Anyway, great product! I guess i’m just being a brat and I want more things under one roof ”

So expect lots of love for the speed and usability and there are some exciting developments on the scheduling front…
– not too far past the horizon!

There are two features that we’ve had several requests for:

1)  Google Calendar compatibility – Google uses the same ‘bot’ to fetch ics files as it uses for trawling the internet. This is causing an issue because we prevent Google from indexing our account servers (so your subscription doesn’t appear in Google search results). However, this prevents Google Calendar from downloading the ics files. We are awaiting a response from Google to try to find a fix for this issue.

2) Syncing multiple projects using one ics file – Currently we generate one ics file for each project, we’re monitoring load closely before we decide whether to allow a single ics file per client or for all projects.

Now for an awesome tip!
For any customers who need either of these features immediately, you can use Yahoo Pipes to create an ics feed that can consolidate multiple ics files and will also work with Google Calendar.

We have recorded a short video below that explains the process for using Yahoo pipes to generate an ics file that combines two project feeds.

.
iCal Integration Guide!
http://www.screencast.com/t/MmQ3ZWUwMjk

.

.
iCal Integration Guide!

.

Check out the above video to learn how to setup and use the iCal integration. It’s fairly easy, but we’re here to help if needed!

How does it work?

Step 1. Enable the iCal integration

All you do is go to your ‘HOME > Personal Settings’ popup (accessed from the dashboard when you login) and in the popup, scroll down to the ‘DEFAULT CALENDAR SETTINGS’ section.

As shown below, you can enable the iCal integration for Project Tasks, General Tasks or Events (or all). Just tick what you need!

Note: If choosing ‘Events’, you can subscribe to the calendar from the link that will appear below when you tick the ‘Events’ option.

Step 2. Subscribe to a Project

Click the ‘Subscribe’ link on a project to subscribe to the project’s calendar items. This will make the project calendar’s address (URL to .ics file) appear. Click this to finish subscribing to the project.

The image below shows the project calendar address. click this and the

Step 3. Select the calendar application

You should see a popup window showing a list of your available calendar applications (iCal, Outlook etc). Select your preferred calendar app and the items should be added to the calendar. As an example, below I used my Outlook calendar.

And here’s the Project’s items in the calendar!

Note: Adding Events

Another place you can subscribe to the Events calendar is from the Calendar page in ProWorkflow. All you nee to do is click the link and a green section will appear showing the calendar address. Click this and follow the same process as above.

And here are the events showing in the Outlook calendar.

If you have any questions, please feel welcome to contact us.

Update: We aware of an issue affecting Google Calendar users relating to robots.txt file. We are waiting on a response from Google on this issue which stems from the fact that they use the same search bot for ics files as for their main search algorithm. This means that working with Google Calendar currently would mean having all of your projects and tasks potentially indexed on Google (obviously not a good thing!).

• PRO/ADV: iCal Integration!!! (Will be explained in separate post)
• PRO: End dates and times on events.
• PRO: ‘Add File’ issue in task popup in IE resolved.
• ADV: New setting allowing Staff to view ‘ALL messages’ on a project.
• ADV: Project Archive has extended search fields and filters.
• QuickBooks: now showing an error on page where there is a sync issue. This is to assist with troubleshooting various QB versions.
• Misc other bugs and tweaks

You can now manage and set file space per team. We’ve improved this process so it’s easier to keep your file usage under control.

.

Roles

We have allowed you to set default Start Page and View for each ‘Role’. This means that all users with a particular role, (ie: Designers) can be easily made to all have the same Start page, (ie: Projects Page)

.

My Project Requests

The ‘My Active Projects’ and ‘My Pending Project Requests’ sections now have their own section on the new ‘PROJECTS Manager > My Projects’ page. These are all the projects you have requested internally that you are essentially the ‘Client’ of.

.

Auto-Numbering for Projects

• We’ve added a new variable {team} for simple Auto-Numbering.
  ({team} = the team that is doing the Project)
• We’ve added an advanced Auto-Numbering option that lets you set different auto-number prefixes and individual numbering (for each team). Currently used by some of our custom customers, we have brought this through into ADV as the larger groups may find this useful for reporting and identifying different Project types.

Note: If the update doesn’t work, you may need to reinstall AdobeAir and then reinstall the Widget. Your settings will remain intact.

——————————————————————–

The most recent Adobe Air update that was released on Friday has caused the ProWorkflow Time Tracker to stop working for some customers.

Our development team are investigating this issue as a high priority and anticipate that a fix will be released within the next 24 hours. In the meantime as a temporary fix for any customers who need to use the Time Tracker, you can uninstall Adobe Air 2.0 and then download and reinstall the working 1.5.3 version using these links:

Adobe Air 1.5.3 for Windows

Adobe Air 1.5.3 for Mac

We will post an update as soon as a 2.0 compatible version of the Time Tracker is available and are very sorry for the inconvenience, we realise just how important the Time Tracker is to you.

Normal tasks can be completed in any order.

Dependent tasks are linear and must be completed or sent back (reactivated) in order.

For example these tasks below must be processed in the order:
1.0, 1.1, 2.0, 2.1, 2.2, 3.0, 3.1, 3.2, 3.2.1, 3.2.2

1.0 – ABC Proposal
        1.1 – Write Proposal
2.0 – ABC Website Design
       2.1 – Design Look and feel
        2.2 – Initial visuals
3.0 – ABC Website Development
        3.1 – Plan Development Changes
        3.2 – Start Development
                3.2.1 – Brief the contractors
                3.2.2 – Send images to contractors

By default all new projects are set to Normal, you can change them to dependant using the “Edit All” link on the Project Details Page for the specific project

In the pop-up window change task type from “Normal Tasks” to “Dependant Tasks” then click Save

When the pop-up refreshes you’ll see an “Active” column where you can select which task is currently active.

Now, wherever you see the project you won’t be able to edit, track time on or delete any tasks in the project unless they are the active task.

You can mark the active task as clicking the check-box alongside it. Using the drop-down list you can either mark the task as complete, or send the task back (so the previous task becomes active)

There are two email alerts specifically for dependant tasks, and these are really helpful. (check your settings for these in ADMINISTRATION > Email Alerts Settings)

It can be a good idea to set up a project for trying these out and see how these suit your organization.

As Chrome is one of our supported browsers we want to bring this to the attention of our users. We love the Chrome browser for its speed and functionality and our stats show that just over 15% of ProWorkflow users regularly use Chrome as their browser of choice – six months ago this was less than 10%.

The update, which affects users on Google Chrome 5.0.375.38 and above, has defaulted the ‘Pop-ups’ setting to ‘Block All’. This will mean that dropdowns such as the ‘Tools’ on Projects, Invoice or Quotes pages will not perform correctly.

To check your settings for this:

1. Go to the Tools menu and select ‘Preferences…’
   
2. Click the Under the Hood tab.
3. Click Content settings.
   
4. Click the Pop-ups tab.
5. Select ‘Allow all sites to show pop-ups’, alternatively click Exceptions to allow only pop-ups from your ProWorkflow server.

This will allow both pop-ups and dropdown menus to work correctly for our users who love Chrome.

A Google Chrome help topic covers this also: http://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=95472

If you have any questions about the latest Chrome update then please contact the ProWorkflow support team.

The most exciting update for QuickBooks users is the addition of sending the lines of an invoice from PWF to QB. Previously only the tax and non-tax totals were sent. After this update the quantity, description, unit price, total amount and tax code will be sent per line:

For QuickBooks users setting up the integration we’ve smoothed a step out of the process by now setting the tax/non-tax codes in PWF before sending.

As different country versions of QB use different codes we were finding that onset it was needed for users to go into QuickBooks and add extra tax codes – this was less than ideal.

The update will include an option to set these in PWF so that the data is sent already matching. This will be in ADMINISTRATION > QuickBooks Settings:

Current users of the QB integration will not need to update these settings, we will retain your current defaults.