Since then, Basecamp has made some pretty major changes in the look, feel, and overall use of its project management software. Back in quarter 1, 2012, they completely overhauled Basecamp’s foundation – originally calling the project (before release) Basecamp Next. Since then this new streamlined version as completely replaced the old version of Basecamp (now called Basecamp Classic).

Many of its foundations are the same (to-do lists, calendars, and messaging), but Basecamp has definitely altered itself to stay updated in an ever-evolving marketplace.

My team and I have been using (and reviewing) Basecamp for years. With the rollout of some new features for Basecamp, I thought it was time to update Zincubate and give our readers a new Basecamp review.

Basecamp Classic & The Latest Version: What’s the Same

The first thing I’d like to do is list what features are the same between Basecamp Classic and the latest version Basecamp (hence, these are the features that I’ve already reviewed).

• Projects: the organization of projects on the Basecamp Dashboard is different, but the overarching idea is the same. Each project represents a set of activities and communication by team members.
• To-Do Lists: to-dos are nothing new for Basecamp. Each team member is assigned to-dos underneath a specific project.
• Messages: messages are still the same, but simply have been assigned a new name: Discussions.

Basecamp Classic & The Latest Version: What’s Different

The foundation on which Basecamp lies is essentially the same, but there has been an introduction of newer features and an omission of a couple features I’d like to see return.

The New Dashboard

It only makes sense to start where everyone starts in Basecamp: the Dashboard. After using Basecamp Classic for so long, logging into the latest version of Basecamp presents a little bit of a cleaner display. The menu has been updated and has a few different options:

• Everything: a gateway to literally everything including links to all to-dos, all discussions, etc.
• Progress: see what went on for specific days within a project.
• Everyone: where you can add new team members and click on each team member’s name to see what they’re working on.
• Me: a list of everything you’ve done or need to work on.

In addition to the new menu bar, the Basecamp Dashboard presents projects a little differently (see below).

The circle icons represent team members working on that particular project (real pictures can also be uploaded, but I kind of like these faces!). In addition to the projects, you will also find a menu bar and a handy search bar.

Lack of Time Tracking

This is the first feature I noticed was missing – and for good reason. Time tracking is absolutely fundamental when it comes to business (especially small businesses). Team member time is precious, and it’s important to know where it’s going and where it’s being spent. I should also point out that time tracking IS available, but you must access it through Basecamps’ add-ons, i.e. it’s NOT standard.

Another project management tool, Apollo, does a fantastic job with time tracking. Not only can you track time, but you can also categorize it and mark it for billing purposes (i.e. billable, non-billable, billed). Again, time tracking should definitely come standard and I think this is a misstep for Basecamp.

The Introduction of Text Documents

A recent addition to Basecamp is the availability of Text Documents. From what I can see and understand, these documents are mean to be notes that can be edited and updated for everyone to see. When completing the Basecamp review, I noticed there were no writeboards. While this is the case, I believe Text Documents were created to replace the writeboards since they essentially serve the same functions.

Playing Catch-Up

Another new feature is Catch Up. If you’re taking a day away from work (who am I kidding? That never happens!), you now have the option to catch up on what happened within a project for that day. I think this feature will prove very beneficial for all Basecamp users.

Project Management Tool Innovation & Competition

All in all, I think 37signals continues to do a good job of keeping Basecamp updated and fresh to attract new users and please current ones. However, with newer tools like Apollo gaining ground, Basecamp should be ready to innovate even further to continue being the big player in the project management market.Similar Posts:

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A tab bar at the top of the screen gives access to all the key functions and views available to the user and the tabs are clearly named.  The My Home screen is the place where all your work is summarised and accessed, including centrally stored documents, timesheets, calendar, messages and your to-do list.

Central storage of project related documents and files is becoming a must for good collaborative working and general time management – who want’s to spend endless minutes and more searching email archives or network folders trying to find the right version of a document? – and PROJECTMANAGER.com does this well.  Folders and sub-folders can be created to help categorize documentation and a search facility makes finding documents simple.

To help get users productive quickly or introduce new features to existing users, Projectmanager.com offers a comprehensive range of online video tutorials and around 4 webinars per month covering beginner and advanced topics.

Under the All tab, access additional features, including:

• Dashboard to get a comprehensive view of all the work you have under way, so you can see quickly where things are working to plan or falling behind.  Nice though it is, the Dashboard view can be customized to your your specific needs, for example, hiding views that you don’t need.
• Roadmap – see your list of project tasks in a Microsoft Project-style view with a table in the left pane and a Gantt view in the right. This is a comfortable view for most project managers and gives a strong visual representation of the status of the project and what’s left to be done.
• Manage your project resources – assign resources to specific tasks and then manage their performance as the task progresses.   The integrated resource scheduling means you, as the project manager, can see, in real-time, just how well (or not) they are doing.

In addition, PROJECTMANAGER.com offers built-in risk & issue management which most of its competitors don’t, even though this is a key aspect of any successful project.   All team members can raise risks and issues and the system will use the applied ratings to give an overall score for the project as either low, medium or high. How useful is that!

To sign up for a trial version, please visit: http://www.projectmanager.com.Similar Posts:

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Interview with TimeTac CEO Bernd Pichlbauer

I recently had the opportunity to speak the cofounder and CEO of TimeTac, a cloud-based employee time tracking program to find out just what time tracking software has to offer and what sets TimeTac apart from other time tracking tools.

What is TimeTac?

TimeTac is cloud based, online, employee time tracking. You can record your working hours from wherever you have Internet access, on whatever device. In the morning, you simply log in, state what tasks or projects you’re working on, and then log out at the end of the day. You get an exact, accurate record of where you spend your time, which helps make sure you and your employees get paid the right amount and those invoices get dispatched to clients. The software helps you plan future appointments, improves employee motivation on tasks and even allows you to book your holiday time. You gain all of that, from simply saying “I went to work today.”

What are the key features that differentiate TimeTac from other time-tracking software?

Everyone offers the ability to bill clients. It’s incredibly useful, but not groundbreaking. The time you record with TimeTac also helps the organization and its employees. You can create working time models, where you can define core hours, overtime hours and overtime rates. You can also use the inbuilt leave day planner to manage your vacation requests, and apply for compensation time off when you’ve worked additional hours. TimeTac is a time tracking program that uses recorded time data to become a useful human resource planner. There are even NFC options for our software, which are ideal for construction sites, retail sites, factories etc.

What is the most difficult part of managing employee time without time-tracking software?

Automation. You don’t have control. TimeTac does not pry on what employees are doing; the responsibility lies solely with the employee. However, when you or your employees use TimeTac, you know that time is being recorded accurately and precisely. This makes invoicing precise, reduces quarrels in the workplace and gives you the security that everyone is working on their projects and tasks.

Why did you create TimeTac?

Working as freelancers didn’t make managing time easy. Clients would receive many hours free labor on a project, simply because we could not accurately maintain a record of our time. When I was thinking of hitting the pillow in Singapore, the others were travelling through Europe and eating breakfast in Mexico; work was less than productive, to put it nicely. We wanted a solution where we could work independently, whilst accurately recording where our days went. We then thought of TimeTac and it soared into the market; not just to freelancers on the open road, but also to companies of all sizes, in all sectors.

How many users do you currently have?
We currently have more than 100 clients, which totals towards approximately 1500 users. A large proportion of our customers originate from German speaking lands, but we recently went live in English, attracting clients from the USA, UK, France and India.

What is the most surprising thing about running TimeTac?

You never know where your next customer is coming from. One day you’ll be answering an e-mail enquiry to a company of 10 employees, then the next day you’ll receive a phone call from a company looking to accommodate several hundred employees. The mixture between companies is what we love the most; it’s often the smaller companies that have requests for features that they would like us to create for them!

Where do you see your company in 1 year? 5 years?

We’ve got a few features coming in the next year that will widen our scope of abilities even further than our competitors. This will help us build more into the international market over the next 12 months. As for 5 years’ time; I can see us as a market leader.

Anything else you would like to add about your company?

I mentioned creating features for clients a minute ago. That is what we call our main selling point. TimeTac is modularly developed, so it can be customized in many ways. We often build custom made solutions for businesses, pulling customers away from the big names. When there is a feature that somebody needs, our customers know to just give us a call and request it; everything from different displays to customized export functions. The direct feedback and request relationship builds our program, builds our customer base, and builds our clients themselves.

For more information about TimeTac or to sign up for a FREE 30-day trial, click here.Similar Posts:

• Tracking Employee Time, Basecamp
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The Ajax interface means Apollo is zippy and nice to use.  The interface is sleek and clean but at the same time it is intuitive and easy to use.

With functionality to cover all the aspects of project management that a good project manager would need to hand, Apollo seems to be hitting the mark in terms of complexity. Feedback from users shows that, in terms of features, some of Apollo’s competitors are way too simple, and the more complicated competitors are way too complicated.

With a strong emphasis on customer relationship management (CRM), Apollo offers an integrated solution that lets companies manage not just their projects but their all-round day to day business.  Not only does it provide a set of integrated and comprehensive features, Apollo is simple to use, letting teams get up and running quickly with little need for any training.

Some recent testimonials from customers give a good feel for the reason for the popularity of this solid project management application:

•  You said you were working on the mobile site and I tried it just recently and thought “oh, it looks the same” then I used it and everything works like lightning. I just wanted to say well done!
• I would like to see a bit of a UI upgrade so you can SEE it is new/better/awesome, but aside from that what i really wanted to say is thank you!
• ­Almost a month using Apollo…Total satisfaction…
• Thanks so much for adding FreshBooks integration. I was already a happy user, now I’m ecstatic. Just sent off an invoice for many billable tasks. You guys rock.
• The new timer is perfect. Thank you for implementing the suggestion.Y’all are awesome!

The testimonials from happy users show that Apollo not only delivers on easy to use functionality, but the development team really listens to its clients, implementing new suggestions where they will add benefits to their wide user-base.

For more information on Apollo and to sign up for a free trial, please visit: apollohq.com.Similar Posts:

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• Pole striding: when placing trot and canter poles for horses and ponies, the distance between them is often measure in ‘fairy’ steps (placing the feet heel to toe).  But a European size 37 foot is very different to a size 41, for example.  The app takes the user’s shoe size (in a variety of international formats) and tells the user how many fairy steps are needed to measure out trot & canter poles and also bounce jumps, for both horses and ponies.
• Draw course: riders often come across good jumping exercises that they would like to save to refer back to.  The draw course feature lets the user draw out, with their finger, a set of jumps in a sequence, automatically numbering them as they go, with a line style for uprights and a different line style for spread jumps.

As a technology company, Equinox-Apps, of course, makes use of technology to help manage the development of its apps and has tried out a number of online, collaborative project management solutions in earnest to assess the benefit to their business and finally settled on Apollo.  Why? Equinox-Apps has an extensive base of contacts that they need to manage, covering development contractors, outlets for marketing and press releases and advertisers.  They needed to integrate good management of their contacts directly alongside the management of their development projects.

The strong CRM component within Apollo, coupled with the task management and calendar features has given Equinox-Apps the functionality they need in a single application.  They can open up access to individual contractors as they come on board for new projects. Being Ajax based, Apollo is responsive, too.

My Pole Strides is now available for download in the App Store: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/mypolestrides/id569658783?mt=8

For more information on Equinox-Apps & their iPhone apps, please visit: www.equinox-apps.com

For more information on Apollo and to sign up for a free trial account, please visit: apollohq.com.

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What is Wedoist.com and Todoist?

Wedoist, launched in 2010, offers users the ability to manage projects, add status updates, tasks and upload documents. Multiple users can collaborate on any project they’ve been invited to. Any task, status update or file can be labeled to any specific person or everyone at once. All tasks (from a single project or across all projects) can be synchronized with a calendar software through iCal feeds. Wedoist’s goal is to allow people working online to easily manage their workload through an online application with a minimalist design and ease of use should improve team productivity and communication and not stand in the way of managing the tasks at hand.

Todoist was published in January of 2007. It is a web-based task management service developed by Doist.  In July 2012, with the implementation of HTML5 technology, Todoist became the first cloud-based task manager incorporating offline accessibility across all customer services. Todoist’s vision is to offer easy to use software with a simple and clean design which should not stand in the way of managing personal tasks and increase the productivity of the user by letting him concentrate on the task itself and not the management of his to-dos.

Would you tell us a little bit more about the product and some of the challenges about developing it?

The greatest challenge was to combine simplicity with usability. It’s very easy to add as many features as you can and create a complex product difficult to use, but it’s a big challenge to make a powerful app while maintaining a clean design and ease-of-use. Another challenge is of course cross-platform compatibility. We offer a wide variety of browser plugins, email client add-ons, mobile apps – all cloud based, but also capable of offline work thanks to the HTML5 technology which we’ve implemented as the first online task manager service utilizing this technology.

What Are Some of the Software’s Special Features?

Todoist enables creations of tasks and sub-tasks grouped within projects and sub-projects which can then be “checked off” upon completion. Each task can have a due date, label, priority or notes attached to it. Tasks can be viewed within projects or search results – temporal, by label or by priority. All tasks can be synchronized with a calendar software through an iCal feed.

Todoist can be accessed directly through the web-app. It boasts a variety of browser plugins for Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox or “Todoist Anywhere” (a JavaScript-based overlay accessible through a bookmarked URL in any browser), an iOS app, and a mini version optimized for touch screens. All these features are HTML5-based and can be accessed on and offline.

How Does WeDoist and ToDoist Project Management Software Help Small Businesses?

Wedoist helps any team of any size to “meet” in one place regardless of their location and concentrate of the projects and tasks at hand. You can visit www.doist.io to see how Doist’s own team is spread out around the world (and hardly any of them have ever met)! The complete history of every status update, comment, added or completed tasks is accessible in one place giving the team a great view of how they progress, which motivates them to reach the goals set for a project.

Small businesses no longer need to purchase very expensive project management tools, with Wedoist, project management software has become affordable for even small businesses.

Are Either Products Highly Technical to Use?

One of the greatest things about Todoist is its ease of use. It is often described as “minimalist.” No one needs to read through long manuals or go through trainings to be able to use the software. You set up your account in 20 seconds and you can start using the service immediately. Everything is very intuitive. Todoist even supports “regular date” formats. You can type “every day” or “next Monday” to set a due date.

Thanks to intuitive design, tasks or project can be easily broken down into sub-tasks and sub-projects – all without any technical knowledge. The general simplicity also applies to Wedoist. Although project management is more complex than task management, we believe that with Wedoist we have managed to create a simple and intuitive project management software.

What Considerations Were Taken to Keep It Simple?

The company philosophy has always been to help people increase their productivity, and an important step to achieve this goal is to write things down and break them into smaller goals which we rendered possible with Todoist. At the same time it should also be accessible from everywhere – so a person can manage their tasks no matter where he or she is.

We currently support nine platforms and have great integration with a lot of them – for example, our Chrome plugin makes it possible to add Gmail emails as tasks (and hence manage a person’s busy inbox). Our desktop apps bring Todoist to the desktop and integrate nicely into both Windows and Mac environments (it’s easy to add a task from anywhere using a global keyboard shortcut). We do not quite support as many platforms for Wedoist yet, but we’re working on it.

For more information please visit Todoist.com.Similar Posts:

None Found

Of course, by using an SaaS you are sacrificing some say over how those tools are used. With only a handful of employees and contractors, though, this is probably the least of your concerns.

But, what about when the time comes to expand and grow your business? What happens when you suddenly have too many projects to keep track of in Basecamp or when you want your CRM and project management software to be directly integrated? This is one of the biggest challenges facing small businesses and startups – how to scale without jumping into the murky depths of dangerous waters.

Our Recent Jump

To be perfectly honest, I just moved from spreadsheet to Basecamp a few months ago. I had attempted to use a project management tool a few times and it simply wasn’t necessary. But with the growth of my business and bringing in new contractors and clients, we needed something more robust than my head and Basecamp did the trick.

Don’t get me wrong – I love 37Signals and their products – but they are admittedly very simple tools. If you’ve read ReWork, Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson’s blueprint for startups, you know it’s on purpose and they are well aware that, at a certain point, customers will move on to bigger tools that can scale with their needs.

That’s what happened to us and it was a tough decision. Are we ready to scale? Do we really need all these extra tools? Will I spend more time managing this than doing real work?

These were the same questions I asked before signing up for Basecamp, but even more pronounced. It turned out that the change made sense for us, so we migrated our content writing contact info out of Basecamp and Highrise and into the new service, Podio.

But how do you know it’s time – how do you know you’re ready for a move to a bigger, more feature rich SaaS – whether for project management or for your CRM, invoicing or CMS?

Remember the Purpose of Software

The goal of software is to make your life easier. Specifically, it should streamline processes and make it possible to automate things someone will do instead of you. So, if you spent the last 3 years talking to all clients and you recently hired an account manager, you need software to keep track of those communications.

Ideally, the right software will make it so that if the person you hire to do a job quits or is let go, you can plug someone else into that role with minimal training and everything they need will be right there.

At the same time, the right software will have as few “extra” features as possible. Extra boxes to check, forms to fill out and calendars to track just means less time to get real work done and much steeper learning curves that can hold back your staff. We chose Podio because it was customizable to a degree that other services were not, so we could remove all those extra boxes. Other tools are even more powerful but we didn’t need those features so we chose what worked for us.

That’s the key in selecting any SaaS for your company – finding a tool that fits your needs as perfectly as possible. There is no universal “best” project management tool or CRM – it’s all about what works for your company. So, sit down, write up a list of specific things you need YOUR software to do and then look for the option that best matches them.

It takes longer and may require more in-depth research, but the extra time is well worth it in the end.Similar Posts:

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Here at Zincubate, we’ve had the opportunity to work with a variety of project management software, and we were recently able to give Bitrix24 a try. After experimenting with project management tools such as Basecamp, I have to say that Bitrix24 is a breath of fresh air.

Zincubate’s Social Network

Bitrix24’s main differentiator is that it’s not simply a project management tool. It combines project management and social media to create a beautiful portal to access all aspects of the company’s progress. Bitrix24’s social intranet makes it extremely easy to communicate with coworkers. Think of it as your company’s Facebook – a community dedicated solely to you and your coworkers. There is the Activity Stream, Instant Messenger, Conversations, and even a “Like!” button (I can think of a number of times when I’ve wanted to “like” something awesome a coworker has done).

A Fresh Take on Project Management

I find that many online project management tools look the same – the same boring interface that looks too much like work. There is something to be said for a website like Bitrix24 that is able to make project management software both effective and clean.

Too often, I find that project management tools look cluttered and unorganized. With Bitrix24, everything I need is easy to organize hence making everything easier to find. Whether you’re searching for a specific message, task, file, or employee, Bitrix24 has it covered. Bitrix24 makes it easy.

One of my favorite features of Bitrix24 is the ability to create workgroups. Keeping people/duties organized is crucial whether you’re working with a company of 5 or 5,000. With Bitrix24, employees can placed into their respective workgroups to keep track of progress for their respective department. Do you need to locate a document that was created by your Marketing Director? It’s easy to do with Bitrix24.

Bitrix24 is Project Management Software Made Easy

All in all, Bitrix24 makes everything simple. It’s attractive, easy to use, and combines (in one place) the tools every modern business needs: communication, organization, and accountability. These tools are invaluable, and Bitrix24 combines the best business management apps and processes into one attractive and easy-to-use portal.Similar Posts:

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Projects are delivered by people to people, giving us a project team and a set of stakeholders.  For the project to be guaranteed a level of success, everyone involved needs to know a number of things, including:

• How the project is going?
• What they need to do and when they need to it by
• The status of other activities that need their input or that they are dependent on to carry out their own allocated tasks
• Has anything (most likely unexpected) happened that will affect their planned activities?
• Will the project be delivered on time and, if not, when?
• And so very many more…

Without a strong flow of information to the right people at the right time, the project cannot hope to succeed (and if it does it is despite the poor management rather than because of it)!  So, Kona aims to answer this challenge by bringing aspects of social media to the project management collaboration arena to produce an integrated solution that encourages project members to come together in a way that makes communication and engagement with others a second-nature part of their day-to-day way of working.  Offering conversations, instant chat and shareable files, it’s easy to keep in touch with team members.

By placing the focus on both working and personal life projects and activities, Kona looks to address that balance between work and home and helps to ensure that you’re not double-booking yourself over a personal set of activities, for example, rather than having your personal stuff somewhere else.

From a user perspective, Kona has an appealing interface that is easy to find your way around.  The functionality is comprehensive and it does what it says on the tin! It’s worth noting if you’re working on an older browser, Kona wont!  It also requires Google Chrome Frame Plug-in to be installed for IE7/8 to get the best out of it.

Although only recently released, Kona is already boasting strong sign-up numbers, with some very positive feedback.

Currently the product is being offered free – so sign-up and make the most of it at www.kona.com.Similar Posts:

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• Identify and manage project risks – putting mitigations in place for identified risks, means there is a plan in place to cope with the unexpected if and when it happens.  Risk identification is a key activity for any project. If not done well, unexpected problems can cause significant negative impacts on project timescales which, in many cases, if they’d been planned for could have had their potential impact reduced.
• Things will always go wrong, even with the best of planning, so, most importantly, make sure you recognize when things are not going to plan and that you take action to bring things back into line.
• Use a good tool – few people can & would manage complex projects using anything other than an electronic tool.  There are many online tools available, that are available on-demand on a monthly subscription.  Apollo is a popular project management application that is available on a number of different subscription offers to suit most business pockets.  Using a good tool, like Apollohq.com, lets you plan and manage your projects and tasks and integrated functionality lets you manage not only time in terms of task schedule and durations, but also, the time in terms of individual work on tasks.  Build daily to-do lists, report on which tasks are due or are running late, to help keep your project on track. Apollo also supports good collaborative working amongst project team members.  Working collaboratively helps get results quicker by keeping team members in touch and ensuring everyone has the most current and up to date information.
• Delegate! Sometimes, it’s easier to do tasks yourself and this can be a huge downfall in effective project management. An effective project manager who knows how to manage their time will let others do what they’re good at and ensure they are available to oversee the big picture of what’s going on.
• Build in contingency – when planning, don’t assume things will always go to plan. It’s really important, especially if you’re under pressure to deliver by a given date, that you build in additional slack time so that if tasks slip, there’s other places you can make up the time so that the overall project doesn’t have to be delayed.

Good time management is one skill that’s worth spending time on to help ensure project success!Similar Posts:

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