Project categories for improved workflow management

July 17, 2010

ClientSpot now supports customizable categories for your projects.

In a nutshell, you can define categories to group projects by a certain type (like Web Development, Graphic Design, Marketing), or by a certain phase of it’s lifecycle (like Proposal, Approved, Phase 1, Phase 2, etc). This can help with focusing on just certain projects, such as ones that need followup to get approved, or those with certain billing requirements.

Getting started with categories is simple - you can create them for use with any existing project or new projects, and the categories you create are available for use in any project in your account. Read on for details.

Creating and Editing Categories
To create categories, just add or edit any project, and you’ll see a new Category field. As an Administrator user, you will see a link next to that field called “Edit categories”. Click that link to show the Category Editor popup. From here you can add a new category with a click. You can also rename existing categories, or remove unused categories easily. Note that you can’t remove a category that’s being used by a project (you’ll get a warning when you try to do this).

Filtering Projects by Category
Once you’ve got your projects assigned to categories, you can now filter them from the main Projects tab. There are two new options from the Project List page - filtering the list by Category, and sorting the list by category.

To filter, choose a category name from the dropdown menu. This will show only projects in that category on the list page. You can also filter by “any” or “none” as the category, to show all projects, or only those without a category assigned.

You can also sort the project list by category - just choose Category from the “Sort by” dropdown menu to see projects sorted by the category, then due date.

 

Improved email integration, QuickBooks support

April 11, 2010

A few recent product updates include support for email file attachments, editable file descriptions, task timer enhancements, and improved QuickBooks integration.

File Attachment Support in Email Integration
ClientSpot can now read and import email file attachments from dropbox emails and comment replies. Files can now be attached to new comment or task emails sent to the project dropbox, or to email replies to comment notifications. ClientSpot puts these files into the appropriate project under an “#Email Attachments” folder.

Editable File Descriptions
You can now optionally add a short descriptions when uploading a file. You can also edit the description for any existing file by hovering over the file name (a popup menu will appear with the option to edit the description). File descriptions can help you better track the purpose and status of files without having to rename the file.

Task Timer Description
The Task Timer now lets you directly enter a description when you select a task to work on. The description is used for the time entry when you click “Start” for the task. You can see time entry descriptions from the main Time report by clicking the “Show detailed entries” checkbox.

Improved QuickBooks Integration
ClientSpot now gives the option of exporting Tasks as QuickBooks Items or as QuickBooks Notes (previously exported Tasks as Items). For generic tasks (e.g. Consulting), Items are probably the best fit, since they can carry billing rates, etc. For more specific tasks, Notes are a better fit, and you can also specifiy a default QuickBooks item to map to your tasks. ClientSpot and QuickBooks users who also use QuickBooks can now more easily export time entries for invoicing and billing.

 

Staying under budget has never been easier

December 15, 2009

ClientSpot now makes it easier for you and your team to stay under budget, and make projects more profitable.

Set Project Budgets
You can now set budgets (in hours) for projects. As you track time against projects, the main project list now shows you the total time logged and the budget you set, along with a little graph that show project health - green for safely within budget, yellow when you’re approaching the limit, and red if you go over. You can also see percent complete and time remaining by hovering over the graph.

Set Task Budgets
You can also set budgets at the task level - this can especially useful when working with subcontractors who are just doing a few items for the project.

You can see task time totals and whether they are over budget from the main project screen (over budget tasks show their time in red).

You can also use the main Task List view (click View Task List from the Projects tab) to show budget information with totals across all tasks, or filter by person or client. Excel exports also now include the budget information from this view.

Track Time against Budgets
The Task Timer also supports task-level budgets by showing the total time logged for a selected task (in addition to time logged for the selected day), and time remaining for that task (if set).

 

Email integration and project dropboxes

November 23, 2009

ClientSpot now plays nicely with email.

Reply to comments by email
You can now reply to comment notification emails, and those replies will be added to the project. The only restrictions are that the reply has to be a plain text email (versus an HTML email). The system can also handle replies that have mixed content (combination of HTML and text), but only the text portion will be used.

Create new comments or tasks by email
You can also create new comments and tasks for a project using a special project dropbox. Administrators can get the project dropbox address from the Edit Project view.

To create a task, send an email with a subject starting with ‘@task’ followed by the task name. Your email message can include task notes. If you address the email to a valid person in your ClientSpot account, the system will try to assign the task to that person as well.

Both features currently require the sender’s address to be a valid ClientSpot user for your account.

 

Task tracking and email notification updates

November 02, 2009

We’ve rolled out a few small enhancements we think you’ll like:

Find out what’s new with improved notification emails
Email notifications for project and task updates now show exactly what’s changed.

Choose specific people to notify of comments and replies
You can now choose who you’d like to be notified of a new comment and any replies. This supplements the company-level defaults if you’ve got a few extra people to include.

Show which tasks are waiting for responses
You can now set a task status to “Waiting for response” to let team members know that you need input or questions answered.  New filtering options also let you look for flagged tasks.

Something else you’d like to see?  Let us know at our new feedback forum:

http://myclientspot.uservoice.com