Schedule team members more easily

December 08, 2011

A unique challenge for distributed or virtual teams is that they’re often not all on fixed schedules. Calendars can help, but the problem isn’t so much knowing exactly when someone is available as how much time they have.

So we’ve introduced some new features to make finding out team member availability a snap. This can be used for scheduling new tasks or projects based on who’s available to work on them, and how much time they have, say, over the next week or so.

Set My Availability
You can now set your own availability, which means how many hours you’re available for each upcoming day.

Just click once for each day the number of hours you’re free, or click “N/A” to show that you don’t have free time for that day. You can set your availability as far out into the future as you want, and of course can change it at any time once you know more about your schedule.

Show Team Availability
You can now see who’s available on your team in one simple view.

See at a glance how many hours each team member has available in the upcoming days.

Let us know what you think about these new additions, and what else you might need for better scheduling and workload management.

 

Task comments and file linking now available

June 03, 2011

We’ve gotten several requests recently for a way to keep comments and files related to an individual task grouped together. The problem these users reported was that especially when working with subcontractors it was difficult to manage a single task through project-wide comments and files.

So we’ve introduced a couple of new features that solve at least a part of this issue.

Task Comments
You can now add comments directly to a Task.

Just click on the Task name to go to a new Task Details page that shows any comments or related files. You can add a comment there or view other comments about the task.

Task Folder and Related Files
You can now link a project file folder to an individual task.

This will display the associated files when you are viewing the Task Detail page as above in a new Related Files area.

You can link a task to a folder from the Task Detail page as well, or remove the link. You can also create a new file folder from that page for convenience.

 

Task Categories and better QuickBooks integration

May 14, 2011

Two recent updates for ClientSpot that make managing tasks easier, plus make QuickBooks integration more seamless.

Task Categories
You can now create and set a Category on each task under a project. Task Categories are per account, and can be reused across all your projects.

You can create Task Categories to help you organize what kind of work you’re doing, and then filter on these categories from the project view, or the main task list.

QuickBooks export with Task Categories
For QuickBooks users, you can now take advantage of Task Categories automatically, since they can now be used as QuickBooks Items. When exporting time entries to QuickBooks, the Item name will be the category of the Task you entered time under, and will be imported as a matching Item in QuickBooks.

This can then be used to setup specific billing rates for different types of tasks as QuickBooks Items, simplifying invoicing from QuickBooks.

This feature is automatically enabled when you choose to map ClientSpot Tasks to QuickBooks Notes in the Settting panel of your account (previously just used a default Item name for exports). Tasks without categories will continue to use the default Item name you setup in the Settings.

 

Recurring Tasks and Private Folders now available

October 13, 2010

Two frequently requested product updates are now available in ClientSpot, including support for recurring tasks, and the ability to have private folders that your team can see, but your clients can’t.

Recurring Tasks
There is now a new checkbox in the “Add Task” screen that lets you make a task recurring. You can choose a frequency (daily, weekly, every 2 weeks, or monthly), and the number of recurrences (up to 30).

ClientSpot will create a set of recurrences of the task starting from the due date you specify, using the frequency and number of copies you specify.

Each recurrence can be independently managed, assigned, completed, or have time logged against it. You can also change individual task due dates.

Private Folders
ClientSpot has had file folders in projects for quite some time now, but this enhancement lets you create a new type of folder - one who’s contents are only visible to people in your company with access to the project.

To create a private folder, just use the current “Add Folder” link, and check the new box that says “Make this folder private”.

You can directly upload files to a private folder, or move existing files into a private folder to prevent clients from seeing those files. This can really help when you need your team to share source materials and documents, but want to limit clients to seeing only finalized or approved deliverables.

 

Task Dependencies for Flexible Scheduling

August 17, 2010

ClientSpot now supports simple task dependencies so you can change the date of one task, and have the ones following it automatically adjust.

Using Task Dependencies
You don’t need to explicitly define any relationships between tasks. Instead, once you’ve assigned a due date for a task, when you go back later to change it, a new option will appear that lets you choose to:

1. Adjust all task dates following the one you’re editing
2. Skip weekend days when adjusting task dates

Tasks that have already been completed, or tasks without due dates won’t be affected by this.

The adjustment works by keeping the same number of days between your later tasks and earlier ones. If you choose to skip weekends, the adjustment works by only counting “business days” (non-weekend days).

You can adjust dates forward or backwards with the same effect, though you’ll most likely adjust dates forward in time.

Project Templates and Task Dependencies
When used in conjunction with project templates (the Duplicate Project option from the project edit page), you can now create pre-defined task lists that have a fixed number of days in between each.

When you duplicate the project template, those same dates will initially be set for tasks in the copy of the project, but you can then change the due date for the first task to shift all the following dates as well.