ActionThis Release on 19 August
Posted on 20 August 2008 by Tim HowellYou may have noticed that we have made some changes to ActionThis. The following changes were released last Sunday.
Improvements to the Project area:
- The Project and Action Item pages have been merged. The new Project page has an Action Item and a Details tab. The Project page functionality can be found on the Details Tab, while the Action Item page functionality can be found on the Action Item tab.
- A team member can leave a project they are signed to by going to the Details tab and clicking “Remove me.”
- We have created the “(Other)” project that will display all Action Items assigned to you from Projects you are not a member of.
- A new tick box to allow the viewing “Show Closed Action Items” instead of the two “View Open” and “View Closed” text.
Parent/Sub Action Items on Action Profile Page:
- A Sub Action Items can now be created in the Action Profile Page by going to the Sub Action Item section and clicking “Add Action Item."
- Rollover command functionality (from Project page) is also available.
- When viewing a Parent Action Item you can navigate to a Sub Action Item by selecting it in the Sub-Action Item section.
- When viewing a Sub Action Item the Parent Action Item is displayed below the “Status:”
- When viewing a Sub Action Item you can navigate to a Parent Action Item by selecting its display name.
Outlook Client:
- When working offline the changes to an action item's workflow are now reflected correctly in the Workflow buttons (e.g. Accepting an Action Item off-line now causes the “Accept” button to be greyed out when the item is next opened and the action is recorded in the item's history).
- A Sub Action Item can now be created by right-clicking on the Parent Action Item and selecting “New Sub Action Item."
- Action items can now be dragged to different projects or even be moved to be a Sub Action Item of another Action Item.
If you have any questions or feedback please email support@actionthis.com.
Thanks for your continued support.
The ActionThis Team
Filed under: General , Product View comments (0)ActionThis wins gold at Microsoft awards
Posted on 18 August 2008 by Ed Robinson
 | A fantastic night on Thursday where ActionThis won the Software + Services solution of the year at the Microsoft New Zealand Partner awards. Congratulations to the core team - Aaron, Blair, Derek, Glenn, Jeff and to our totally awesome interactive designer Mark. Thanks to Randy Burns from Dallas City Hall for the great customer feedback. I'd also like to recognize the other nominees for this award: CNS Treasury Enlighten Design PolyMEDIA Each of these companies have also brought to market truly world-beating solutions and are great examples of software+services. |
Visit us at the 2008 Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference
Posted on 11 June 2008 by Ed RobinsonWe’re exhibiting at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in Houston, Texas July 7-10.
Visit us at Booth 120. We've just started signing ActionThis resellers - if you're an IT solutions company, project management or change management consultancy email us (or visit us at the conference) and we'll give you details on the reseller program.
Its great to be invited to exhibit at Microsoft's premier partner event. We're also proud to include four other New Zealand based companies: ActiveDocs, IPFX, Mindscape and Voola.
Its going to be a great event. Thanks to Microsoft and New Zealand Trade & Enterprise for sponsoring the exhibition booth.
New Features May 18
Posted on 19 May 2008 by Ed RobinsonWe've added new features to ActionThis
- Layout changes on the website. We've moved the website to support a screen resolution 1024x768 or higher - this means the reports are better laid out and there is more space for working with action items.
- Team workload report. This will now show you the team member workload for all projects where you have the 'manager' role
- Organization memberships. Invitations to join an organization now appear on the Dashboard
- Office client installation. Both the Excel and Outlook clients are now included in a unified installer
- Outlook Explorer. We've added full offline support to the Explorer
- Outlook reminders. Due reminders have always shown in Outlook's reminder window - we've changed the reminder time, so they appear at 8am on the date they are due
Behind the scenes, we've also put plumbing in place to support blackberry and Windows mobile clients and Microsoft Project synchronization - we're working on these at the moment. The next major release will have the Microsoft Project synchronization.
Filed under: General , Product View comments (0)Getting Started Guides
Posted on 28 April 2008 by Ed RobinsonWe've just released new user guides:
- ActionThis 5 minute tutorial. How to use the web-based task management
- ActionThis Outlook Client user guide. How to use the clients for Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007
- ActionThis User guide. How to set up your organization, work with projects and use reports.
These can be downloaded from the HowTo page: https://my.actionthis.com/Private/HowTo.aspx
Each guide is intentionally brief and to-the-point.
Filed under: Product View comments (0)New Features April 27
Posted on 27 April 2008 by Ed RobinsonToday we released some new features to make it easier to sign up and get started. Self-sign-up for new users is now simpler and quicker.
When you first sign in, you'll see a one-minute guided tour to help you get started.
You can access this tour at any time by navigating to the dashboard and choosing Show Tour from the top menubar. Yes - we'll be adding more tours soon
Installing the Excel Client on Windows Vista
Posted on 23 April 2008 by Ed RobinsonIf you have Windows Vista, you may experience set up installing the ActionThis Excel Client. The problem occurs because Windows Vista "User Access Control" prevents the setup from installing all the components. Here is a workaround for this, and we'll have a proper fix built into the setup soon.
NOTE: This doesn't affect the ActionThis Outlook Client, or the ActionThis Excel Client on Windows XP
How to install the ActionThis Excel Client on Windows Vista with UAC on
- Open Windows control panel
- In control panel, Open "User Accounts"
- In Control Panel > User Accounts, open "User Accounts"
- In Control Panel > User Accounts > Make changes to your account, click on "Turn User Account control on or off"
- In Control Panel > User Accounts > Make changes to your account > Turn User Account Control On or Off page, uncheck the box "Use User Account Control (UAC) to help protect your computer". Click OK
- You’ll need to restart your computer. After this you can install the ActionThis Excel client. After the Excel client is installed, you can turn UAC back on if you wish.
Tagging, Search and Project View in Outlook
Posted on 22 April 2008 by Ed RobinsonWhen we started building the ActionThis Outlook 2003 and 2007 add-ins 18 months ago, I gave the product team a brief:
- Make the experience as natural as possible - people want Outlook to behave like Outlook
- No splash screens - I hate anything that wastes my time just to advertise their product
- Integrate with Outlook's existing Inbox, tasklist, reminders and email - don't make people learn something new
- Don't mess with performance, stability or security
- Don't load the Outlook main window up with new toolbar icons
I detest software that takes over my computer, looks ugly or continually pesters me with splash screens. So the ActionThis Outlook client simply helps you assign and work with action items - quietly, securely, no impact on performance, with a natural experience for Outlook 2003 and 2007 users.
Recently, after a lot of thought, we added one new toolbar button to Outlook's main window - its an incredibly important one. The "explorer" button opens a window with action items grouped by project. It also enables you to tag/categorize action items and search.
Here is where to find the button, have fun exploring:
Introducing Larry
Posted on 21 April 2008 by Ed RobinsonIf you're new to ActionThis and want to experiment assigning action items via the website or Microsoft Outlook, try assigning an action item to Larry@actionthis.com.
Larry is our virtual team member, who automatically completes any action item you assign him. Use Larry to try out the assign, reassign and bounce back capabilities.
Filed under: General View comments (0)New Features April 13
Posted on 14 April 2008 by Ed RobinsonIts been a busy few weeks, and the team has just completed adding new capabilities to ActionThis.
- Our website has a new look emphasising that ActionThis task management is available for Microsoft Office 2007 and Microsoft Office 2003 as well as for the web.
- We've enhanced the blog and removed forums - all support is now provided through emailing support@actionthis.com
- We're getting ready to release new Office add-ins soon:
- Enhancements to the Microsoft Outlook add-in with a project explorer, tagging and search
- A new Microsoft Project 2003/2007 add-in giving two-way synchronization with ActionThis
- A new SharePoint 2007 webpart that adds ActionThis task management to SharePoint teamsites.
The Microsoft Outlook add-in enhancements will be released this week, with Project and SharePoint following soon after.
View comments (0)This weekend's release
Posted on 17 March 2008 by Ed RobinsonThis weekend’s release comprised a number of useful enhancements and tweaks across the board. Here are some highlights:
- Using Outlook for personal tasks – ActionThis is designed for teams, but it’s an effective personal task management tool too. If you’re using it to manage your own tasks, here’s something useful: Enter all the details of the task but leave the recipient empty – when you send the action item it will automatically be sent to yourself. Personal task management made easy.
- Printing from Outlook – For those of us who still like paper documents, we’ve improved how printing works from Outlook. You can use the Print button within an action item to get a useful printout of what you need to do. Simple, but effective.
- ActionThis Installation Troubleshooter – Should you have any difficulties connecting to ActionThis, we’ve enhanced the troubleshooting application which can be used to check the settings of your PC and, in conjunction with our Support team, help us resolve any issues.
- Report Subscription Enhancements – Now you can specify the day and time you subscribe to reports, so the reports can work the way you want. Need your task list before you arrive at work? Want to get a list of tasks the night before your day at work? No problem.
- Support for American Express credit cards – We can now process American Express credit cards. If you’ve hesitated to subscribe because we didn’t take Amex, then the barrier’s gone: we now support Visa, Mastercard and American Express.
Of course, there are also a range of other minor tweaks and fixes to the system. If you’ve got any feedback, feel free to post a comment or contact support@actionthis.com.
Filed under: General View comments (0)ActionThis CEO speaking at SaaS Conference
Posted on 11 March 2008 by Tim HowellJust as he did last year, Ed Robinson, CEO of ActionThis, will be talking at this year’s On Demand Software Delivery Summit, being run by BrightStar in Auckland, New Zealand on May 19.
Ed’s session is called “Reading the Tea Leaves: The Next Five Years for On-demand Services” and will be a future-looking presentation. Here’s the overview:
On-demand software is challenging the way we think about provisioning software services. What’s in store for the future? What trends are we likely to see from IT department investment and from On-demand vendors? This talk examines today’s landscape, the trends emerging from Europe and the United States and what this means for New Zealand companies in the future.
To find out more, and book yourself a place, visit http://www.brightstar.co.nz/nz/on-demand-software-delivery-summit.html for more information.
Tim Howell, CMO
Filed under: General View comments (0)What we're working on
Posted on 07 March 2008 by Ed RobinsonWe're preparing new features, concentrating on reporting and printing from Outlook and the website. These will be released in about a week, and here is a preview of the new report saving dialog.
- we're keeping it simple, with intuitive options for saving
- we're adding more flexibility around date ranges and when things get emailed.
BTW: the "pink" interior of the name box indicates you've got to enter something in the box. Our team felt it is more intuitive than a star * which many other sites use.
Ed
"Task management for teams"
Posted on 28 February 2008 by Tim HowellIf you’ve kept an eye on our home page, we’ve recently changed how we describe ActionThis. Instead of calling ourselves a “Next Generation Project Management” service, we now focus on what we do best: “Task management for teams.”
In marketing terms, this means we’ve changed our positioning; for everyone else, this means we’ve subtly changed how we describe ourselves to the wider market place.
The reason for this is simple: When people think of traditional project management solutions, they envisage Gantt charts, resource costing and other complex features which are typically the domain of products such as Microsoft Project.
At ActionThis, we’ve never seen ourselves as playing in this space – our goal is to help teams work more effectively together to drive the completion of their tasks. While people can use ActionThis to manage their projects and tasks, for us this is a means to an end – we need people to organize their data this way so that we can continue to drive the completion of these projects and tasks.
So we’ve changed how we describe ourselves, simply to make it clearer what we do and where our value lies.
In the past, we’ve talked about “execution,” and helping people finish what they start. This focus hasn’t changed, and we will continue to encourage and enforce execution. Our strengths lie in us being able to connect people together, from anywhere, whether they are co-workers, colleagues, partners, vendors or family members.
We believe our ability to assign and track tasks – or action items, as we call them – across the web, using Outlook or our web application, combined with our reporting and execution capabilities, means that we provide teams with an ideal tool to track the tasks they need to get done, and measure progress.
The change in positioning is a subtle, but important one, but for our users the proposition is the same: ActionThis is the tool you need to drive business outcomes across your team, so that you can get stuff done and go home early. The words may have changed, but the philosophy behind what we’re doing definitely hasn’t.
Tim Howell, CMO
Filed under: General View comments (0)New Features just added
Posted on 24 February 2008 by Ed RobinsonI'm pleased to announce we released new features last weekend. The vision of ActionThis is to help teams and individuals execute, so it’s great to add some more capabilities here.
OUTLOOK USERS: please note you'll need to update your ActionThis Outlook Client from the Website Setup|Downloads page.
Here is what's new:
1. "Auto bounceback". When you assign an action item to someone, if they ignore it or do nothing with it, after 7 days the action item will be returned to you - this enables you to follow up directly with the assigneee or choose an alternative approach.
2. Team workload report (premium members only). We have a preview of the team workload report showing managers workload for all people across projects they manage. We'll be doing more work here over the coming weeks, so please send comments/suggestions to support@actionthis.com.
3. General projects. These have been renamed to Personal projects - in preparation for more team and personal features we'll be adding soon.
4. Merging accounts. We've created a better experience for merging/adding email addresses to an existing membership. This is available through Setup|My Settings|Email addresses page.
5. ActionThis Outlook 2003 client. We fixed an installation issue affecting users with Windows Vista and User Account Control off.
Ed Robinson
Filed under: General View comments (0)Updates to Outlook and Excel clients
Posted on 05 February 2008 by Ed RobinsonI'm happy to say we're releasing updates to both the Outlook and Excel clients tonight (Monday 11pm PST).
These updates address two issues that affect a small number of people:
- Connectivity problems through certain corporate proxy servers
- Not enough permissions to install Outlook client, for some people on Windows Vista
The Outlook and Excel clients are very stable, and we're very happy to release these updates tonight, and solve some of the final connectivity issues.
Ed Robinson, CEO
Filed under: General View comments (0)Excel yourself with ActionThis
Posted on 31 January 2008 by Ed RobinsonLast week we quietly added a useful new feature to ActionThis: the ability to download ActionThis project data into Microsoft Excel.
The concept is a simple one: You work in ActionThis and use it to manage you and your team’s tasks for a particular project. You want to report on the status of a project and its tasks and add your own information, such as costs or other project-related metrics; you also may want to slice and dice the data a particular way, or simply want a report you can carry round.
Introducing the ActionThis Client for Excel.
Once installed, you have one-click access to the ActionThis service from within Excel. Enter your login details, select a project, and Excel does the rest, downloading all of the action items for a particular project into an Excel spreadsheet. Once downloaded, you’re then free to play around with the data, and any changes you make won’t affect the data in the ActionThis system. We even provide a template to get you started, featuring a collection of graphs.
This feature is available to premium members of ActionThis and works with both Excel 2007 and Excel 2003.
To find out more, download the software by going to Setup |Downloads within the ActionThis application. You can also read the User Guide to get started.
Filed under: General View comments (0)Working to live or living to work? Achieving work-life balance
Posted on 10 January 2008 by Tim HowellIt’s the start of a new year, the holidays are over, and people are returning to the office en masse. January is often a time to set goals for the year ahead, identifying those personal and work-related resolutions we want to achieve over the next 12 months.
For most of us, achieving a work-life balance is at – or near – the top of the list. Typically that means doing enough work to give us the time and resources we need in order to create opportunities for recreation. Or, as some people like to say, they would prefer to “work to live,” not “live to work.”
Here in New Zealand, that work-life balancing act is firmly tilted towards work. Last year, a Labour Department work-life balance survey found almost half of all respondents working between 40 and 50 hours a week, and 19% worked more than 50 hours. The most recent census puts it even higher, with a quarter of employees – 35% of men and 13% of women - saying they worked more than 50 hours a week. Other countries report similar metrics.
If this trend continues, and we work 20% more than we’re meant to, are we ever going to achieve the work-life balance? How can we reduce the number of hours people are working each week, to allow them to do what they want to do, not what they have to do?
For those of us in the technology industry, we often have a simple response: Use technology.
Realistically, technology alone won’t fix the problem. The reality is that, at the very least, any technology solution needs to be accompanied by changes to behaviour – at both an individual and organisational level – and the processes that are employed by those people and their technologies. Together, people, processes and technology work together – and this triumvirate is critical to driving change and improvement.
That said, there is an emerging breed of software solutions that are designed to help people execute – to get things done more effectively, helping individuals and teams to achieve what they need to do, and to finish what they start.
Software solutions such as ActionThis (www.actionthis.com) are designed to help people in a number of key ways. The premise of this particular solution is a simple one: people are great at starting things, but are lousy at finishing. For managers, the impact of this is simple: they spend most of their time following up and chasing people to find out if something has been completed, instead of focusing on strategic and long-term planning. In other words, they end up being reactive and not proactive.
And while there are many tools in the market that help people plan and collaborate, they all have fundamental weaknesses:
- Traditional project management and planning tools are often complex, and don’t often reflect reality. The onus is on a single person, usually the project manager, to update the plan and ensure its currency – usually requiring more follow-ups.
- Collaboration tools help people work together, but don’t drive outcomes. Using these tools we can collaborate in the same way we might hold a meeting, but unless someone drives outcomes, these end up being a never-ending party.
ActionThis takes the best of both these traditional approaches and adds some smarts to help inform and update people about what they need to do, to ensure visibility of activity and workload across a team, and to drive outcomes from tasks and activities.
Unlike web-centric tools, ActionThis also works with the tools we all use every day. Users can create and manage action items (ActionThis’ version of tasks) alongside their email messages in Microsoft Outlook, without having to learn a new tool. Similarly, they can download and analyse their action items in Microsoft Excel. And soon they will be able to synchronise their Microsoft Project plans with ActionThis, so that project managers no longer have to chase people to update their plans – as their project team updates their ActionThis action items, these updates can be synchronised back into the main project plan.
So how does ActionThis help us achieve that elusive work-life balance?
As individuals it helps us manage and have control over the tasks we need to perform – including tasks we have assigned ourselves, as well as those assigned to us by other people. What’s more, ActionThis will drive the completion of these tasks. No loose ends to worry about. Visibility into everything that’s going on. No surprises.
And if we have asked other people to perform tasks, we don’t need to spend as much time following up and chasing people; ActionThis will do this for us. In the meantime, we can use this time to deliver on those things we have to do.
The theory is simple: the more efficient we are, the more likely it will be that we reclaim some personal time and therefore shift the work-life balance away from work. And, if we need to do more work, then we can simply get more done in the time we have available.
Tim Howell, CMO
Filed under: General View comments (0)