“What are you working on?” is a link at the top of your DeskAway account, through which you let other team members know what you are currently working on. This is similar to a Twitter update except that you use it only within your team members currently.

Quick Facts
a. This is a brief description of what you are working on right now.
b. See everyone’s updates and keep a track of what all your team members are doing in real time.
c. You can even set your update from within a project (on the left side of the Project Overview page).
e. The account owner can clear anyone’s status so be sure to play by the rules.

Wishing you all Happy Holidays and A Prosperous & Productive New Year ahead!

Cheers!

The DeskAway Team

An entrepreneur who has just got on to DeskAway pinged me the other day and asked me a rather rudimentary question “How do I add people into my Project?”  So here is how:

If you are the Account Owner or Super User, you can ADD / MODIFY / DELETE teammates from the TEAM tab on DA.

Here is where you’ll find the Team option

Under the TEAM tab, there is an option to Add Team Member. Here you can add a new team members to your account.While adding a team member, you can define the User Type for each member. User Type defines the extent of permissions / rights / access that user will have in the DA account. There are 3 user types:

Limited User: You can add people you are collaborating with, who are from outside your company as Limited Users. Limited Users can also be those who are working on specific parts of a particular project. Say, a team member of a UI design team or the free lance designer.

Regular User: Team leads, people who have a coordination role to play in a particular project, those who need to manage a small team or a particular project - all these guys can get Regular User access. Like the Team Lead of a UI design team. He can not only monitor the UI team, but can also add tasks / assign tasks, create events, share his thoughts on the project via the blog to motivate the team, etc.

Super User: A Super User can do all the things the other two users can do and more. This user can create and manage projects by adding milestones, tasks, etc.; assign people to the projects, manage and monitor the team mate’s progress within the project. An Account Owner / another Super User can give this user permission to add other users to the account and modify the account settings on DeskAway. However, these two permissions should be given to team members who are high up in the responsibility chart of the organization. Managers and CXOs in an organization are ideal people to be assigned permissions of Super Users. Team mates who are owners of a particular project, who are required to analyze data and progress of a set of projects, etc.

At MVP, the partners have Super User access. Each company we work with has a Project in their name and only team mates of that particular company has access to their project on MVP, as Regular Users. Anyone outside of that company, who is a part timer, free lancer, consultant - all these guys are Limited Users.  I have added all the various entrepreneurs I work with as team mates to my MVP account, globally. This makes it easy for me to add specific users to specific projects.

Adding users to specific projects:

Within a project, there is another Team option; from here you can manage team member access to that particular project. Here all the members that are a part of the account are listed and you can give them permission to access that particular project by changing the permission button from Red to Green. Only an Account Owner or a Super User with permission can add users to specific projects.

As an Account Owner on DeskAway, assigning permissions to users is a great responsibility.  Think about the level of involvement of the person you are adding into the account and assign them permissions accordingly.

“My Tasks” is a tab on the Dashboard, having a consolidated snapshot of all assigned & delegated Tasks related to you. Everytime you add a new task or someone assigns you a task, this list gets updated in real-time.

A few things that you might have not known:
a. “My Tasks” saves your time and shows you all the tasks related to all the projects on one page.
b. By clicking on any Project name you are taken to the “Task Lists” page.
c. By clicking on any Task name you are taken to the “Task Preview” page.
d. Easily see which task is nearing a deadline and has a high priority.
e. If you think that a task is completed, just knock it off by clicking on the check box.

At the end of 2007 we had promised “loads of new stuff” in 2008.  So, here it is. A full recap of 2008 - what we were up to, month-wise development road map and what you can expect in 2009.

2008 has been a fantastic year where we have not only enjoyed a steady increase in customer growth but also have updated DeskAway almost once a month with new features and enhancements that our customers have requested.

We kick-started this year with being on of the finalist products to showcase at the Proto.in startup event in January at Chennai, India. Proto was a great introduction to the Indian startup scene and the investor community. View a few photos from this event here.

In March, we began talking to Jamcracker, a SaaS channel partner that would carry DeskAway within its marketplace. After a few months of negotiating on terms, we finally signed up with Jamcracker in May. We will be launching DeskAway on their marketplace shortly.

We thank each and every blogger who have reviewed and written about us. A special thanks goes out to Web Worker Daily, an A-list blog technology and web apps blog for reviewing DeskAway in late May here (comparing it to Basecamp) and then again in December here (for turning on project 2.0 social features). In September, we were included in Mashable’s list of 270+ tools for running a business online.

The startup community in India is on a roll. This is when I was connected to Morpheus Venture Partners - a startup advisory business founded by Sameer & Nandini. I had briefly met Sameer & Nandini at Proto in January. After our initial talks and working together on a trial basis for around a month, we finally decided to get Sameer & Nandini on board the DeskAway team in September. Sameer helps out with the business side of things whereas Nandini focused more on the product development and user experience. Its been a rewarding last 3 months working with them.

We end the year with being nominated and then shortlisted (out of 588 startups) into the top 30 hottest Indian startups by Tata NEN. Voting is still going on and the top 5 startups will be announced early 2009. This competition has increased our brand recognition through the media, amongst other startup groups and within the small business network. We are seeing more Indian small businesses give a shot at SaaS and how it could help their business.

Here is a quick snapshot of the development Journey 2008:

January
Revamped Task Lists and Tasks with a new look and feel.

February
Small enhancement to the Calendar, Messages, Tasks, Files sections.

March
Created the Issue tracking feature, added more reporting charts, created a public calendar and the ability to archive projects.

April
A way to group team members via Companies.

May
Working on personal email reminders and the project template feature that would go live within the next few months.

June
Improved contact importing and the ability to re-order Tasks and Task lists.

July
Daily personal email reminders and the ability to clone projects using templates.

August
Full export/backup of your DeskAway data, Viewing Tasks within the calendar, better iCal support and revamping of the Help dialog boxes across the application.

September
Adding sub-folder support for Files, editing Messages and other small enhancements.

October 2008
Released better international character support.

November
Ability to view My Tasks on the dashboard, Project history and RSS.

December
SSL, Uploading a profile picture, social features and BaseEscape (a tool to import your Basecamp data over to DeskAway)

What can you expect in 2009? More enhancements, features, integration of 3rd party apps within DeskAway and an iPhone and mobile version of the app are some of the things planned for early 2009. We will be launching our affiliate program around January 2009.

We are taking forward one thing from 2008 - love what you do and do it more. Every month is a stepping stone to stay true to our vision - to provide simple, powerful and affordable tools to help people work smarter.

The DeskAway team wishes everyone Merry Christmas and a very happy New Years. Stay safe!

Cheers,

Sahil Parikh
Founder & CEO