I’ve been working with a few companies in the MVP portfolio on their Product Alpha Releases. The past month specially, has been busy with testing the functionality, usability, and other related aspects. Managing multiple projects, test cases, filing bugs and usability issues, and tracking to them to ensure they are fixed is one hell lot of a task, especially when teams work remotely.

I started my collaboration on email initially, moved on to google spreadsheets, but soon felt things were all over the place. Then I decided to file issues and bugs on a spreadsheet and upload them on DA. Until one fine day, I discovered that DA actually has an Issues section where I could have filed and tracked the bugs and issues from the start!

DA defines Issues as something that needs to be resolved during a project.

Once I chanced upon the Issues Feature, I figured out that I can now file all my observations related to that particular project right on that DA account. This was not just true to me, but the companies could use this method with their entire test team. Here is what we went about doing:

1.       Uploaded the test cases document on DA Docs: This helped testers refer to what to test and what the expected behavior was.

2.       Gave access to all members of the Test Team on the companies DA account. These guys who were testing were friends and family besides remote tech. testers.

3.       All people who were testing used the Issues Feature to note their observations by adding a new issue. You can add:

a.       Summary

b.      Description

c.       Link the Issue to a Milestone

d.      Priority

e.      Due Date

f.        Assign Issue to a particular person

g.       Specify who all can see that particular Issue

4.       Once the Issues were filed all associated users tracked the status of the issues, found out if the assigned person had accepted and started work on the issues, and users interacted using the comments option for each issue.

5.       Teams also exported the issues to an excel sheet OR printed the issues table to pass them onto users who were not on DeskAway.

This not just made tracking Issues easy, we also saw that things were more organized and we got issues resolved faster.

Currently, what’s missing is that we can’t attach images / files to an issue, add categories to issues or tag them. I spoke to the DA team about these things and they have promised me that they are adding these functionalities very soon. They are also soon going have this cool feature, where I can add Issues, attach files to issues and do everything else via email.

Guess this is what Simplfy Team Work really means! Or is that my Xmas wish coming true?

We are proud to announce that out of 588 companies, DeskAway is one of the top 30 hottest startups in India. Final round has begun and will end on Dec. 22, 2008. We wish to get your support in voting for us again. Thank you for your time.

HOW TO VOTE AGAIN:

Online

Your can use your same login that you created in Phase 1 or create a new login id. Vote for DeskAway online.

SMS (India Only)

HSU<space>1<space>[voter first name]<space>[voter lastname]<space>deskaway<space>tatanenhotteststartups

e.g. HSU 1 Ajay Kumar deskaway tatanenhotteststartups

Send SMS to 56767

Learn more about the TataNEN Awards

We have just updated DeskAway with some exciting new features. Thank you all for requesting these! We are keeping these features for the Free plan as well. Enjoy!

PS - User Reports was one feature that we planned to release but had to delay it till the end of the month due to unforeseen circumstances.

My Account & Profile

We have renamed the “Services” link to “My Account”. You will be able to update your profile, upload a profile photo and talk a little about yourself. After all, if you are working in a team, it would be cool to let others know a little about yourself, what skills you possess and what have you done in the past etc. Something social of sorts

Plus, you can easily change your account password from My Account -> Change Password link. We will not email you the new password anymore!

Personalization - Profile Photo

Personalize your DeskAway experience by uploading a 50px image of yourself. Anytime you want, you can remove the picture. Your profile information will also be shown to your project members from the Project Overview page. In addition, your profile picture will be displayed next to your comments.

What are you working on?

This excites us! Something like Twitter but for your project team. Why not let your project members know what you are doing? e.g. “Taking a break, going for a quick lunch” or “Working on Ajax development, anyone have open source scripts ready?”.

You can set your message from the “What you are working on” link at the top of the page or from the Project Overview page.

BaseEscape

A lot of current Basecamp “frustrated” users have requested an easy way to import their data to DeskAway. So, here it is - BaseEscape (get me out of there!). Simply login to your account and access BaseEscape from the My Account - BaseEscape link. Only Account Owners are allowed to import their Basecamp data once into DeskAway.