Earlier, whenever you completed a task (hit the checkbox) it would disappear from the page since the list of completed tasks was hidden from the user. This made some users and us anxious. Hence, today, we will show you only your last 3 completed and have a link for you to checkout the remaining ones from the Task List page. Here is what it looks like now.

Unlike email marketing tools like MailChimp, iContact or ConstantContact, one of the key challenges of adopting a collaborative app like DeskAway is that its value is directly proportional to the number of people using it within your team. The more the merrier. However, realistically, there are chances that even though everyone buys into the concept of using a web-based app, some people might not log into the system to update their milestones or check off their tasks. A vision for a company-wide system to manage and track work remains a dream. See if these 5 things can help you get the ball rolling…forever.

#1 Send out an email or discuss in live with your team as to why you have chosen the application and its advantage over email. Spell out why email is a poor collaboration tool for working in projects where multiple people are involved.

#2 Show examples of other apps. Most people are familiar with a CRM (customer relationship management) app. If a CRM app can track your sales, a project collaboration app can track your work (internal as well as client-driven).

#3 Manage expectations. What can people expect from using the app. Clarity? Accountability? Time savings? Control? Doing more with less? etc.

#4 Start small. Have a few evangelists use the app for a few internal projects. Slowly, let them infect every one else.

#5 Don’t force. It doesn’t work with anyone.

DeskAway has been mentioned in the Mint (web as well as the print edition) as one of the tools that can help you become fitter, happier and more productive.

Learn how to ignore the World Wide Web’s many distractions and get down to work…with the help of the Web.

This might sound familiar: You’re at your desk, finally having dispelled every distraction to the corners of your mind, and just about to get some actual work done when someone pings you on chat. Intrigued, you change tabs—and there are three new emails waiting for you, including a comment on a photo you’d just uploaded on Facebook. One tab leads to another, and soon you’re neck deep in three IM conversations about the contents of your lunch box.

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DeskMail is a service by DeskAway that helps you communicate with your projects via email. DeskMail for Issues will allow you and your team to add issues and reply to issue comments via email. If you are using email on your smartphones (iPhone, Blackberry etc.) you can easily email out issues to your team members (just like you would normally) and still have a copy of it stored on your DeskAway account. When people reply to those issues (by sending you an email), new comments are added to the issue on DeskAway and the entire communication thread can be tracked within your projects.

In a nutshell, this is how it works…

What really led us to designing DeskMail for Issues?

We observed that email is still very very popular for sending issues and bug reports. People were adding issues from DeskAway but were using email to comment and update others. Hence, the communication was broken up into 2 channels, DeskAway and email, making it hard for everyone to follow what was happening within a particular issue. If the comment was sent via email, it was not stored on DeskAway and hence making it hard for the project manager to locate it. With the feedback we received, we decided to let people communicate with DeskAway via email aka DeskMail.

Check out our help page for instructions on using DeskMail for Issues. Thank you for your continued feedback and do keep them coming. Cheers!

Setting up your DeskAway calendar entries to show up on your iPhone is easy - there are a few one-time steps that you need to follow.

1. Google Sync - First, setup your iPhone/ BlackBerry to sync with your default calendar on your Gmail or Google Apps account. Follow the steps here. BlackBerry users click here.

2. Once you can see your default calendar entries on your iPhone/ BlackBerry, it is time to sync your DeskAway calendar to your Google calendar. Follow our steps here.

3. On your Google Calendar, you should now see your DeskAway events. Google sometimes takes long to pull all the events data - we have seen this to be irregular. Once this is done, you need to choose which of your calendars you want to sync to your iPhone by following the steps here. By default, only the primary calendar syncs.

Thats it. You should now see your DeskAway events on your iPhone. This is a sample event that I added to my DeskAway calendar which now shows up on my iPhone! -:)