Some of you found the permission structure of DeskAway a bit rigid for Account Owners (the evangelists who created the account for their team). Account owners can see all projects but cannot access projects that did not include them. We realized that this caused problems in the following scenarios:

1. When new projects are created by other people.

2. When people require help with a project. They turn to the account owner for help. Since they are not a part of the project, the project lead or another Super User needs to give the account owner access. Quite cumbersome and a waste of time.

3. If a Super User leaves the team and his/her user login gets disabled. This causes a deadlock situation within a project.

Taking these issues, including an ongoing thread over at our forums here and support emails from users, we decided to make a change to what an Account Owner can access.

Get access to all projects automatically:

From now onwards, the Account Owner can access any project (present as well as future) created in your DeskAway account. For users who donot want to make this happen automatically, we have placed this an an option within the ‘Settings’ section. By default the account owner will not have access to all current and future projects (the way it works right now).

This setting will reset if the account ownership is changed.

Claim access to projects individually:

For those who don’t want to set access for all projects, here is an option to claim a project individually for account owners..

Hope this change eases your workflow and helps you work smoothly…

A couple of small fixes…

Fixed: Blank Milestone Showing Overdue:
Milestones which had no tasks and issues but having deadline (which had passed) were showing under the ‘Overdue’ section. Technically, the Milestone should not show up as Overdue since it does not have any work under it. This confused some of you and hence we applied a simple fix. Now, it will show up under the On going section of the Milestone page.

Fixed: Live LinksLinks under Task List and Task Description
Add any URL while creating a task list or a task and that should be automatically be converted to a link. Clicking on the link will open up the page in a new window.

Indus Net Technologies (Rated as #1 IT SME by Dun & Bradstreet in 2008) is one of the fastest growing IT service company in India (Among Top 50 Emerging Companies in 2010 as per NASSCOM) providing web design, web development and Internet marketing services to governments, enterprises and digital agencies since 1997. Indus Net Technologies employs 500 experts in Kolkata, Chennai and Warwick - with plans to open up office in USA in 2010.

Abhishek Rungta, Founder & CEO of Indus Net Technologies shared his views about how his team uses DeskAway…

How are you using DeskAway and what value is it providing your team?
DeskAway helps in tracking the status of our on-going projects and helps us to manage those projects effectively.

Were you using any other tool before before DeskAway?
Yes, Zoho projects.

Was there a learning curve associated with DeskAway? How did your team adapt to a new application?
DeskAway is very user friendly so adapting to it was never an issue.

What features does your team use the most?
Our team uses it mostly for delegation of tasks, creation of documents and maintaining timesheets across projects.

Are you emailing (sending tasks, attachments etc.) less because of DeskAway?
Yes emailing has greatly reduced as the tasks assigned to every person are visible in DeskAway. In addition, the responsible person gets an email notification from the system so the need to send an email is not there anymore.

How has DeskAway helped in lowering project costs, profitability or improving efficiency?
Deskaway saves time by automating project management and task distribution. The document management system is good, providing an effective way of managing our resources.

Thanks!

If you are using DeskAway and would like to get featured, please drop us a note and we will get in touch with you.

We sent our a sneak preview of our new logo and then launched it on August 1st. Here are some reactions (positive as well as negative) from people:

“Looks Great!”

“Wow, my lips are sealed!!!!”

“I love the new logo - seriously, nice work”

“improve your product, not your logo”

“This is really good! Congrats!”

“Very nice logo!”

“your current logo is much better than any of the new ones (I feel)”

“new logo looks awesome :-)”

“really like the new logo. looks fresh.”

If you have missed it, read the making of the logo here.

A quick video showing how you can add & delete your personal notes by using quickies in your DeskAway account…