A few small fixes…

Fixed: Monthly recurring tasks date issue
Tasks were not recurring on the set monthly deadline. This is because we were calculating months as a fixed 30 days so this issue came up when months had fewer than 30 days (Feb) or had 31 days. Now, if a monthly recurring task has a  deadline of 31st October then the new recurring task will be 31st December and not November - this works the same way as Google Calendar monthly recurring events.

Fixed: Upload Files in the Issue section
Files are properly uploading to the issues section of each project. Earlier, there were issues with certain file types and names.

Fixed: Wrong deadline for GMT -5
For this timezone the deadline would come back 1 day earlier.  This has been resolved and tested with other time zones as well.

Fixed: Adding time to Tasks
The time clock icon would not show up when time was added to a task unless a page refresh was forced.

Fixed: Google Apps login help
We have added some more help and informative error messages on the login window for the Google Apps login.

DeskAway will be conducting scheduled maintenance on Saturday, October 16, 2010, between 10:00 AM and 11:00 AM IST (that is 11:30 PM Friday Oct 15th to 12:30 AM Saturday Oct 16th US EST). DeskAway.com (including all project sites) will be temporarily inaccessible during this time. This is a minor service upgrade.

We appreciate your patience and can assure you the service will be restored as quickly as possible. Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns.

Thank you,
The DeskAway Team

We are happy Zendesk customers for more than a year now. It is our trusted help desk system. One thing that we saw that was lacking as a feature was a way for customers/users to rate our customer support staff. How well did they answer a support query and left the customer with a positive experience?

So, today, we did a minor tweak and signed up for PollDaddy. Since we have 3 agents, we created 3 polls (with their names on it) and using Zendesk’s trigger feature we included the poll link in the email that is sent to the requester whenever a ticket is solved. Simply click on the link, rate us and close the window.

The more choices the more confusion. In our quest to simplify everything, today, we are resting out the $10 Personal plan for all new accounts. Existing users will still be able to upgrade or downgrade to the Personal Plan at anytime. The new plans look like this on our revamped pricing page:

This is the first time we have made change to our pricing plans since 2007. Again, this change will not affect existing account owners.

Simply put, project templates are re-usable portions of a project (milestones, task lists, tasks, doc templates) that can be used in creating other similar types of projects. Something like a ‘project clone’. Ever had a process that you follow and wish you did not have to type it out everytime you made a new project? Templates will help you save time and get you more process-driven.

Here is a quick update on new fixes and feature updates for making project templates more powerful and better looking:

1. The Task List description is now saved into the new template.

2. Open Task lists and recurring tasks are being recognized when the template is created.

3. Milestone and tasks ordering is preserved in the new template.

4. Milestone and task dates are also now saved to the new template

5. Hence, if we save dates (as in point #4) we need to shift them according to the project start and end dates. Here is an example of how your dates will shift when a new template is created out of a Project ABC that starts on August 1st and has a task that starts on Aug 3rd and ends on Aug 10th.

After creating the template and loading the template into a new Project XYZ (starting on Oct. 1st) the dates of the Task A will be:

Start on Oct 3rd
Due on Oct 10th

6. Updated UI of the template listing page.

7. Some other small bugs and fixes.

To learn more about project templates click here.

We are listening. Do keep the feedback coming