We have released a revamped version of the Docs Section. Some of the changes are as stated below:

1. Chronological listing of Docs.
2. Older Docs show up after the “Browse Older” button is clicked.
3. After adding a new Doc you are taken to the edit window automatically.
4. Updated Doc editor
5. The editor opens up on the same page. Earlier it opened up in a popup.
6. Allowing you to create a template out of a Doc. Earlier, you could only add templates to a Doc.
7. Cleaner interface and formatting of items.

You can also check out the FAQ’s for this section.

DeskAway recently got added to the FreshBooks Community Add-on page. Do check it out. It asks users to review the DeskAway FreshBooks integration. Would be great if you can pen down your feedback…

Just like we add new features every month, we are also keeping an eye on the ones that need to be removed and phased out. This will keep the app fresh and the user experience smooth. These are features that are rarely used or are outdated (and there is an alternative way).  On Tuesday, Dec. 15th we will be phasing out the following small features.

View pending tasks link under Project Tab

We built this about 2 years ago and it still has the old interface. A better way to keep track of your pending tasks would be to either check out the Overdue section on your Dashboard or setup a daily email reminder that will email you your overdue projects/ milestones/ tasks and issues.

Team Departments

This feature just never made it. Even though you make a team department and link up a contact, you really can’t segregate people by departments. We plan to take this up in a more powerful way in 2010. Your contacts that you added to departments will now become your Personal contacts.

Project Listing Page - Pending Links

The separate pending task and issue link at the bottom of the Project (boxed in yellow) will be removed for 2 reasons:

1. Even though it tells you the number of pending tasks it takes you to the Task List page that also can be accessed from the icons on right top corner of the individual project listing (boxed in green).

2. We noticed that fetching this data was slowing down the Project Listing page for people who had a lot of projects (over a hundred in some cases).

We are excited to announce a simple integration between DeskAway and FreshBooks (a very popular web application to track your time and invoice clients on projects). When you enable FreshBooks integration you will be able to easily map your DeskAway projects to your FreshBooks projects. Time logged within a DeskAway project (from Time sheets) can also be sent to your FreshBooks project thereby keeping time logs synchronized between both your accounts.

Why should you use the integration? If you are duplicating your efforts in managing time in both DeskAway (you use it to manage your projects) and FreshBooks (you use it to track estimates and invoice clients) you now can automatically push time logs from a project in DeskAway into a project in FreshBooks!

This integration will be available on all our plans, including the free plans!

Only the account owner will be able to setup the integration.

Read more about it here or watch the video.

Do let us know what you think.

After a successful migration we have a host of new updates waiting to be released. Announcing the first batch of new features and enhancements today. Take a look and hope it simplifies the way you and your team manage your projects and work.

Open Task Lists

DeskAway’s permission-based task system is great but when you want to open up your tasks to every team member within your project it could became a bit confusing. Though, you could easily assign the task to ‘Anyone’ but then there would not be a person responsible for that task. Or you could assign the task to Mr. X and then cc the same task to all your team members. Painful if there are a lot of team members. Hence,

http://getsatisfaction.com/deskaway/topics/allow_limited_users_to_access_all_tasks_by_checking_this_box

http://getsatisfaction.com/deskaway/topics/only_some_tasks_are_visible_to_other_users

Today, we have added (in addition to the permission-based system that a lot of people love) a new concept called ‘Open Task List’. By making a Task List open, all tasks under only that particular Task List becomes visible/accessible to all your team members (Super, Regular & Limited) of that project. Anyone would be able to track, close, add time, comment and upload files to an Open Task List task.

So, if you have a bunch of tasks that you want to assign to A and B but have everyone in the team know about and track their progress, go ahead and create an Open Task List and add those tasks within it.

3 more Options for Recurring Tasks

Earlier you could set the following options for recurring tasks:

Daily
Weekly
Monthly
Yearly

Today, we give you 3 more requested option:

Fortnightly
Quarterly
Half Yearly

Team View Filters

To make it easy to sort through you team members (some DeskAway users have more than 100 team members) we have added a new filter on the team page. This should make it easy to view team members by Company or by their type - Super, Regular or Limited.

File Folder & Subfolder Differentiation

A tiny usability change to the user interface of the Files section. You can now easily differentiate between Folder (in Bold now) & Subfolder names.

Revamped Timezone Dropdown

To make your life easier we have added a new time zone drop down while signing up and adding a new team member. This one shows the +/- GMT and even has most of the popular cities of the world so you should not spend time finding your correct time zone!

Hope you like these features. Do let us know what you think!