At the end of 2007 we had promised “loads of new stuff” in 2008.  So, here it is. A full recap of 2008 - what we were up to, month-wise development road map and what you can expect in 2009.

2008 has been a fantastic year where we have not only enjoyed a steady increase in customer growth but also have updated DeskAway almost once a month with new features and enhancements that our customers have requested.

We kick-started this year with being on of the finalist products to showcase at the Proto.in startup event in January at Chennai, India. Proto was a great introduction to the Indian startup scene and the investor community. View a few photos from this event here.

In March, we began talking to Jamcracker, a SaaS channel partner that would carry DeskAway within its marketplace. After a few months of negotiating on terms, we finally signed up with Jamcracker in May. We will be launching DeskAway on their marketplace shortly.

We thank each and every blogger who have reviewed and written about us. A special thanks goes out to Web Worker Daily, an A-list blog technology and web apps blog for reviewing DeskAway in late May here (comparing it to Basecamp) and then again in December here (for turning on project 2.0 social features). In September, we were included in Mashable’s list of 270+ tools for running a business online.

The startup community in India is on a roll. This is when I was connected to Morpheus Venture Partners - a startup advisory business founded by Sameer & Nandini. I had briefly met Sameer & Nandini at Proto in January. After our initial talks and working together on a trial basis for around a month, we finally decided to get Sameer & Nandini on board the DeskAway team in September. Sameer helps out with the business side of things whereas Nandini focused more on the product development and user experience. Its been a rewarding last 3 months working with them.

We end the year with being nominated and then shortlisted (out of 588 startups) into the top 30 hottest Indian startups by Tata NEN. Voting is still going on and the top 5 startups will be announced early 2009. This competition has increased our brand recognition through the media, amongst other startup groups and within the small business network. We are seeing more Indian small businesses give a shot at SaaS and how it could help their business.

Here is a quick snapshot of the development Journey 2008:

January
Revamped Task Lists and Tasks with a new look and feel.

February
Small enhancement to the Calendar, Messages, Tasks, Files sections.

March
Created the Issue tracking feature, added more reporting charts, created a public calendar and the ability to archive projects.

April
A way to group team members via Companies.

May
Working on personal email reminders and the project template feature that would go live within the next few months.

June
Improved contact importing and the ability to re-order Tasks and Task lists.

July
Daily personal email reminders and the ability to clone projects using templates.

August
Full export/backup of your DeskAway data, Viewing Tasks within the calendar, better iCal support and revamping of the Help dialog boxes across the application.

September
Adding sub-folder support for Files, editing Messages and other small enhancements.

October 2008
Released better international character support.

November
Ability to view My Tasks on the dashboard, Project history and RSS.

December
SSL, Uploading a profile picture, social features and BaseEscape (a tool to import your Basecamp data over to DeskAway)

What can you expect in 2009? More enhancements, features, integration of 3rd party apps within DeskAway and an iPhone and mobile version of the app are some of the things planned for early 2009. We will be launching our affiliate program around January 2009.

We are taking forward one thing from 2008 - love what you do and do it more. Every month is a stepping stone to stay true to our vision - to provide simple, powerful and affordable tools to help people work smarter.

The DeskAway team wishes everyone Merry Christmas and a very happy New Years. Stay safe!

Cheers,

Sahil Parikh
Founder & CEO

Quickies: are personal notes that can be added, edited and deleted in a jiffy! Only you can see your notes.

You can use quickies to make quick reference notes, note down ideas, followups, notes while on a call - which can be translated to tasks, etc later. Quickies is like your personal notepad where you can pen down thoughts, things of reference for yourself!

You can edit these personal notes to update / modify them OR delete them.

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?

I have been using Deskaway (DA) for the last 6 months. Having used Base Camp and Zoho for a while in the past, I migrated to DA and the experience has been better than the other two.

As part of my professional work, I not only use DA to collaborate and coordinate within my company (MVP), but I also have the responsibility of getting all the companies as part of our Portfolio on DA. This is a huge challenge, especially because various teams or individuals have their own methods of dealing with projects, tasks and their work in all.

Here’s a technique I used to get a portfolio company- a startup onto DA, very recently:

The CEO, lets call him Mike, is someone who believes that making lists on paper is a good way of tracking his personal tasks, meeting deadlines and achieving milestones. And this method is loosely followed by others in his team. I believe that it’s a great start (considering that I have met many people in responsible positions in large companies, who do not use even physical lists). This method worked really well for Mike and his team, when they were starting off their company. Today, the business has grown considerably and Mike has to manage a total of 2 teams and 10 people with different tasks, different clients, varied work times and multiple locations. Soon, I noticed that a few important tasks were being forgotten and deadlines were slipping.

I had spoken to Mike about DA in the past and had casually tried to get him and his team onto DA, but in vain. This time, I employed a different method.

Everyone who has worked on a project/ assignment individually or in groups understands the following:

- Tasks: Things to do
- Milestones: Things to achieve before a particular date / Important Dates

With this as the basis, I explained to Mike the importance of having a tool to track the things he needs to do that will help him achieve his milestones and progress in his projects. I used the below representation to explain and get Mike on DA

The premise here is that when you have any project ( Any activity that has a definitive business outcome. It can be anything from what a team is working on internally to a client assignment) to execute at hand, there are a few important dates attached to it. This can be release of a new website, launch of a new product, publishing the next magazine edition, etc. These are Milestones.  Attached to these Milestones are various tasks. These are things-to-do that help achieve the important dates. All these tasks collectively make a Task List.

So basically you can create a New Project on DA, let’s call it “Marketing Website”. One important Milestone attached to this is “Beta Launch on 1 Jan, 2009″. There are a set of tasks that are required to be done to achieve this milestone, these make for Task Lists (TL) - Product Development TL, Technology Development TL, Marketing TL. Each of these TL has a set of tasks listed below it.

It’s very simple. You could add more details to each task by attaching a start date/ end date, how long the task will take, assigning it to a team member, adding comments and sending yourself email reminders for the same.

Mike and his teammates have now started using DA to plan and manage their tasks. It has organized their work to a large extent. They are taking on more initiatives as a company now, since they have a tool that helps them plan and execute.

Mike now has better visibility on what is happening across teams in the company, as he gets a snapshot view of what everyone is working on and can monitor the Project’s health on a daily basis on DA. Mike now has enabled the “Automatic Email Reminder” option - this generates daily email updates to him and his team about their approaching deadlines and over due tasks.

Now, Mike and his team look at the My Tasks Tab on their DA dashboard to see what they have to do, instead of looking into their handwritten lists, depending upon their memories or waiting on their manager or teammate to assign them a task!

So, getting started on DA is as easy as listing your tasks on an excel sheet or on paper! Only, DA has many more advantages in helping you deal with multiple and complex projects.

Have you been successful in getting your team to use DA regularly? Please share your adoption techniques. Are you one of those who have repeatedly tried but have not been able to get your team to use DA? Do let us know what the reasons are or common complaints are.