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!

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.