Recently something changed in Gmail land and people who use Google Mail (Apps and Gmail) noticed their Teamwork email notifications were being grouped together even though they were from different projects.

We tracked this down to Gmail ignoring everything inside square brackets. We use the square brackets to show the Project Name but as Gmail now ignore this the emails were being grouped incorrectly.

While this technically is a Gmail issue and not a Teamwork issue, it's not good for our users and not good for our support staff ;-) Today we have changed the square brackets to round brackets.

Your email notifications will now be of the form "(Project Name ) Re: This is an example subject"

This used to look like "[Project Name] Re: This is an example subject [Teamwork Account]"

You'll also notice we took this opportunity to shorten the subject and remove the redundant [Teamwork Account] section at the end of each subject. Since we now have this in the From field of emails along with the senders name we decided to remove it to make subjects easier to read.

I know this is a small issue for many but we also appreciate that people get used to certain formats and also have filters set up on email subjects so it's only right we explain why this change has been made.

Dan.

Hi there,

My name is Mike and I'd like to introduce myself as the newest member of TeamworkPM. I've been around Teamwork for quite a while helping out on the iOS app as necessary. However the lads decided to put a big push behind mobile apps and I've been here full time for the last two months or so.

At 38 I'm a bit older than the rest of the guys at Teamwork.  So instead of an XBox I started messing around on an Oric 1 (google it).  It didn't do a whole lot and died within weeks, but it did have Zap and Ping as BASIC keywords and that got me hooked.  After that I was always messing with some computer or other.  At one point Myself and a friend somehow managed to convince Atari to give us some pre-production Falcon030's and set about creating the World's-Greatest-Application-Framework.  All written in 68K assembly.  It was about as successful as the Falcon itself.

After College, I went straight to work for Apple - it was a brand new department and we were all around the same age, so not only did we learn loads but we had a ball doing it.  Steve, however, didn't like having developers where he couldn't see them. The department was shut and I couldn't convince my soon-to-be wife to move to California.  My tan would be forevermore restricted to two weeks a year.

After that I spent a couple of years working on localisation tools for indie developers and freelance translators.  While that led to some oddities ( practically all of the open source software in Vietnam was translated using my software! ) it was no Instagram.  It did however teach me the value of listening to your customers - a whole section that I added as a favour for one particular client ended up being the most popular feature overall.

Not long after that Apple brought out the iPhone and finally - finally! - my parents could understand what I did!

Outside of work, my Family take up all of my time.  We have two kids and they're at that age where they're great fun but there's not a whole lot of rest to be had in our house!  The highlight of the family week is when we all get together to make the homemade pizza.  My daughter becomes the DJ and my son makes these mad little 1 inch wide minis.  It's good fun.

Odd stuff that the Teamwork guys probably don't know:  I'm not a GAA (Irish Sport) person, but at under-age level I did captain a Waterford team with both Paul Flynn and Tony Browne on it (That'll mean nothing to people outside of Waterford.  And if you're outside of Ireland: Hurling is the best sport in the world : obviously!).  Odd part time jobs:  I was a Milk Man all through school and college, I spent some time doing Wedding and GAA Videos to help out a Friends business. I was one of the main characters in a bigish budget short movie (don't ask).  And I've been lucky enough to present at WWDC twice.

Tools that I use.

Sublime Text  - Multiple cursors is Pure Genius.

Alfred - I'm a recent convert from Quicksilver and I love it.  Sit me down at a Mac without at least one of these installed and I feel like I'm missing some fingers.

XCode - Obviously.

git - once you start using git, you can go back to svn.

Terminal - for 90% of stuff it's simply faster and easier to use git from the terminal.

Spotify - I nearly always work with music on in the background.

Airfoil - Great for sending Spotify to the speakers connected to the AppleTV

WindowKeys - Allows me to Move and resize windows via a hotkey.  It's great for moving between screens too.

HipChat - How we communicate in the office

Dash - Extremely fast and efficient documentation viewer.  Great for iOS but supports Javascript, Ruby and plenty more.  Very nice.

Twitter - !

Magic Trackpad - I prefer using the keyboard as much as possible ( hence Alfred ) so it's nice that the trackpad just sits there in the same place, unlike a mouse.

Of course I use my iPhone and iPad every day as well so :

Paper - makes even my scrawls look presentable.

Bamboo Stylus - I liked Paper so much I went out and bought a good stylus.

Adobe Ideas - I actually don't like the UI.  But I do like its fast zooming - perfect for writing down ideas with the Bamboo..

Zite - the best thing about this app is that it pulls out great articles that I never would have found otherwise.

(download)

Click here to download:

meet-the-team-mike-mobile-apps-byuEvfaijwDpBcfiFqts.zip (1.31 MB)

And finally, I don't actually use any of the UI mocking apps.  I've bought nearly all of them, but I find they're usually just too clumsy. Go detailed and they're not that much better than Interface builder.  Go vague and they're not as good as Paper.

I live and breath what I do.  The Teamwork guys do to and that's why I came to work here.  I think you'll enjoy the stuff coming down the line for TeamworkPM.

When we started out this year we made a decision that it would be the year of integrations with other apps. So far we have really stuck to this. This year you have seen some really useful systems linked to TeamworkPM such as Dropbox, Freshbooks, Google Docs, Harvest Blinksale, QuickBooks Online and now box.com.

Adding and removing access is dead simple. All the controls for each individual project are handled within each project's Settings page.

If you already use box.com within your business to handle large files and to share files with clients and work mates, having box.com now fully integrated into your TeamworkPM account is going to make managing and running your projects even more useful and efficient.

So how do you hook box.com into your account?

The first requirement is that you are using a Business 2, Corporate or Enterprise account.
Next you need to click on Settings->Site Settings and choose Integrations. Scroll down to the box.com section and authenticate your box.com account. Once authenticated you need to select your top lever folder to use within your TeamworkPM account. No user can browse above this top level root folder so choose wisely.

The settings here let you turn on or off box.com on the project. You also pick the Box folder you wish to be use for the project and you also choose who you wish to have access to Box on this current project.

(download)

Click here to download:

box-com-integration-now-available-on-business-2-corporate-and-enterprise-plans-chfIhrcmmCmvGrEieueD.zip (293 KB)

It’s all pretty straight forward and easy to use. As with all our new features we hope you love this new addition and as always any feedback or questions you may have please let us know.

This month seemed to fly by but again we managed to get a whole load of new features and tweaks into the application to make TeamworkPM even better!

The big ticket items this month were:

• box.com integration
• Quickbooks online integration
• Speed enhancements to the whole application
• The trash can
• Updates to moving milestones

Updates

• Update Tasks by email/Quickadd: Added ability to add a task description by putting the description in curly braces ie:{this is a description}
• UI Calendar - month picker improved
• Can set privacy on items - new project permission. Adds ability to disable users from setting Privacy on items
• Can now login with your username OR email address
• Update Login: IE9 running in compatability mode: Added new link to our FAQ on how to force IE9 out of compatability mode (http://www.teamworkpm.net/technicalfaqs?#q187)
• Update Notebooks: Added "Print" option directly in to Notebook Options menu
• UI Lightbox appear/hide effects for modern browsers
• UI Most CSS loaded initially instead of on-demand - no flicker
• UI iPad sidebar icon - toggle siderbar on/off 
• UI Replaced transparent png curves with border-radius - IE678 still use transparent png method
• UI User project permissions - Improved interface - collapsed view - new permission - nicer header
• UI Improvements to Templates page of settings
• UI Changed the old  "New project message categories" editor to use Category Manager:
• Update Companies: Edit Company: Auto-populate current users country code to make editing faster
• Added "invoiceno" to time.xml
• New Caching System
• Update Trial Notification Emails: Improved layout and readability
• Basecamp Import Update to strip escaped html tags from task comments (This is working over-time ;-))
• Reordering task lists - need to hide the "Edit" option on the Task List header
• Update Notebooks: Improved styling and added css for code blocks
• Tasks Added Pagination to completed tasks
• Optimization Login page loads faster - unnecessary scripts skipped.
• Improvement to Move Task process
• Update Tasks: Added title tip showing the complete due date of a task to compliment the text friendly due date
• Update Task Lists: Sort: Added new sort method "Sort by date created"
• Comments - don't notify self with all
• Update Project Report: Changed "Upcoming (7 days)" to "Upcoming (within 7 days)" to clarify any confusion in wording
• Update Files: Editing file details now puts full file details and download link in notification email
• id=pageTitle added to page titles - needed for pushState update "."
• Update Tasks by email: If mail client adds "<no subject>" to the email remove it for adding multiple tasks
• Update Milestones: Add day to Milestone badge to easily see what day the milestone is due on
• Update Milestones: Added new option when shifting milestones so you can adjust by the same number of days but the due date is kept off Saturday's and Sundays
• Update Milestones: Remember the method of date calculation picked for each user
• Google Docs Removed Table and Form as documents that can be created (Google Docs API doesn't support it yet)
• Update Email Notifications: Removed replyByEmail identifier from subject {tw.XX.XXXX}
• Update Google Docs: Relax restriction on who can set Access Rights when linking documents in to project ("Who can browse" setting covers this)
• UI Enabled pushState support on "All comments" page
• UI Enabled pushState support on "All time" page
• UI Enabled pushState support on "Workload" page
• UI Enabled pushState support on "Calendar" page
• UI Enabled pushState support on "Statuses" page
• UI Enabled pushState support on "People" page
• Push state support for "Projects" page
• More robust javascript lib loading - callback fires if script already loaded
• Box Integration: Better handling of thumbnails if file is renamed in Teamwork file listing
• Update Box.com oAuth Callback complete
• Update Dropbox: Added ability to create folders on Dropbox from within Teamwork Dropbox browser
• UI pushState supported added to "All Messages"
• UI pushState support added for "All milestones" page
• PushState support for "All completed tasks" page
• Merged project and dashboard headers
• Update Settings: Added new section to set default user that emailed tasks/messages are posted from if we can't match a sender email address to a user on the project
• Update Notebooks: Swapped position of indent/outdent buttons on editor toolbar
• pushStateProject to dashboard level - hide project nav and change to top level header
• Dashboard pushState working nicely
• Update Email Dropbox: Added ability to match users by name and auto-populate alternative email addresses
• Update Email Dropbox: Added ability to set a default user as the poster if we can't match a sending user by email address
• New Error report and silent error report format
• Update Messages/Tasks by email: Added extra code to check for forward addresses to match back to users on a project
• Calendar iCal: Added new parameter &limit=X to limit feed events to X number of days ahead
• Optimization PushState - ajax loading of project content from top level
• Update Google Docs: If file is renamed in Google Docs and linked in again, update the file name in TWPM Reference
• Files Can't drag and drop files in to categories anymore
• privateInfo ripped out of activity log – mp longer made sense with lockdown user-specific privacy
• Update: Soft delete of tasklist templates
• Update If time is logged on the Everything->All Time page, the report is regenerated
• Update: Added ability to get comments on a file without having to pass fileVersionId
• Added email-alt-1/2/3 field to PUT & POST people calls
• Update API: Validate user via temporary password sent in forgotten password email also
• api added alt email addresses to GET people api calls
• Fix for API passwords with semi-colons.
• Fix Billing: Items not loading (Time logs and Invoices)
• Can't unattach files from tasks
• Fixed Daily Report: Logo images that have a "+" should encoded to %20 instead of %2b
• Fixed: Reorder task lists should not show on sidebar
• Fixed: Search: Tasks associated with a deleted task list are returned by search
• Fixed: New project URL rules break viewing messages
• Gantt chart export fix for non-utf8 task names 

I am very happy to announce our fourth (and not final) billing integration; it is a big one. QuickBooks Online!

This integration works very similarly to our other integrations. There is one difference though, and that is in setting up the connection between Teamwork and QuickBooks Online. I have outlined the steps involved below. We hope you find it useful!

QuickBooks Online Setup

1. Choose an Invoice and click the Export Invoice link at the bottom of the page.

2. A dialog appears asking you to choose an export option. Choose QuickBooks and click the export button.

3. Another dialog appears asking for your connection key. To get your connection key click the "Set up connection" link on the top right.

4. This brings up another window asking you for your QuickBooks login details. If you are currently logged in this step will not apply.

5. Click "Continue".

6. Enter a connection name or leave it as the default "Project Management". Click "Continue".

7. Click the no option for login security.

8. This will bring up another window confirming your choice of login security. Click "I still want to turn login security off" to confirm. Then click "Create Connection".

9. This page will contain your connection page. Copy the connection key to you clipboard (The "copy to clipboard" link doesn't work consistently so do a manual copy of the key).

10. Now you can click continue and close the window.

11. Go back to your TeamworkPM Account and paste your connection key into the field. Click "Authenticate".

12. A loader should appear once your key has been authenticated and then a list of companies associated with your QuickBooks Online account should be loaded in.

13. Choose a company and click Export to QuickBooks.

14. You're done! When you go to export another invoice the list of companies should appear immediately.

This month we thought we would quickly highlight our developer zone. For those of you who aren’t aware of this we have a full API to allow 3rd party developers to extend the functionality of TeamworkPM by building their own custom apps, or by hooking TeamworkPM into other existing apps.

This month we would like to highlight a 3rd party timer app for the Mac made by the team at fuelcollective. The app, called Eon, is a time tracking app for the Mac.

It’s simple and easy to use and allows you to to set multiple timers up to record your time and then allows you to easily log the time directly into your projects.

You can read more about Eon and download the app from their website here.

If you too would like to have your app highlighted in our newsletter just send us an email to support@teamworkpm.net

The trash can is used to restore items which have been deleted from your teamwork account within the last 30 days. There are two distinctly different trash cans; one for restoring data within a project and another for restoring projects. Both trash cans are only accessible to administrators in the owner company.

(download)

Click here to download:

introducing-trash-can-you-can-now-restore-deleted-items-iwsJFHAbvGcrnvkoBjeH.zip (71 KB)

Restoring tasks, milestones, files etc..

To restore either milestones, tasks, task lists, notebooks or files within a project: Go to the project settings page and under project options, click "Trash can". This will bring up a lightbox containing a list of all data deleted from the project listed by date deleted. On the top right of this lightbox there is a dropdown menu for filtering by type. To restore an item simply click the restore button beside its name.

Restoring a project

To restore a project- go to the projects page. This link is accessible through the menu in the top left of every page. At the bottom right of the projects page there is a "Trash can" button. Click it and it will list all deleted projects. Again, hit restore and your project will appear 

This update is due to some really helpful feedback we received from one of our customers, over the last few weeks. A big thanks to Matt for all his patience and help with this.


Moving multiple milestones has always been possible within TeamworkPM but the issue Matt was having was is that he wanted to move a large number of Milestones in one go and have them all stay off weekends, yet hold pretty much the same space between them all.


We had the option to keep milestones off weekends but if you selected this option, it would count the weeks as five day weeks and not as seven. This meant if you moved the first milestone forward by two weeks, or 14 days, it would move all the others forward by 14 working day. This means that any affected milestone could move forward by more than 18 days, as there are two weekend in two weeks. At this stage my head is starting to hurt, so imagine the headache Matt was getting trying to move forward more than 20 separate milestones. It was throwing his whole schedule completely out of whack.

This is about the time Matt starting emailing wondering what he was doing wrong . All he was looking to happen for was that no milestone landed on a weekend day. This means that if a milestone was going to fall on a Saturday or a Sunday it would just be pushed forward to the next Monday.

I have also put together a short video to demonstrate how this new update looks and works.

Last month, I explained that I am completely obsessed with making TeamworkPM insanely fast for you.

This month we've been working hard behind the scenes to finish what we started with last months update.

pushState everywhere!

I explained last month that "pushState" is something that allows us to serve you pages insanely fast without having to reload everything.

When we left you last month we had PushState rolled out for all project-level pages: Overview, Tasks, Milestones, Risk register, Files, Time and Notebooks.

However we didn't have pushState implemented for the top-level pages so clicking the Dashboard link for example, did a full reload of the entire page.

The good news is that we have now implemented pushState for all top-level pages! You should find that the Dashboard, All Tasks, Projects, All Milestones, Calendar, Statuses, and the People pages are now loading much faster than before.

Minimal login page

The login page of your TeamworkPM installation now loads faster. We've ripped out all the unnecessary stuff so it loads just what it needs to look pretty.

This is important because we want to show you the login instantly, even when you are on a slow connection. We want the entire TeamworkPM experience to be amazing for you.

JavasSript and CSS Pre-loading

Once the login page is displayed, we instruct your browser to start loading CSS and JavaScript libraries in the background. These files will then be in your browser cache so that when you login everything loads faster and seems snappier.

Object-level caching (V2 Caching System)

I'm so excited about this one! :D

At the moment we used project-level caching on all objects. So if you add a notebook for example, you've just invalidated all tasks lists on the project. This is less than ideal.

Internally we've started a new project lovingly referred to as the "V2 Caching System" (inventive eh!).

The new "V2 Caching System" is smart. Now if you add a notebook, only the "Notebooks" page is invalidated. And when you edit a comment attached to a task, the V2 Caching system is smart enough to know that it only needs to invalidate the task and not the task list or the project it resides in.

In addition, we now store the last-modified-date for every object in memory! This allows us to instantly serve you unique "eTags" for every object that hasn't been updated. Also we can now serve you something called "far-future expires headers" on specific data fetching URLs to prevent data from ever having to reload (this system is even faster than eTags).

Phew. All you have to know really is that over the coming weeks, as we carefully roll out the new caching system, you are going to be blown away by the speed of TeamworkPM.

So you see there are a lot of incredibly nerdy happenings behind the scenes to deliver you the world's best online project management system. It's a lot of work, but hey, you're worth it!

We've got a really nice update to the iOS app this month, we have added a few really nice new features to the App.

Search

First up, and the most obvious: full Search available right from the main screen.  Type in anything you waant and it will go search the server for the latest most up-to-date information possible. Tap on one of the results and if it's something that's not already on the phone the details will be instantly downloaded automatically for you - so no stale information here.  

The list of search results has been designed for quickly skimming through, however if you need more detail then tap the 'Expand' button and it will give you that extra bit of context. Hit it again to go back to the simple display.  And finally, to help you get around, start scrolling and a large index bar will fade in allowing you to jump straight to the section that you're most interested in.

Notebooks

The Project screen sports three new sections, one of which is Notebooks.  As you'd expect, this new Notebook section gives you the ability to read all of your Notebooks directly within the app.  So no more having to go out to Mobile safari and zooming around to fit the notebook to the display - the display fits the notebook. Exactly.

(download)

Click here to download:

ios-update-search-files-notebooks-and-contacts-lijxsvzelefDDJtAFpai.zip (234 KB)

Files

Just like Notebook, the Files section gives you full access to all of the files available in your Project. Plus, as you can see from the screenshot, you can easily send the file to your favourite App.  So if you like reading PDF's in iBook or presentations in Keynote, no problem

Contacts

Finally, Contacts.  A full listing of everyone associated with the project, this screen has a couple of nice touches.  Each detail of the person's information can be used - so, for example, tapping on a Skype address gives you the option of starting a Skype call, a chat or simply copying the account name.  Same goes for GTalk, Email and, of course, Phone Numbers.

We hope you like it and as usual, let us know what you think!

Download the app from the App store today.