We've just updated the Dashboard adding new charts and graphs for easy project visualization. The Dashboard is now tidier, faster and more useful.
The value of being able to get an overview of what's been happening with your projects and invoices over the year can't be overstated. It seems that any web application that has charts or graphs gets loads of press and happy customers, so we wanted to jump on this ship and be a part of it. We also know that it's something we probably should have added a long time ago. So here it is.
Your Dashboard is now much tidier. We've gone through each item that was on there and taken out what we thought was causing unnecessary clutter. Now the Dashboard serves as your project (and financial) overview.
The new dashboard tells you:
What's been going on this year
What projects, tasks and invoices are due today or overdue
Recent activity in the team (including comments and files)
How your time is being spent across open projects
Breakdown of open/closed projects
Amount collected this financial year
Amount outstanding
Storage
Tip: You can change your financial year by going to the Preferences section in the My Company page.
Two years ago today we launched a service that we thought might be useful to small teams and freelancers for managing projects and invoices. Two years later over 10,000 users all over the world are now managing their businesses, saving time and money with Project Bubble
We're so pleased to have gotten to where we are today and wouldn't have got here without your great support, feedback, suggestions, ideas and positive comments - so thank you!
To celebrate our second birthday we have a new major update planned for tomorrow. Version 2.0 will bring a few new amazing features but will mostly solidify our current offering, and that is easy to use and simple project management.
Here's a sneak peak:
We'll be updating to version 2.0 tomorrow at around 6AM EST. Downtime should be minimal.
We're very excited to announce Project Bubble Version 2.0! With sub-tasks, real-time collaboration, a new dashboard and project email threading, we are sure you'll love this exciting new update.
It's been a few months in the making, but version 2.0 is now live! Yesterday we celebrated our second birthday and thought it was very fitting to release a major new update at the same time.
These are features that you've requested, as well as our own ideas such as interface design improvements. Read more below and enjoy the updates!
Sub-tasks
Yes, those sub-tasks which you've been requested for a long time have finally made their way in to Project Bubble. If you've used Project Bubble heavily for a while then you'll probably notice that Sub-tasks are basically To-dos renamed. However they are more powerful than you might think.
First of all Sub-tasks are now much more integral to the project and task management. The structure is now Client > Project > Task > Sub-task.
Sub-tasks are now part of the overall progress of a project. Therefore tasks now have a progress bar (like the Project) so that when you complete sub-tasks the task progress gets updated (and so does the Project progress bar in real-time).
We've redesigned the project's task page to make everything clearer and more useful. When you click on a project name now you'll go to this page where you'll see the project's progress, hours tracked and a quick link to the report page.
Project reports now include sub-tasks (as well as tasks), so your clients will find this much more useful when wanting a breakdown of how complete the project is.
Please note that as to-dos have now been replaced by sub-tasks we've converted 'project to-dos' to tasks and 'task to-dos' to sub-tasks. If you need help with this or a further explanation get in touch with us.
New Dashboard
You'll probably know about this already, but the Dashboard has been improved with new charts and graphs to get overviews on your time spent, and the activity on your projects.
Also we have improved the Notifications section on the Dashboard to show up-coming deadlines as well as just what is overdue or due today. Therefore you'll find this section much more useful for getting an overview of your next 48 hours.
Real-time Collaboration
You can now view updates your collaborators make to projects and tasks within your Bubble as they happen. As you work on a project (completing tasks and to-dos) you'll notice the project updates itself in realtime, likewise time that is tracked, changes to tasks or projects and the activity feed on the Dashboard all update now in real-time.
So if you want to monitor activity in your Bubble across your whole team simply sit on the Dashboard page and watch events as they happen.
Email Threading
All projects now have their own email address which you can give to clients or collaborators. When emails are sent to this address they become comments which are threaded in to the project. Like normal, comments can be replied to aswell by email and they too will be threaded in to the conversation.
We feel this particular feature massively improves the CRM capabilities of Project Bubble as email conversations can now be completely threaded to projects so you will never lose track of a conversation or get lost in a sea of emails about a project.
To access the email address of a project just click on the project report page, and then the "Email Comment" button and the email address will get passed to your default mail client.
We hope you enjoy the updates! Let us know if you have any questions.
We've made some improvements to the way files are handled in Project Bubble adding greater security, speed and a quick way to preview PDF files.
All files you upload are now safely stored 'in the cloud' using Rackspace Cloud's Content Delivery Network. What does that mean in real terms? It basically means that your files will be served faster, be more secure and also allows paves the way for integrations with other file storage providers such as Dropbox.
Speed
A content delivery network (CDN) serves files to you from your nearest location. So if you are in Australia then our CDN will serve you files from a server in Australia, meaning you'll get it a lot quicker. The same goes for users all over the world.
Security
Your data is served over a secure SSL connection and stored with encrypted URLs so only you have access to your files. As each account on Project Bubble gets its own unique and private CDN URL, it makes your files very secure. Also our providers (Rackspace) have been in the business for years and know a thing or two about security, so they are a well respected and trustworthy brand.
Access
If you need access to your files for whatever reason, they can now all be accessed together in one place as each account on Project Bubble now gets their own virtual CDN. If you ever need access to all of your files just get in touch and we'll point you in the right direction.
PDF Preview
A cool new feature we thought we would 'throw in' is the ability to preview PDF documents in the file browser. We get requests for this often so we know that a lot of you will love this new feature.
Simply upload a PDF document and then you'll see a preview of the document in the file browser window. You can even enlarge the view if you want to and then export to Google Docs.
We hope you enjoy the new features, and of course let us know if you have any questions.
Please note that unfortunately we cannot preview DOC or XLS documents at this time using the preview tool. Rackspace, Fanatical Support, and the Rackspace logos are registered trademarks of Rackspace US, Inc. Google Docs is a trademark of Google Inc
