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Intelligent Defaults vs TeamworkPM’s Management of Message Subscriptions

Our main project management tool is Teamwork as you may know. Teamwork is a great tool with all kinds of advanced functionality. Alas often the basics don't work. In this case Message subscription management.

I've written to TeamworkPM about five or six times about their incompetent management of message subscriptions. In the bad old days (pre-thrashing by Foliovision), TeamworkPM tried to make everyone subscribe to every message. It was hell. Clients emailed our entire team (up to 35 people at a time) for the smallest issue. We couldn't get any work done.

Keep reading Intelligent Defaults vs TeamworkPM's Management of Message Subscriptions

Marvellous Secrets of the TeamworkPM API

We've been doing a lot of work with the TeamworkPM API for our project supervision SAAS AscentList (there's been a beta available for Basecamp before we switched to Teamwork but we're now ready to release for Teamwork). Sign up here. Here's a quick preview:

Here's a list of tips to help you get the most out of the TeamworkPM API:

Just like Basecamp (Classic)

The first cool thing about the TeamworkPM API is that it's a lot like Basecamp Classic's API which means developers with a good Basecamp helper app should be able to port their technology over relatively easily.

Keep reading Marvellous Secrets of the TeamworkPM API

HelpScout Help Desk Review: Happier on Freshdesk

This review is very positive about Freshdesk. But if you are planning to use Freshdesk in conjunction with a forum (bbPress in our case, fully integrated with WordPress), you should be very aware of a huge limitation in Freshdesk: it doesn't respect the Reply-To address. Helpscout is no better.

Update 1 December 2013: Freshdesk has fixed the Reply-To Address and we've been able to fix our incoming forms to use reply-to, making our work a lot easier.

Update 25 April 2014: I've recently reviewed Freshdesk's new Freshfone feature, including extensively testing Freshfone call quality.

As many of you know, we've moved from selling just services to also selling product (FV Flowplayer, the most feature rich and intuitive HTML 5 video player for WordPress). For services, every clients gets his or her own TeamworkPM project with messages, task lists, milestones. But that kind of overkill doesn't make sense for purchased product where many people won't need support and many people will just need one or two requests answered.

Part of preparing support was improving our very active forums. But in addition to the forums for free support, with a paid product we needed an efficient help desk solution. We didn't want our customers to feel that they were in a help desk: the personal feel is very important to us. Support should be as easy as email.

When WPMU mailed us their glowing review of Help Scout we thought this is just what we needed.

When we first got our hands on Help Scout we thought it was great. Multiple shared mailboxes with internal notes.

Keep reading HelpScout Help Desk Review: Happier on Freshdesk

Basecamp Mobile Platform Subscribes Everyone. Note to 37 Signals: Mobile has to work to be useful

Basecamp's mobile platform subscribes everyone to messages, making it nearly useless. With up to 20 people on a single project, spanning design, programming, SEO and content, notifying everyone is a nightmare. That's an average of 2 minutes per person digesting notifications which are not relevant to him or her across 18 people who don't need the information.

I.e. every time a client posts a message from a smart phone Foliovision loses over half an hour of work time. Way to pick our pockets and/or steal our day, 37 Signals.

Keep reading Basecamp Mobile Platform Subscribes Everyone. Note to 37 Signals: Mobile has to work to be useful

37Signals, Basecamp URL change and not giving a damn about your customers

Today 37signals dropped our domain http://webwork.clientsection.com. Instead they have replaced it with http://webwork.basecamphq.com.

There is a thread on their forums covering the issue. As one customer writes:

BasecampHQ is a stupid domain for one. What is its relevance to my clients? I am paying for a professional service – not for branding that sounds like a paint ball website.

I totally agree. Apparently this change is coming with additional footer branding and additional branding in the emails.

This is a case of breaking the contract with the original customer: us. We are the ones who bought into their white label extranet solution with attractive anonymous core domains like:

  • grouphub.com
  • clientsection.com
  • projectpath.com
  • seework.com
  • updatelog.com

We pay a handsome yearly fee for the use of the software and the domain. Until recently, it's been $600/year. Now, it's $1200/year. For that fee, we expected 37signals to honour their part of the deal which was to allow us to continue to use the software and environment which we helped them get off the ground.

Keep reading 37Signals, Basecamp URL change and not giving a damn about your customers

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