File Space Manager
You can now manage and set file space per team. We’ve improved this process so it’s easier to keep your file usage under control.
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Roles
We have allowed you to set default Start Page and View for each ‘Role’. This means that all users with a particular role, (ie: Designers) can be easily made to all have the same Start page, (ie: Projects Page)
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My Project Requests
The ‘My Active Projects’ and ‘My Pending Project Requests’ sections now have their own section on the new ‘PROJECTS Manager > My Projects’ page. These are all the projects you have requested internally that you are essentially the ‘Client’ of.
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Auto-Numbering for Projects
- We’ve added a new variable {team} for simple Auto-Numbering.
({team} = the team that is doing the Project) - We’ve added an advanced Auto-Numbering option that lets you set different auto-number prefixes and individual numbering (for each team). Currently used by some of our custom customers, we have brought this through into ADV as the larger groups may find this useful for reporting and identifying different Project types.
Update – June 15th 23:30: A new version of the Time Tracker widget is now available, you can either download this directly from our website or use the "Update" link that will appear on the right side of the Time Tracker to upgrade automatically.
Note: If the update doesn’t work, you may need to reinstall AdobeAir and then reinstall the Widget. Your settings will remain intact.
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The most recent Adobe Air update that was released on Friday has caused the ProWorkflow Time Tracker to stop working for some customers.
Our development team are investigating this issue as a high priority and anticipate that a fix will be released within the next 24 hours. In the meantime as a temporary fix for any customers who need to use the Time Tracker, you can uninstall Adobe Air 2.0 and then download and reinstall the working 1.5.3 version using these links:
We will post an update as soon as a 2.0 compatible version of the Time Tracker is available and are very sorry for the inconvenience, we realise just how important the Time Tracker is to you.
What are they?
Normal tasks can be completed in any order.
Dependent tasks are linear and must be completed or sent back (reactivated) in order.
For example these tasks below must be processed in the order:
1.0, 1.1, 2.0, 2.1, 2.2, 3.0, 3.1, 3.2, 3.2.1, 3.2.2
1.0 – ABC Proposal
1.1 – Write Proposal
2.0 – ABC Website Design
2.1 – Design Look and feel
2.2 – Initial visuals
3.0 – ABC Website Development
3.1 – Plan Development Changes
3.2 – Start Development
3.2.1 – Brief the contractors
3.2.2 – Send images to contractors
By default all new projects are set to Normal, you can change them to dependant using the “Edit All” link on the Project Details Page for the specific project
In the pop-up window change task type from “Normal Tasks” to “Dependant Tasks” then click Save
When the pop-up refreshes you’ll see an “Active” column where you can select which task is currently active.
Now, wherever you see the project you won’t be able to edit, track time on or delete any tasks in the project unless they are the active task.
You can mark the active task as clicking the check-box alongside it. Using the drop-down list you can either mark the task as complete, or send the task back (so the previous task becomes active)
There are two email alerts specifically for dependant tasks, and these are really helpful. (check your settings for these in ADMINISTRATION > Email Alerts Settings)
It can be a good idea to set up a project for trying these out and see how these suit your organization.
A recent update of Chrome has resulted in the changing of some default settings which may affect some ProWorkflow users.
As Chrome is one of our supported browsers we want to bring this to the attention of our users. We love the Chrome browser for its speed and functionality and our stats show that just over 15% of ProWorkflow users regularly use Chrome as their browser of choice – six months ago this was less than 10%.
The update, which affects users on Google Chrome 5.0.375.38 and above, has defaulted the ‘Pop-ups’ setting to ‘Block All’. This will mean that dropdowns such as the ‘Tools’ on Projects, Invoice or Quotes pages will not perform correctly.
To check your settings for this:
- Go to the Tools menu and select ‘Preferences…’
- Click the Under the Hood tab.
- Click Content settings.
- Click the Pop-ups tab.
- Select ‘Allow all sites to show pop-ups’, alternatively click Exceptions to allow only pop-ups from your ProWorkflow server.
This will allow both pop-ups and dropdown menus to work correctly for our users who love Chrome.
A Google Chrome help topic covers this also: http://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=95472
If you have any questions about the latest Chrome update then please contact the ProWorkflow support team.
The next ProWorkflow update includes an update to the QuickBooks integration that will now allow the different tax codes for regions to be set per account and sends line items to QB.
The most exciting update for QuickBooks users is the addition of sending the lines of an invoice from PWF to QB. Previously only the tax and non-tax totals were sent. After this update the quantity, description, unit price, total amount and tax code will be sent per line:
For QuickBooks users setting up the integration we’ve smoothed a step out of the process by now setting the tax/non-tax codes in PWF before sending.
As different country versions of QB use different codes we were finding that onset it was needed for users to go into QuickBooks and add extra tax codes – this was less than ideal.
The update will include an option to set these in PWF so that the data is sent already matching. This will be in ADMINISTRATION > QuickBooks Settings:
Current users of the QB integration will not need to update these settings, we will retain your current defaults.
The Recurring Task feature has had some love recently and we’ll be moving this onto accounts in the update at the end of the week.
When the Recurring Task is made the tasks are now created and will show in all views. The feedback we’ve received helped us move this up the dev list to bring this to our users sooner that we’d planned – I know that the benefits will be immediate.
We’ve added the ability to have a Due date on these tasks, we know it was difficult for this to show fully in reports, Tasks Page, Timeline and the Calendar. The reports were a real bugbear for the Recurring Tasks so the Projects reports, Tasks reports and Staff Workload Schedule report will now show these tasks.
As a little extra we’ve also added the ability to Auto-Number these Recurring Tasks. The majority of our users have Compulsory Task Ordering (ADMINISTRATION > Usability Settings) enabled so now when Recurring Tasks are made the order number will increment appropriately.
There is a new confirmation step before making the Tasks and here there is an option to send yourself a reminder when the last task is made, simply tick this box and hit Finish to create the Recurring Tasks.
We’ve removed the old Recurring Task section from the bottom of the Project Details page, you can access Recurring Tasks on your Project by using the Add Task dropdown. (All Projects will now have the Recurring Task option available and you will no longer have to select this in Project Settings or in Tools).
The changes simplify and streamline the Recurring Task process for users and we’re pleased to be able to sneak this update out to you sooner than promised.
We’ll contact current users of the Recurring Task feature to ensure you’re ready for the changes to be implemented, if you have any queries on this at all then please contact the ProWorkflow support team.
There is a feature in ProWorkflow that many users overlook. The ‘New Project Request’ feature. Your external clients that have a login to your ProWorkflow account are able to request new jobs/projects easily.
The link is located on the left menu in the app:
Project Manager > New Project Request
Here’s a few videos to help you better understand how your clients can add project requests (on both the Professional/Advanced plans)
Tip! Click the links to view full-screen.
Professional plan: New Project Request
http://www.screencast.com/t/YThiMWEyNTEt
Advanced plan: New Project Request
http://www.screencast.com/t/N2EwM2RmMzg
Need more help?
Here’s an article from the Help Center
http://help.proworkflow.com/project-manager/client-project-request/
Dev Note: Future development will add the ability to add files to Project Requests in the Professional plan.
Many of our dedicated blog followers have noticed that we’ve been a bit quiet recently and there hasn’t been the usual steady stream of updates. But don’t worry, we haven’t been taking it easy, on the contrary it’s been a hugely busy time for the whole team as we’ve been working on some massive changes to ProWorkflow that will bring some awesome long term benefits to all of our customers. We don’t like to keep secrets so we wanted to share what we’ve been up to.
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Changes under the hood
ProWorkflow is developed in ColdFusion and has been for many years, during that time there have been some great new features added by Adobe and wherever possible we look to take advantage of these. Most of the time these require just small changes but this time around we had to think a bit more deeply (and by “we”, I mean our overworked developers).
Previously, each of our customers had an entirely separate set of files that provide the logic for ProWorkflow. So when a user added a new task they would be using the “add_task.cfm” file that was stored in a folder dedicated to their account. Every account would have its own copy of this “add_task.cfm” file even though they were all identical.
This approach has worked really well but had a few key drawbacks that we wanted to overcome:
- Performance – having every customer requesting copies of the same file meant more load on our servers because we couldn’t cache effectively.
- Updates – with several thousand customers, the process of rolling out updates was time-consuming, server intensive and generally quite difficult to manage.
- New accounts – each new customer required a lengthy setup process.
- Storage – every file was small but several thousand are needed to power ProWorkflow, having copies for each customer was eating away at our hard drives.
It’s been just over 6 weeks of early mornings and late nights but we are thrilled to say that with a mix of ingenuity, persistence and caffeine we completed the final testing phase late last week. Every member of the ProWorkflow team has been involved in testing every feature, button, link and setting within ProWorkflow across multiple browsers. I feel it is a real credit to everyone that we are not only still talking to each other but remain good friends afterwards!
We have already been using this new “Shared Code” approach for new trial accounts and it is going very well, it’s a bit too early to start giving performance figures but we will produce those in coming weeks. We will be rolling out to existing accounts over the next 1-2 weeks, carefully monitoring to ensure there are no issues.
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What’s next?
The new shared code model will bring performance improvements to all of our customers but more importantly it will dramatically shorten our update rollout time. This means our developers spend more time making ProWorkflow even better and everyone gets the changes at the same time! It also opens up the door for some fantastic new features and you’ll be hearing about those in the coming weeks.
