With the recent update to the Autonumbering feature we thought it was a good time to remind everyone about this functionality and how to get the most out of it.
To adjust your Autonumbering settings just go to ADMINISTRATION > Application Settings in the navigation bar and you’ll see Autonumbering on the right:
Autonumbering is available for Projects as well as Invoices and Quotes (if you are using these modues). If you’re already using the Autonumbering the ‘Start at’ field will be populated, this is the next number that will be assigned.
The ‘Placeholders’ drop-down defines the length of the Autonumber to help you keep the number format consistent. For example, if the start at value is 24 and Placeholders is set to 4 then then next number would be formatted as 0024.
You can also use some other variables as part of the Autonumber to make it easier to track clients and dates just by looking at the Project, Invoice or Quote Number.
The following variables are available:
{autonumber} – the autonumber formatted based on your placeholder selection
{code} – the code for the Client company (you can set these up in Contacts Manager if you don’t use them at the moment)
{dd-mm-yy} – the current date e.g. 21-12-2010
{mm-dd-yy} – the current date e.g. 12-21-2010
{yy-mm-dd} – the current date e.g. 2010-12-21
You’re also able to add and additional text anywhere in the number Format, you might use this to differentiate between Projects, Invoices and Quotes or just to fit with a numbering convention that you use internally.
If you’d like assistance with setting up your Autonumbering please contact the ProWorkflow Support team – they’ll be happy to help.
Earlier this week we rolled out a small but significant improvement to the Project Autonumber feature that will prevent issues that a few users were experiencing with occasional duplicate numbers.
There is a single change from the user point of view and this is that the Project Number is now assigned only when the Project is created. When adding a new Project the Autonumber is no longer displayed, instead there is just a simple option to ‘Use Autonumber’ or not and the number is automatically allocated once the Project is made live.
Where you chose not to use the Autonumber then you can enter the Project Number:
If you are not currently using Autonumbering then you will not be affected by this update.
New ‘Project Request’ Permission
On the ‘ADMINISTRATION > User Permissions’ popup we’ve added a new permission to control which staff users are able to ‘Receive Project Requests’. This just gives you a little more control!
Email Recipients
The way project requests worked previously, you could only have one person’s email receive the incoming requests via email.
We’ve changed this now so multiple users (with the ‘Project Request’ permission) can receive incoming requests. This also gives you a lot more flexibility and control over your workflow.
Preformat Description
Feel welcome to preformat the description field to get people started or if you need to display specific information.
Add Files to Requests
Regular users of this feature will love this one! Your customers can now add files when submitting project requests!
Below is what the client sees – note the ‘Add Files’ link… 
And when the request comes in, as shown below you can see the files are shown. Awesome!
We do have some further tweaks coming but we hope this helps the ProWorkflow userbase and adds some value for you and your clients!
My name is Kylie; I’ve just joined the fantastic team here at ProWorkflow!
My job here at ProWorkflow is Software and Administration Support, so I’ll be one of the friendly voices you hear at the end of the phone when you have a question. I’m really looking forward to the new and exciting challenges of working here. I come from a background in Administration but have had some experience in the IT industry. I am really looking forward to talking to you all, and helping you with your questions.
Outside of work I enjoy Snowboarding, Painting, Motorsport and shopping (as all girls do). I have taken up snowboarding this year and by the end of the season I managed to make it down the mountain without falling over, so really looking forward to next season, planning on taking on the jumps – so broken legs and arms, here we come!!
So that’s a little about me, feel free to drop me a line anytime and I’ll be more than happy to have a chat and help you out.
- Kylie
Here’s some funny jokes about project management we came across. Feel welcome to comment if you have some more
- Nothing is impossible for the person who doesn’t have to do it himself.
- Any project can be estimated accurately (once it’s completed).
- At the heart of every large project is a small project trying to get out.
- Too few people on a project can’t solve the problems – too many create more problems than they solve.
- I know that you believe that you understand what you think I said but I am not sure you realise that what you heard is not what I meant.
- A verbal contract isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.
- Good estimators aren’t modest: if it’s huge they say so.
- A little project management saves a lot of fan cleaning.
- If you can keep your head while all about you are losing theirs, you haven’t understood the plan.
- When all’s said and done a lot more is said than done.
- The more you plan the luckier you get.
- The most valuable and least used WORD in a project manager’s vocabulary is “NO”.
- A user will tell you anything you ask about, but nothing more.
- The sooner you get behind schedule, the more time you have to make it up.
- A badly planned project will take three times longer than expected – a well planned project only twice as long as expected.
- If at first you don’t succeed, remove all evidence you ever tried.
- Schedules are made to be broken
- Work expands to fill the Time. Cost expands to meet the Budget.
- Today you idiot proof it…tomorrow a new and improved idiot arrives
- If you can’t convince them, then confuse them.
- The first 90% of a project takes 90% of the time. The last 10% takes the other 90%.
- Your inability to plan is not my emergency.
- Re-establish work/life balance – begin a new crisis at home
- The only certainty in a project is uncertainty
- I’m going on a time management course… just as soon as I can work it into my schedule.
- The trouble with being punctual is that nobody’s there to appreciate it.
- On time, on budget, on spec – pick 2.
We haven’t done a lot of blogging and tweeting the past month or two so you may think we’ve been a bit quiet lately. Actually it couldn’t be further from the truth!
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New Servers!
We have overhauled our entire suite of servers and set in place some awesome redundancy so we’re more reliable than ever!
These have pretty much doubled the speed of the application!
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New Timeline and Timesheet!
We’ve also been building a brand new totally slick Timeline/Gantt and Timesheet. Both will be fast and amazingly easy to use!
These are current in development. As these are two of the most used pages we’re taking our time to make sure usability is great and code is fast and agile. We’ll be running small beta groups on these so the final versions may change as needed.
When you ask?
We are not going to give a timeframe as we don’t want to let anyone down but I can say they’re both looking good and Timeline will probably be first out. We’ll notify users when ready to see more or test.
Here’s a couple of teaser screenshots.
(Full sized screenshots will be available at a later date)
Timeline Rebuild
Fast, live drag to edit, context menus, tooltips etc
Timesheet Rebuild
Fast, live drag to add/adjust time, live totals, easy to use
New Mobile Webapp!
We still have the ProWorkflow iPhone App and that’s going great but the customers are wanting more!
In order to offer ProWorkflow on all web enabled phones, we’re been working on a slick mobile webapp! This has been designed from the ground up to work on iPhone, Android, Blackberry and most other smartphones.
We’re doing this app right. it’ll be full featured, fast and powerful and will be a massive step up from all other project management apps on the market!
Sneak Preview!
Here’s a teaser from the app in production. We’re not going to release full sized screenshots just yet – The customers will get the first play 
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Tweaks and Improvements!
In addition we’re always making tweaks, adjustments and enhancements that are too small or numerous to blog or mention. In the past quarter we’ve released about 35 updates containing in excess of 100 changes!
This is the power of our subscription model, we’re able to rapidly update and improve the application live and it’s totally seamless!
We’re always looking for ways to improve ProWorkflow’s project management software and we’ve got no intention of stopping but with all those new features we always keep an eye on performance. We decided a few months ago that it was time to refresh our server infrastructure.
This wasn’t a decision we took lightly since it meant putting a hold on most of our development work, but with our current rate of growth we needed to add extra capacity.
It’s been a busy time for our development and networking teams who have done a fantastic job and completed the migration just over two weeks ago. All of our customers are now on the new infrastructure and we’ve already received a huge amount of positive feedback. We thought it would be interesting to share the results of our own testing of several pages within ProWorkflow including some of the most intensive.
As you can see, the new infrastructure is roughly twice as fast so ProWorkflow is making our customers even more productive!
We’re got some further speed enhancements planned and there are some great features coming very soon that will improve usability and make it even easier to manage multiple projects, track and adjust staff workload and keep on top of time entry!
Watch this space!
We often come up against companies and customers comparing the ProWorkflow SAAS (Software As A Service) solution with the option of using (or building) an Installed application.
Basically, do you host the project management software remotely or install it locally? There are a lot of considerations on both sides, but the key ones are cost, implementation, support, security, speed.
Technology has come a long way in the past few years to the point that in most cases, these considerations are covered both in local installs and SAAS.
One of the common comments we’re hearing these days is that I.T. departments are slow, bureaucratic and costly. It’s pretty expensive to manage a server internally, control uptime and even get I.T. departments acceptance of unknown software.
SAAS solves all this. Just sign up, login and use it! We manage everything else (Backups, servers, support)! Below is a comment we received the other day along these lines.
Thank you Julian,
On another note – being part of a large corporate business which has an Microsoft enterprise licence, I had to justify to management why I recommended PWF for our department. To cover all bases, I met with a South African Microsoft representative for detailed advice on a possible MS workflow solution. After many discussions, they came up with a proposal today. The cost of setting something up for us is around US$ 25,000 which will take 2-3 months to implement – this excludes the monthly server/hosting costs.
This is exactly why I recommended PWF (which management approved):
- there are no start up costs
- can be up and running with minimal effort
- monthly subscription is low
- and covers all IT maintenance and infrastructure
Thank you for an amazing online solution to workflow management.!
Regards,
xxxxxx
