Posts tagged "News"34 posts

Update on Projecturf 4

Posted February 25, 2013 by Chuck

In 2012 we announced that we were working on a new version of Projecturf and that it would be available at the end of the year. It was delayed, and then we said it should be available in February 2013. Unfortunately, it won't be available this month and we owe you an explanation.

Essentially, we haven't done a very good job at estimating how long Projecturf 4 would take. We are so excited about it and we want to release it so bad that we've made promises about dates that we haven't been able to adhere to. We understand this makes us look bad, but most importantly, it frustrates our customers, which we never want to do. For this, we are truly sorry.

We also have not been communicating regularly with you about the progress of Projecturf 4, which we realize needs to change now. Basically, we've just been heads down, all day, working overtime and late nights and haven't thought much about taking some time to make posts about our progress. Fortunately, we have many great customers who have asked for more regular progress reports. Thus, we are going to start doing regular Twitter posts about our progress until we launch the new version. We will tag each post with projecturf4. You can follow @projecturf on twitter for the updates. We promise from here on out that we will communicate the progress of Projecturf 4 to you regularly.

Finally, in terms of a launch date, we don't officially have one. As some of you may or may not know, there are so many unknowns in development that it's very difficult to provide a final launch date. This is the mistake we made last year. Projecturf 4 is such a major overhaul that it's just too complex. It's going to launch with a brand new Web app, a beta API, a brand new interface, new features, multilingual support (2 languages to start), and much more. The Mobile app is being developed as we speak and we will be launching that shortly afterwards. We've taken on a lot and I'm sure you'll love it as much as we do, but for the time being, it has delayed us more than we had hoped. At this point, I can tell you that we're getting really close. We are using the product now internally and the majority of the sections are basically complete, and we are truly thrilled about it. Follow us on Twitter for upcoming updates.

Thank you for your support and patience. I know it's difficult to wait for a product. Please know that we're doing everything we can to get this out as soon as possible.

For your reference, the original Projecturf 4 Coming Soon post is located here.

Projecturf Set to Launch Brand New Project Management Software

Posted October 1, 2012 by Mike

Over the last three years, we've had thousands of companies use Projecturf everyday to manage their projects, collaborate online, and improve the productivity of their team. We've been listening to customer feedback about Projecturf on the suggestion forum and have released new versions and updates along the way to provide new and improved ways to help you get things done.

Although we still believe the current version of Projecturf offers an excellent way to manage your projects, we are about to embark on a new era. Late last year, we saw the need for a completely new way to manage your projects, your business, and also your personal stuff. This got us thinking and also got us started on creating something entirely new, innovative, and something that will take project management software to a whole different level. We know you have lots of options when it comes to choosing the right software for your team. The next generation will not only stand out from a design and usability standpoint, but will keep everything in your life in one place and get your entire team fully engaged in Projecturf throughout the day, whether it's from their computer or on the go.

As a result, I'm pleased to announce that we will be releasing the new product, Projecturf 4, later this year. Projecturf 4 has a brand new design and layout, all new features and functionality, and so much more. Here's a quick snapshot of a few things to come in Projecturf 4 (more details will be shared later):

• Re-designed top-to-bottom in fullscreen
• Mobile version to use on any platform
• API for integration with your other applications
• My Stuff area showing everything on your plate
• New personal stuff such as personal tasks and contacts (plus, free personal accounts coming)
• Sync files with Dropbox and BOX
• Multilingual support with 3 languages immediately

To sign up to get notified when we launch Projecturf 4 and to learn more, visit the Projecturf 4 page. Also, all existing customers will receive a free upgrade. Lots more to come, so stay tuned!

New Feature: Task Estimates in Your Project Management Software

Posted July 9, 2012

We just released an update that allows you to assign time estimates to each task and subtask in Projecturf. By adding time estimates to tasks, you can easily track actual spending against task budgets. Once actual time spent is entered on a task, simply click the timer icon to compare it to the budget and view the percent complete. You can also find out more such as the date of the entries, hourly rates, and the specific users that recorded their time by clicking the view button.



You can now check the progress that has been made on a task at any time by viewing the percent complete. If someone is over the allotted time, it will show as red to quickly notify you of the overrun. If someone hasn't recorded their time yet, it will display the estimated time without any actuals against it.

Having both time tracking and estimating in your project management tool will improve productivity for your entire team. Each person will now know how much time they should be spending on a specific task. Using the new time estimates makes it simple to track your costs, stay within budget, and better allocate workloads when creating and altering project schedules.

Faster Page Loading & Speed Enhancements

Posted July 3, 2012 by Chuck

Last week, we rolled out a very large upgrade that primarily addresses the speed of Projecturf. I won't get into the nerdy details too much, but at a high level we moved from our dedicated server environment to a cloud-based one instead. We left our Oracle database on it's own dedicated server (as it was before), but now both the cloud servers and the database server are located in the same geographic location, which eliminated the latency we were experiencing before. After thorough testing, I'm happy to report that we're seeing page loading times drastically improved across the board, and in some instances, they have increased up to 20 times. However, the most important thing to you, the customer, is that as you hop around Projecturf from project-to-project or section-to-section to get things done, you will notice a significant difference in how fast things load.

If you would like to read more about this update, check out the press release.

I want to personally apologize for the week prior where we did have several maintenance periods and a few issues we tried to fix very quickly. Thank you for your patience. These updates make things much speedier, but also have addressed a few requests a lot of our customers have asked for on our suggestion forum. It also sets the table, sorta speak, for some bigger things coming later this year :)

Projecturf speed improvements

Posted February 17, 2012 by Chuck

This year is already well underway and it's been a very busy and hectic time at Projecturf. There are a few big ticket items that we're concentrating on and that currently have the majority of our focus. I want to share which items these are with you.

Early this year, some of you may have started to experience slower response times in our application. This slowness is a result of the growth in our user base and traffic, some hardware issues, and to a large extent, our database. We have been focused intensely on this issue and have made serious headway as of today. Our database has been upgraded to an enterprise-level Oracle database and the majority of our procedures have been completely rewritten from scratch. In our testing thus far, in some instances, we are seeing speed increases upwards of 20 times faster than the current application. This, obviously, is a drastic and very important update that we will be rolling out shortly.

This has, unfortunately, stalled our progress with a couple of other projects that are very important to me and our company. These projects include our iPhone app and our API. The good news, however, is that while we have been focusing on the new database, we have been essentially finishing the API at the same time. This does not mean that our API will roll out in conjunction with the speed update, but it does mean that it will be coming shortly afterwards. In addition, the database updates have allowed us to work in a single sign-on approach. This will give many of you the ability to use one email address to sign into Projecturf where you can then access all the various systems and client accounts you work in. This is another big update that I know many of you are waiting for. These two updates should drastically improve your work efficiency.

In short, our aim is to roll out the new speed improvements as soon as we can in the next few weeks and then follow that up with single sign-on ability. After that, we are going to publish the beta version of our API followed by our iPhone app. We are striving to have all these items for summer.

I also wanted to share with you a little bit about our evolution as a product. I will discuss this in more detail in future posts, but needless to say we have been working on the next generation of our app. We started this process last year and it is starting to really ramp up. It's a little too early to share screenshots or other details, but over the next couple of months I will be discussing it more here, on our blog. We have some very exciting things in the works.

There's a lot we're working on this year to make your Projecturf life better. Follow me on Twitter and check our blog often. I am going to start discussing some of the interface challenges and resolutions we work though on a regular basis and will be providing insights and hints as to what you can expect out of Projecturf 4.

Get One Month Free!

Posted August 22, 2011

We are now offering a promotion which gives you one month free when signing up for the annual subscription. Simply follow these instructions to pre-pay for one year and receive one full month off the total price:

1. When logged into your account, hover over your name on the top right of the screen and click Account
2. Under Subscription Details - Subscription, click on Modify Subscription
3. Select the plan you want and click on the drop-down menu for Type and change it to Annual.
4. Click Continue and complete the remaining steps to confirm.


You have now received your one month discount and will not be charged again for 12 months when your account renews.

Version 3.2 Now Live!

Posted August 18, 2011

Projecturf version 3.2 was just released and is available to all new and existing customers. This update includes several major new features and enhancements that provide additional functionality and help improve efficiency by speeding up your workflow. This latest version includes the following:

• Drag and drop Gantt chart that allows you to move and resize your tasks and subtasks to update your timelines quickly. This is available at both the Global level across all your projects and the project level.
• Apply colors to the Gantt charts to easily decipher between projects on the Global Gantt chart when updating your project schedules.
• Add expenses to your Timecard. You can also associate fixed expenses with a task or ticket and track to your budgets.
• Filter timecards based on selected dates to quickly view a specific week, month, etc. and export them based on the applied filters.
• Sync all your tasks and subtasks to any popular calendar application. Simply check a box and the feed will automatically generate.
• Receive a daily digest email in HTML format of all new, completed, and upcoming tasks, tickets, and events.
• Receive nicely formatted HTML emails for all your notifications and discussions. HTML emails can also be turned off if you wish to receive plain text emails.
• Get notified of Projecturf updates, news, features, and blog posts when logged in. This can be turned on and off in the account section.

These new features and enhancements were a direct result of feedback from you. Share ideas and vote on existing suggestions here: Projecturf suggestion box. To learn more about the Gantt chart and task syncing, visit the support center. We have also added a video tutorial of the Gantt chart for those who prefer video over text.

Add Multiple Entries Quickly

Posted May 18, 2011

Version 3.0 offers the ability to add multiple items into any section of Projecturf at once. By using the "Add Another" option when inputting records, you can include as many entries as you need to quickly get data into your project management software. Another benefit of using this feature is that it saves your settings for each consecutive entry. For example, if you are assigning multiple tasks to a user that have the same due dates, when clicking "Add Another" the responsibility, dates, and priority will be the same as the prior task. Therefore, all you'll need to do is fill in the new task description.



This usability enhancement is available in all project sections such as the Tasks, Calendar, and Document sections - to name a few. To free up more of your time and focus on getting things done, visit Projecturf here.

Version 3.0 is now Live!

Posted April 27, 2011

We have just released version 3.0 which is available to all new and existing customers. The new version of Projecturf has over 30 new features and enhancements and includes a major redesign of the User Interface.



Here is a list of several new features and functionality added in version 3.0:

• New User Interface which includes brand new icons resulting in a more modern look and feel, reduced vertical space for less scrolling, inline panels for better visibility when adding items, custom navigation colors, and a simplified layout.
• Advanced user permissions that allow you to set custom project level permissions for managers, staff, and clients. This includes hiding sections and setting read / write or view only access to each section.
• Custom subdomains have been added and therefore your new login address is: yourname.projecturf.com instead of projecturf.com/account/yourname
• Add multiple items at once by clicking add another in the add new panels to quickly enter any items. Available in all project sections.
• Pin up to 6 project tabs to the top of the navigation bar to easily navigate between projects similar to how internet browsers function.
• Drag and drop project tabs to order them based on your priorities.
• View all active timers from any section in the project and also with an icon on the project tabs.
• Run multiple timers at the same time.
• Set Global Calendar colors for each project from the project settings page.
• Add time to tasks and tickets directly from the task / ticket itself by clicking on the timer icon and entering your time.
• Quickly search for tasks and tickets when adding a new timecard. The results will auto-filter.
• View who has posted a ticket
• New support center with FAQ's, instructions on how to use each section, and more.
• Drag and drop calendar items from the Global Calendar while viewing all project schedules in one place
• Use the Global sections to make edits, add timecard entries and notes, and update task, ticket, and timecard entries
• Upgraded servers to add speed enhancements throughout the application which reduces page loading times
• You can now turn SSL security off if you'd like additional speed improvements

We're very excited about sharing Projecturf 3.0 with you and we hope you enjoy the new version and all Projecturf has to offer! We will be describing each of the new project management software features in more details over the coming weeks so stay tuned.

Projecturf helps Lightrhythm Visuals Get Things Done in Style

Posted April 21, 2011

"Projecturf is visually attractive - I felt much more confident inviting clients to this interface"

Lightrhythm Visuals LTD is a Design firm that is using Projecturf to easily manage their projects and keep their staff motivated. CEO Ben Sheppee describes why he loves using Projecturf. You can learn more about Lightrhythm Visuals by visiting http://lightrhythmvisuals.com.

What problems/challenges were you facing that prompted your company to look for a new project management tool?
In the past we had a lot of troubles getting staff and clients to use online project managment software - I think this is really because it just looked so boring and drab and they saw it as another boring task to do. So Projecturf worked for us because its interfacing was nicely laid out and attractive to use - just has a better sense of design - and as we are based in visual media - that's really important with who we work with and motivating our staff to use the system.

What other project management tools did you review? Why didn't you select them?
We used r.project for a while and basecamp - both of which were clunky in layout and akward to manage. They were also missing vital features that Projecturf offered such as Gantt Charts (missing in basecamp) and reports (in r.dot project).

What types of tools/features did your company specifically require for your project management needs?
Gantt Charts were a must, but we really like and utilize the Designs Module which works wonders for us to present and get feedback from clients

What specifically did Projecturf bring to the table that made it the right solution for your company/organization?
Projecturf is visually attractive - I felt much more confident inviting clients to this interface.

How has Projecturf been received by your employees to date?
Everybody on the team is now interested in getting organized - its amazing

Business benefit/bottom line results from implementing Projecturf at your company/organization?
Better communication between staff and with clients over the overall workflow.

Why would you recommend other organizations use Projecturf?
Because it motivates staff to actually get organized and specifically for us it engages the clients into the creative process.

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