ActionThis Blog

ActionThis Release on 19 August

Posted on 20 August 2008 by Tim Howell

You may have noticed that we have made some changes to ActionThis.  The following changes were released last Sunday.

Improvements to the Project area:

• The Project and Action Item pages have been merged.  The new Project page has an Action Item and a Details tab.  The Project page functionality can be found on the Details Tab, while the Action Item page functionality can be found on the Action Item tab.
• A team member can leave a project they are signed to by going to the Details tab and clicking “Remove me.”
• We have created the “(Other)” project that will display all Action Items assigned to you from Projects you are not a member of.
• A new tick box to allow the viewing “Show Closed Action Items” instead of the two “View Open” and “View Closed” text.

Parent/Sub Action Items on Action Profile Page:

• A Sub Action Items can now be created in the Action Profile Page by going to the Sub Action Item section and clicking “Add Action Item."
• Rollover command functionality (from Project page) is also available.
• When viewing a Parent Action Item you can navigate to a Sub Action Item by selecting it in the Sub-Action Item section.
• When viewing a Sub Action Item the Parent Action Item is displayed below the “Status:”
• When viewing a Sub Action Item you can navigate to a Parent Action Item by selecting its display name.

Outlook Client:

• When working offline the changes to an action item's workflow are now reflected correctly in the Workflow buttons (e.g. Accepting an Action Item off-line now causes the “Accept” button to be greyed out when the item is next opened and the action is recorded in the item's history).
• A Sub Action Item can now be created by right-clicking on the Parent Action Item and selecting “New Sub Action Item."
• Action items can now be dragged to different projects or even be moved to be a Sub Action Item of another Action Item.

If you have any questions or feedback please email support@actionthis.com.

Thanks for your continued support.

The ActionThis Team

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ActionThis wins gold at Microsoft awards

Posted on 18 August 2008 by Ed Robinson

 

A fantastic night on Thursday where ActionThis won the Software + Services solution of the year at the Microsoft New Zealand Partner awards. Congratulations to the core team - Aaron, Blair, Derek, Glenn, Jeff and to our totally awesome interactive designer Mark.  Thanks to Randy Burns from Dallas City Hall for the great customer feedback. I'd also like to recognize the other nominees for this award: CNS Treasury Enlighten Design PolyMEDIA Each of these companies have also brought to market truly world-beating solutions and are great examples of software+services.

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Visit us at the 2008 Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference

Posted on 11 June 2008 by Ed Robinson

We’re exhibiting at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in Houston, Texas July 7-10.

Visit us at Booth 120. We've just started signing ActionThis resellers - if you're an IT solutions company, project management or change management consultancy email us (or visit us at the conference) and we'll give you details on the reseller program.

Its great to be invited to exhibit at Microsoft's premier partner event. We're also proud to include four other New Zealand based companies: ActiveDocs, IPFX, Mindscape and Voola.

Its going to be a great event. Thanks to Microsoft and New Zealand Trade & Enterprise for sponsoring the exhibition booth.

 

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New Features May 18

Posted on 19 May 2008 by Ed Robinson

We've added new features to ActionThis

• Layout changes on the website. We've moved the website to support a screen resolution 1024x768 or higher - this means the reports are better laid out and there is more space for working with action items.
• Team workload report. This will now show you the team member workload for all  projects where you have the 'manager' role
• Organization memberships. Invitations to join an organization now appear on the Dashboard
• Office client installation. Both the Excel and Outlook clients are now included in a unified installer
• Outlook Explorer. We've added full offline support to the Explorer
• Outlook reminders. Due reminders have always shown in Outlook's reminder window - we've changed the reminder time, so they appear at 8am on the date they are due

Behind the scenes, we've also put plumbing in place to support blackberry and Windows mobile clients and Microsoft Project synchronization - we're working on these at the moment.  The next major release will have the Microsoft Project synchronization.

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Getting Started Guides

Posted on 28 April 2008 by Ed Robinson

We've just released new user guides:

• ActionThis 5 minute tutorial.  How to use the web-based task management
• ActionThis Outlook Client user guide. How to use the clients for Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007
• ActionThis User guide. How to set up your organization, work with projects and use reports.

These can be downloaded from the HowTo page: https://my.actionthis.com/Private/HowTo.aspx

Each guide is intentionally brief and to-the-point.

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New Features April 27

Posted on 27 April 2008 by Ed Robinson

Today we released some new features to make it easier to sign up and get started.  Self-sign-up for new users is now simpler and quicker.

When you first sign in, you'll see a one-minute guided tour to help you get started.

You can access this tour at any time by navigating to the dashboard and choosing Show Tour from the top menubar. Yes - we'll be adding more tours soon

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Installing the Excel Client on Windows Vista

Posted on 23 April 2008 by Ed Robinson

If you have Windows Vista, you may experience set up installing the ActionThis Excel Client. The problem occurs because Windows Vista "User Access Control" prevents the setup from installing all the components. Here is a workaround for this, and we'll have a proper fix built into the setup soon.

NOTE: This doesn't affect the ActionThis Outlook Client, or the ActionThis Excel Client on Windows XP

How to install the ActionThis Excel Client on Windows Vista with UAC on

1. Open Windows control panel
2. In control panel, Open "User Accounts"
3. In Control Panel > User Accounts, open "User Accounts"
4. In Control Panel > User Accounts > Make changes to your account, click on "Turn User Account control on or off"
5. In Control Panel > User Accounts > Make changes to your account > Turn User Account Control On or Off page, uncheck the box "Use User Account Control (UAC) to help protect your computer". Click OK
6. You’ll need to restart your computer. After this you can install the ActionThis Excel client. After the Excel client is installed, you can turn UAC back on if you wish.

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Tagging, Search and Project View in Outlook

Posted on 22 April 2008 by Ed Robinson

When we started building the ActionThis Outlook 2003 and 2007 add-ins 18 months ago, I gave the product team a brief:

• Make the experience as natural as possible - people want Outlook to behave like Outlook
• No splash screens - I hate anything that wastes my time just to advertise their product
• Integrate with Outlook's existing Inbox, tasklist, reminders and email - don't make people learn something new
• Don't mess with performance, stability or security
• Don't load the Outlook main window up with new toolbar icons

I detest software that takes over my computer, looks ugly or continually pesters me with splash screens. So the ActionThis Outlook client simply helps you assign and work with action items - quietly, securely, no impact on performance, with a natural experience for Outlook 2003 and 2007 users.

Recently, after a lot of thought, we added one new toolbar button to Outlook's main window - its an incredibly important one. The "explorer" button opens a window with action items grouped by project. It also enables you to tag/categorize action items and search.

Here is where to find the button, have fun exploring:

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Introducing Larry

Posted on 21 April 2008 by Ed Robinson

If you're new to ActionThis and want to experiment assigning action items via the website or Microsoft Outlook, try assigning an action item to Larry@actionthis.com.

Larry is our virtual team member, who automatically completes any action item you assign him. Use Larry to try out the assign, reassign and bounce back capabilities.

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New Features April 13

Posted on 14 April 2008 by Ed Robinson

Its been a busy few weeks, and the team has just completed adding new capabilities to ActionThis.

• Our website has a new look emphasising that ActionThis task management is available for Microsoft Office 2007 and Microsoft Office 2003 as well as for the web.
• We've enhanced the blog and removed forums - all support is now provided through emailing support@actionthis.com
• We're getting ready to release new Office add-ins soon:
  • Enhancements to the Microsoft Outlook add-in with a project explorer, tagging and search
  • A new Microsoft Project 2003/2007 add-in giving two-way synchronization with ActionThis
  • A new SharePoint 2007 webpart that adds ActionThis task management to SharePoint teamsites.

The Microsoft Outlook add-in enhancements will be released this week, with Project and SharePoint following soon after.

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