We start 2009 with some cool features to enhance your DeskAway experience (yup, we were working and busy during Christmas/New Years). Check them out and tell us what you think! As always, thank you for your feature requests and suggestions.

User Reports

All along you have tracked team member activity within each project. There was no one place to see what Tina worked on across all her projects. How many  hours has she contributed and what tasks/issues does she have pending?

User Reports (Summary as well as Detailed) gives you a central place to track work by any of your team members. Filter, print or export these reports to a spreadsheet.

(Click on a team member’s name on the Reports page)

(Summary Work Report Page)

(Detailed Work Report Page)

My Work Report

Easily track your work across all your projects. In addition to the email reminders, this will give you a heads-up on what you have overdue.

(Access your report from the My Work Report link under Projects)

Silent Projects & Better Control of Email Notifications

We received feedback that after creating a project there were just too many emails going out to every team member. For example, whenever you added a new Milestone, the person assigned to the Milestone got an email. When a task was completed, an email was automatically sent out. To some, this was annoying. Hence, we now give you better control of email notifications within your projects from the Add/Edit Project page.

1. Mark a project as Silent if you do not want any emails to trigger when adding/editing/deleting or commenting on anything within the project.

2. Mark a project as Email-enabled and have better control of when to trigger email notifications.

Its easy to switch between these two options anytime. Tip: When creating and setting up a project for a future date, its better to set it as a Silent Project. When the project is setup and ready to go live, change it back to the Email-enabled option. Your team members will appreciate this.

(Setup Silent or Email-enabled projects by editing a Project)

(This icon denotes a Silent Project)

Super Users + Account Owners can see all Projects

Super Users will be able to see and keep a track of all projects from the Project Listing page. They will not be able to access any projects that they are not a part of. Better control of what’s happening within the DeskAway account and making sure that another Super User is not creating projects that are not needed and hence taking up the total active projects limit.

(Super Users can see all project but cannot access certain projects)

Global Control of Email Reminders

From the Settings tab, Super Users will be able to set personal email reminders for all the other project team members. See someone slacking off? Turn on his/her email reminder.

(Settings Tab - Set individual email reminders)

User-Interface Enhancements

All page headings and text is now bolder and sharper. We got away with the lighter grey shades that were a bit too hard to read.

(New Interface Changes)

Want to know more about DeskAway’s Founder & CEO Sahil Parikh? Check out the latest Express Computer Hot Seat profile on his blog here.

“What are you working on?” is a link at the top of your DeskAway account, through which you let other team members know what you are currently working on. This is similar to a Twitter update except that you use it only within your team members currently.

Quick Facts
a. This is a brief description of what you are working on right now.
b. See everyone’s updates and keep a track of what all your team members are doing in real time.
c. You can even set your update from within a project (on the left side of the Project Overview page).
e. The account owner can clear anyone’s status so be sure to play by the rules.

Wishing you all Happy Holidays and A Prosperous & Productive New Year ahead!

Cheers!

The DeskAway Team