Simplified Sign-Up

OK, so this may not be exactly news worthy for existing ITSO users, but something we’ve been working to improve over time is the sign-up experience.  The result is that we have been able to significantly decrease the sign-up process from 3 pages, to only 6 required fields.  The upside here for existing users is that the initiative to simplify the site in other areas will continue throughout the site so that we can further improve the experience and continue to make the site efficient in what it does for you.

Update on the last week of activities

Things may seem to have appeared quiet around here for the last week or so.  The ITSO team have been hunkering down planning for the next major release of the site, as well as catching up on the less exciting aspects of our work such as documentation and process improvement.   

However, we haven’t stopped working on the current version of the site.  We have been slowly rolling out some minor enhancements such as the new timeline phase improvements that now allows for the much requested “Create Custom Milestone” feature.  This does exactly what it sounds like it should do; it allows users to add an infinite number of custom milestones to their project in addition to the phases that are required.  The results are compiled into the Final Project Report as well as available via the site by the way of a nicely laid out Gantt chart allowing you and your team to visualize your projects timeline.  

We expect we may build on to this area in the future allowing the addition of such things like; iCalendar export to Outlook, email notifications, upcoming and past due alerts and appending team members to milestones.  These features will be decided on as part of the next release and I will share a partial list of what we expect to build soon hopefully.

New Build Making It’s Debut Today

The latest build that was announced earlier this week will finally make it’s debut at the end of the day today.  We’ve been busy testing the new features (see a full list in the post below) and we’re now ready to release them into the wild.  We expect, as always, there may be teething problems, but based on the testing conducted this week we’re confident that the new changes and additions will add considerable value to the existing site for our users.  

Check back later today to see the new build live around 5:00 p.m. PST.

New ITSO Build Coming This Week

A new ITSO build is on the way and should be made public sometime this week.  We are currently in testing mode and if everything goes to plan this week we will push out several of the improvements announced in previous posts, as well as a handful of new features and improvements.

Here’s a quick look at what’s in store for this week:

1. Improved Content library content:  We’ve made a great deal of improvements to the search results returned when using the Research feature in the product research database.  In previous versions the search results were not always optimal, or worst case = was WAY off target.  We’ve now fixed this so we promise… no more questionable results!
    
2. Addition of the Success Metrics data in the Final Report:  You will now be able to access and share the wonderful Success Metrics data as part of your projects Final Report.
    
3. New and improved Team Members area: The Team Members functionality has often been a second thought especially as we work to improve the other key areas of the application, it’s the red headed stepchild if you wish.  We’ve finally got around to fixing some of the issues we had with this section.  However, we have a ways to go before the functionality is at the same level as other areas of the site, but we are hoping the recent changes go a small way to improving usability and user satisfaction.
    
4. Addition of Peer Data pop-up charts in the Success Metrics page: Yea!
    
5. New Gantt Chart graphical display of the Project Timeline: We’ve known of this need for a while and I’m very pleased to see that it’s now working well in testing.  I look forward to getting user feedback on this addition once it’s launched, it’s certainly been a topic on the tip of many toungs during past user interviews.  Oh, and as a bonus we’ve also included this in the Final Project Report.
    
6. Custom Timeline Milestones: Based on popular demand we will soon allow the addition of custom milestones in the Timeline section.  This should provide improved flexibility to our users wishing to work with a greater degree of detail.  In the future we’ll add iCal support that will allow you to view your milestones in your Outlook calendars.
    
7. Costs and Quantities UI revisions to improve readability/usability: Yeah… I know, big deal… but small improvements add up, and we’ve made more than 400 small improvements in the last 3 months and sometimes small wins add up to big victories. 
    
8. Loading Message for the Project Report: Yes, we’ve also noticed that the report is typically very slow loading.  It works hard to compile all of your project data into one page and sometimes this has to be done in realtime, not only does it take a long time to create the report but it can sometimes appear as if it’s not acutally doing anything…  So we’ve added a loading screen to display progress, and more importantly we are in the process of figuring out how we can speed up the report creation in general.

We hope to make this latest build mid-week (around the 15th of October) and we look forward to hearing your feedback.
 

Visit the site here. 

 

Latest ITSO Development Status

Get a high-level distilled view of the recent functionality updates and features currently in development.  Visit the ITSO Development Status page here.

Success Metric Data Coming to the Final Report

Things have been quiet around here lately as I’ve been out of the country for the last week or so, but don’t let the quiet fool you.  The development on new features of the ITSO site have been moving forward as quickly as ever before.  One of the improvements my team have been working on over the last week is the integration of the Success Metrics Data into the Final Project Report.  We think this will be a very handy addition that will allow your whole team to view benchmark data for your project against that of your peers, and no longer limiting this data to the Success Metrics screen. We expect to launch this addition towards the end of the week.  

We’ll also be pushing out other fixes to the general Success Metric page at this time.  We’ve noticed in certain circumstances that the numbers are not dynamically refreshing, so we’re fixing that and I’ll let you know when it’s live  also.