Beta testers wanted!

We have been super busy working on a few new projects for the ITSO site recently and are feeling good about our general direction for the current Beta site, however we are looking for your input also.  We need additional beta testers to assist us in the ongoing testing of the site and to help us test new concepts, projects and ideas.

If you are interested and would like to become a part of our beta test group please get in touch here.

Update on ITSO Development Activity

It’s been a while since I’ve updated the ITSO blog, but now the holiday celebrations are well behind us it’s back to work as usual for the ITSO development team, and it’s no surprise that the new year brings with it new projects.  One of the reasons it’s been quiet around here of late is because we have been working on drafting the specs for the new product selection and research area in the IT Solution Optimizer.  We have known that this section has needed a large scale upgrade for a long time but we have always had other fires to fight, but now it’s time to finally tackle it.  The initial plans are shaping up to be encouraging and we are expecting to combine product selection with some pretty cool peer data intelligence to add even more insight for the IT project manager when deciding what products to select for any given project type.  If the project gets a final sign-off I expect a beta version within the next 2-3 months.

I’ll provide updates and we move forward and if any of you would like to take part in user interviews to help us guide this project forward with your real world experience please get in touch, we would love to hear from you.

ITSO Site Video Tour

We have finally put together a video tour of the ITSO product to help new and perspective users get a better understanding of what the site does and how it can help in the development of your IT projects.  We tried as well as we could to make the video as streamlined as possible so it’s certainly no “all incompasing” overview of the entire ITSO feature set, but we hope it adds to the understanding of the product.  

Unfortunately even though we’ve tried to streamline the video and intentially only briefly touch on most of the sites features, the video is still over 15 minutes long, so you may want to throw some popcorn in the microwave before hitting play on this one….

Here’s the video if you are interested in checking it out.

Looking for your Feedback

We’ve been doing a lot of work recently on iterative builds to make the ITSO site better; we’ve been adding features, fixing usability issues and bugs, and making performance enhancements.  However, all of this work means nothing without you, the ITSO user.  So we’re looking for your feedback on the latest changes of the site, we also want to hear about what you think would make the site better for you.  To send your feedback directly to the development team click on this link.

We look forward to hearing you opinions.

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.

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.

ITSO to be Chrome compatible

It’s always great to see new competition come along for commonly used software products as it pushes innovation and makes the world a better place for users.  That’s why we’re excited to see that Google has launched their own web browser to complete with the Firefox’s and IE’s of the world.

The downside however is that web designers and developers now have a new browser to support with it’s own personality when it comes to displaying pages, creating a little more work and forcing new considerations.  Of course the ITSO team is no different and we have been testing the upcoming ITSO release with the new Google Chrome.  The result is we’ve found a handful of minor issues that hinder the display of certain pages and we’ve already been busy fixing them – not that we didn’t already have our hands full!

I’m pleased to announce that our new release will be fully Chrome compatible when we release the next generation beta site next week!  We’re also excited to see what new innovations are in store so we can take advantage of them to improve the ITSO experience of our users.  I am sure that now Google has joined the party the speed of innovation is only set to accelerate!

New homepage coming soon!

We’ve realized that an area we have overlooked in the past is the main ITSO homepage.  The current page was put up to mostly communicate information about the last version release back in January of this year.  In the hurry to get the application nailed down and as water tight as possible we sadly overlooked the need for an aesthetically pleasing homepage to attract new users and give existing users something nice to look at when they return to log back in.

We think we’ve fixed that now with the all new ITSO homepage (sneak peek above).  The site will be going online this Friday – August 8th, and we look forward to hearing your feedback.