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.

Export your ITSO Timeline to Outlook!

We’ve just added support for the iCal standard in the Timeline section of the IT Solution Optimizer.  This new addition does something that has been asked of us over and over again… It exports your projects timeline data to your common calendaring or planning application.  

We think this will help our users create better efficiency by allowing you to by-pass re-entering project timeline information into Outlook or Project, etc.  It works very well and I’m sure it’s addition will make many of our users happy.  We’re just sorry it took so long!

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.

Research Content Enhancements

We’ve recently made the some pretty significant upgrades to the Content Research feature within the Design Phase of the ITSO project process.  The Content Research library allows you to search the web using a set of predefined context based search teams that are based on the product category that you’re working in at the time.  

You can use the Content Research library to search for product information, web content, whitepapers and other helpful project related information.  Once you have located content you may access it directly or store it for future reading in your Content Clipboard, a storage repository within your ITSO project.  The content is then accessible to all project users and is also located in your Final Project Report.  

The recent enhancements should make the content more relevant and ultimately help you further optimize your IT projects!

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.
 

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