The year so far has been a very busy one at Accelo - we saw quarter on quarter growth of almost 30% in Q1, and we've also been busy building out the team to help support our scale (we're now 40% bigger than we were on New Year's Day) - and we're still hiring if you know anyone!
Along with this we've been tackling a number of big product priorities, with a number of them now in place, and a few big ones very close. While this quarterly update is overdue (we'll be in Q3 before we know it), we wanted to share a quick update on progress and priorities as we look forward.
The Updates to Accelo so far this year fall into three categories: Major Updates, Minor Updates and our new Best Practices sessions.
So far this year we've released a number of updates, none bigger than our overhaul of the Projects module in Accelo. Here's a list of the highlights in case you missed them:
In addition to these major updates, we also shipped more than 200 minor updates - every week we publish a list of new improvements and fixes to our Updates Blog; well worth checking out (you can subscribe via RSS) if you haven't seen it before.
Finally, we've also been running regular best-practices webinars every two weeks. They include a great Q&A section, and they’re led live by our product and implementation experts. Our next session is about “Making the Most of Custom Business Processes”, and it’s happening June 1st - register for the time that suits you best here. If you can't make the sessions live, the good news is that we record them, so if you've missed a session you can watch the videos below:
The priorities that our product team is focusing on right now are outlined below.
Our design and engineering teams are now getting very close to taking the wraps off a brand new scheduling feature in Accelo: Schedule Reporting, Forecasting & Project Portfolio Management.
This new module will be rolled out incrementally, with an initial focus on helping scheduling and other managers in a business to track the work they have underway visually, seeing the forecast (and historically, actual) workload across their team project by project, ticket by ticket, and retainer by retainer.
Scheduling managers will then be able to drill into each project, ticket or retainer without leaving the screen, being able to see aggregate work by Milestone/Task or by Assignee/Team member.
Work Schedules, with drill-down by Milestone & Task
Work Schedules, with drill-down by Assignee/Team Member
Shortly after rolling out the ability to see a forecast of schedules grouped by the work it involves, our next step will involve the ability to see a forecast (as well as historical performance) of schedules by individual team member.
User Schedules
Once these reporting-interface screens are rolled out, we'll then be turning our attention to making them interactive, with the ability to click into a user's schedule, including the ability to schedule work (either for specific start/end times on a day or as a general commitment) and move work between users.
The act of scheduling work will also support not just one-off user scheduling, but also bulk user scheduling, with managers able to nominate, for example, that a user should be scheduled to work on a specific task for 3 hours every Monday, Wednesday and Friday for the next 4 weeks.
Once we bring in the ability to assign work to users, we'll be retiring the existing Team Schedule screen.
With these two main phases complete - reporting and then assigning - we'll be moving onto the third part of this major project - extending scheduling to more than Tasks in Accelo. This is where we'll be tackling popular issues like assigning multiple people to a single task, allowing time against Milestones, Tickets and Retainers to be assigned to users without needing a task to be created, and more.
We're looking forward to sharing a sneak peek of this major new feature in the next few weeks - stand by for an email update next month with more information and an invite to a webinar we're very excited to be able to finally host!
Up until now, Accelo has been mostly focused on revenue - but with our new Purchases module update, we’ll finally be able to handle the “cost” side of projects, tickets, and retainers, and sync it with your accounting system. This module will allow you to convert lists of materials and expenses into purchases, which will sync with QuickBooks Online and Xero the same way that your invoices do - including whether a purchase has been paid for.
Optionally, you’ll be able to convert a Purchase into a Purchase Order - a PDF file that you can then send to your vendor directly from Accelo via an email activity. This module will allow for the cost side of your business to be synced from Accelo (think: where team members create expenses and materials) into the accounting system you use without double entry. Simply put, your accounting system’s income statement will be much more accurate!
The new Purchases module will include Purchase Templates as well, with their own delivery details, payment terms, and more - just like with invoices. We’re very excited to show you all of the nuts and bolts and how you can make the most of it at our upcoming live sneak peek session. Click here to register!
Accelo currently uses intelligent dates that adapt project plans to the real world and estimate start and end dates for milestones and tasks when things run late - but, it hasn’t been intelligent enough.
When it comes to estimating start and end dates of a project schedule, Accelo currently doesn't make it easy for managers to assert start or due dates for projects and milestones in advance. Instead, we've relied a bit too much on team members to start and complete work accurately, which often doesn’t happen (as we know all too well). Accelo also does currently support those fantastic situations whereby someone finishes work early - in those successful situations, you really want to see those estimated finish dates slide forward!
With this upgrade, we’re going to allow you and your team members to have more control over how Accelo’s intelligent dates work. Here’s how: you’ll be able to assert dates on projects (which will involve milestones and tasks starting on their planned date automatically), making it easier to manage projects that have well defined and scheduled plans. Alternatively, you’ll be able to choose which dates on a project should “slide forward” when work is being done ahead of schedule! On top of that, we’ll also be sending emails to folks whose tasks and milestones are ready to kickoff (because dependencies are satisfied), taking the load off of project managers so they can spend more time managing and less time being a nagging traffic cop (we’ve all been there).
The Task Boards in Accelo were pioneers of our design patterns for filtering and our card-based, drag and drop interface. Nevertheless, like all pioneers, they're now showing their age and needed a revamp - and a revamp they shall get!
We're making it a priority to upgrade our Task Boards to allow for:
Another thing we've wanted to have for some time is custom types and statuses for Tasks. The Task Boards have been the roadblock on being able to upgrade Tasks, since the fixed dimensions of the boards (particularly the status board) held us back. We'll make sure the Task Boards upgrade work is future compatible with custom statuses and making them a future quarterly priority.
We've actually made some good progress on upgrading these Task Boards already, but as we dug in deeper we realized there's a great case to be made for extending the card based (also known as Kanban) design patterns, with customizations, to more of our screens, and in conjunction with our priority to improve reporting in Accelo, we've decided to tackle this upgrade at the same time as the new Custom Reports and Layouts feature, described below.
One of Accelo's limitations that we're acutely aware of is that our users can't customize the columns they see in our list screens. While we put a lot of thought into the columns shown on our list screens, even we have (many) times when we wish we could look at some different columns and report on data differently.
As a part of our work with upgrading the Task Board, we'll be making a number of changes across the Accelo product to deliver custom layouts and reports for almost all of our listing screens. This means a few important things: custom table columns, a new Kanban or card+column view, and saved Reports.
When it comes to displaying tables of results in Accelo, we'll be allowing users with appropriate permissions to create their own custom screen layouts for list screens in Accelo. When it comes to the list-style views (ie, a table of results that match the filter you've chosen), you'll be able to choose the columns you want to on the screen, and save the specific choice and order of columns for later use as a "Custom Layout".
In addition to choosing the columns to represent in a list-style view, we'll also be introducing a "card" based view with a smaller number of wider columns where every single Client, Sale, Project, Ticket, Retainer, Task, Invoice or other object in Accelo will be its own card. In addition to being able to see key details grouped together into a card, this layout has the benefit of showing clearly and visually how many objects are in each column - grouped by status, assignee or other distinct criteria. Finally, where possible, you'll be able to drag and drop objects from one column to another - making reassigning as easy as dragging and dropping from one user's column to another in an "Assignee" layout.
Along with the new Layout functionality, we'll also be improving Accelo's Filters interface. While the convenience of having the Filters across the top and their instant effect can be convenient, our users have been telling us that the way the changes in selection take effect immediately, as well as the fact that you have to choose a field in one place and configure it in a different place makes things a bit frustrating. With the new Filters, you'll have a dedicated interface for choosing fields and setting values, and then running them when you're happy with all of your inputs in one go. This interface will also make it easy to save filters, as well as make copies and delete saved filters you don't need anymore.
Finally, bringing together the custom Layouts and the custom Filters will enable truly customized Reports - you'll be able to choose the criteria, and the layout, of any set of data in Accelo, and save it for one-click access quickly and easily in the future.
Activities (notes, meetings, emails, work logs) are central to Accelo, and there's a few places we want to make the process of interacting with them a lot smoother.
This is another one where the designs have been done for some time - we just need the bandwidth to bring it to life! As we continue to scale our team, this will become that much easier.
With our new Smart Location feature going into beta any day now, our mobile team will be turning their attention to one of the few items in the Accelo app that aren't available at all in the mobile applications - assets.
This feature will be really useful for anyone who goes out and about to work with clients, especially where those clients have assets that team members need to know about or work on. Examples include being able to quickly pull up access or username details for servers and workstations in an IT context, the ability to see filing deadlines and registration codes for subsidiaries and entities for lawyers and accounts, or the ability to check on details for equipment in general for other folks using the Assets module.
With powerful automation (especially around recurring work like Retainers) and billing, it makes complete sense for Accelo to not only create invoices, but to also help you get them paid!
Now that we have payment synchronization in place with QuickBooks Online and Xero, we're finally able to prioritize automatic payment processing. When complete, you'll be able to enter the credit card details of your client into Accelo (and when the client portal is upgraded, allow them to enter/update it themselves) and set rules like what cards can be used to process what types of invoices (Retainers only, or Projects and Retainers, or anything at all), set the max payment to charge per day and then (well deserved) sit back, and let the money roll in.
Accelo's Trigger functionality (available in our Premium products) have always been popular, but sometimes the trigger rules firing only every 15 minutes just aren't fast enough. While we accelerated them a lot last quarter, we also want to deliver native support for scenarios like "when a client sends an email containing 'Urgent' and the ticket is 'Resolved', then send a notification and reopen the ticket".
Keep an eye out for this one!
One of Accelo's most popular features is its automatic email tracking - when a client emails you or one of your team, Accelo will automatically import the email and any attachments, and if it is part of a conversation on a sale, project, ticket, retainer or other work in Accelo, it will be put in the right place.
While Activities (emails) sent out of Accelo apply smarts to automatically CC the owners of where the activity is being sent and client account managers, when a reply comes back in from a client (or colleague) the same automatic CC behavior doesn't currently apply - the email just goes to whoever the sender sent it to manually.
Similarly, the new Team feature with its Automatic CC option is designed to allow key people who are part of the work to be kept in the loop, but when the conversation moves out of activities and into regular emails, Accelo doesn't currently try and include other folks.
To help address these shortcomings and make it easier than ever for teams to stay coordinated as they work together to deliver great service to clients, we'll be making it possible - through a configuration preference - to have the same automatic CC rules apply to emails received and tracked by Accelo.
With the Zapier integration earlier this year, our engineering team implemented a lot of back-end magic, including Webhooks. A webhook is a feature for more tech-savvy folks to ask that a platform - in this case, Accelo - send a special message to a remote URL of the user's choice whenever something special happens, making it easier for developers to integrate with Accelo than the more common alternative, polling an API frequently asking if there's been any updates.
With this enhancement, folks will be able to tap into some of the back-end webhook magic powering Accelo and request that the platform send webhooks to their own URLs based on clients, contacts, sales, projects, tickets or retainers changing from one specific status to another.
Microsoft's Office365 platform is a juggernaut, and while we've had support for it as a direct integration since it was first released, we want to go further and improve the performance and efficiency of our integration.
While we're still in the planning phases, this priority involves upgrading the API to use the newest REST standards (the old API, which Office365 shares with the installed Exchange product from version 2007 and later, uses SOAP which is a horrible, horrible thing) and ideally introducing our first Outlook/Office365 App so you can see contextual information about the conversation you're reading in Outlook Online (and modern versions of the Outlook client) from Accelo without leaving Outlook.
Finally, the long awaited Client Portal! Our ambition in this area is to actually bring all of your clients into much the same Accelo interface as you and your colleagues use each day - obviously with a few different navigation touches and less detail disclosed though.
In addition to the visual synthesizing of the experience, we also want to make the invite process a lot easier and automated - so, optionally, a client who emails you for the first time on a project gets an invite to log into the portal and track the project you're working on for them, without you or your team having to lift a finger.
We also want to give you more control over the identity of your Accelo account, including for the first time the ability to white-label your Accelo domain name (and not just the client portal one, but the one your team uses to access Accelo) and the ability to customize colors and get your own logo up there to the left of the search bar!
There's quite a lot of work involved in bringing these improvements to life, so we don't expect to be in a position to be shipping this until well into Q3, but it is a priority we’ll keep you posted on our work as it progresses.
With more and more large clients, more advanced and enterprise-friendly ways of authenticating users are becoming more important for Accelo
