Feb 12, 2024
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In the past couple of months, we’ve been sharing lots of information about Accelo v4.
To catch up, read about our “lift and shift” approach to development. Then, see details about the latest plans in our Q4 product roadmap.
We’ve also given you a behind-the-scenes look at the technology and architecture, design and product research and validation powering this major upgrade.
Now, I’m excited to share even more of what you’ll see in this new version.
Redesigned Screens in Accelo v4
Accelo v4 is all about making the platform easier and faster to use. In addition to improved page load speeds, this outcome will be enabled by new designs we’ve researched and validated with our users.
One big part of our mission was to build consistency across all of the view screens in Accelo. All of our view screens got:
- A new 70/30 screen layout with a prominent focus on the title, description, custom fields and tasks on the left and important metadata on the right.
- Our new Status History panel to give better insights into the history of a Sale, Ticket or Project and make it easy for your team to see what has happened before.
- Our new “Last Communication” panel in the top right, which shows quickly and prominently the last email to or from a client.
- A new budget panel, which makes it easy to see the hours or financial value of the work completed.
- A Materials and Expenses panel and a Billing tab to make cost data and invoices easily accessible.
Take a peek at the upgraded screens coming in Accelo v4.
Sales view
On this screen, there’s a streamlined menu, only the most essential details in the information bar at the top and prominent notes. Given how important interactions with prospects are to winning new business, we also make it super easy to see upcoming events, quotes and any outstanding tasks at a glance.
The Sales Overview makes it easy to understand the most important details about a prospect’s standing and your team’s recent activity without having to dig for information.
Tickets view
Our approach to the Tickets view was all about expediting your team’s client support process. Tabs are easier to navigate, and it’s simple to understand the most recent work performed on a given ticket since being responsive is the most important thing when it comes to successfully managing reactive client work.
Additionally, as creators of a client work management product, we know that not all reactive work is done for love — you also need to make money from the service you provide. This is why we promote the budget and usage information right in the overview.
The new Tickets Overview reduces cognitive load, supporting fast issue resolution.
Projects view
Like the other view screens, this redesign focuses on optimizing your Projects view to surface the most important detail, while still allowing you to easily access fine-grained usage and forecast information when you need it, simply by clicking on a date cell, progress bar or row itself.
Projects can be very big and complex, especially when Accelo supports not just tasks and milestones, but also time budgets, financial budgets and profitability reporting. To make it easy to use but still powerful, you can now toggle between time and money views (depending on permissions) and hover over almost all flood bar elements to see what is behind the data.
The Projects Overview tab simplifies project hierarchy and color-codes due dates and budgets.
The new info bar displays project status and type and visually calls out problems.
Additional Upgrades to the Accelo User Experience
We’ve also made some impactful changes to the way users manage work in Accelo.
- Activities, Tasks and Milestones are now even easier to view, create and manage with a brand-new right-hand “drawer” experience. Activities also have new names: Notes are now Logs, Emails are Messages and Meetings are Events. You can "Log" a phone call too.
- We’ve redesigned the Stream, a long-time favorite feature for many users, to be simpler for people to navigate. Text on the Stream tab has been enlarged and each entry will display two lines of text instead of one. The same color sentiments we’re using throughout Accelo v4 show up in the Stream, as well as icons to make reviewing recent activities more efficient.
What Else Is New in Accelo?
Accelo v4 isn’t the only thing in the works! We’ve also shared some other exciting updates lately:
➡️ Brand-new mobile app
➡️ Upgraded client portal
➡️ Accelo Payments beta
Stay tuned for more about the upcoming Accelo v4 public beta! If you’re a current Accelo user, keep up with details and get involved by following along with updates in our Community Product Forum and reading our monthly email newsletter.