Feb 12, 2024
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Today we launched our public beta for Accelo v4, which is a very exciting time for the product, and Accelo as a whole. We wanted to take this opportunity to provide an update on how far we have come as well as what you can expect next.
What We've Delivered
As of today, we've delivered a major amount of new capabilities, both visible and behind the scenes. In this progress update, we'll break things down into three sections: the new screens delivered, the shared capabilities upgraded and the work behind the scenes that makes this and our future work possible.
In addition to the improvements below, we've also delivered a brand-new and redesigned mobile app along with the web application!
New Screens Delivered
The most obvious deliveries so far for Accelo v4 are the three completely new view screens:
Sales View: Our new Sales view screen has been redesigned and engineered in the new architecture. The Sales screen was our first released alpha back in February, and, after a number of enhancements through the year, is now live for the public beta.
Tickets View: Our new Tickets view screen has also been redesigned and engineered in the new architecture. The Tickets screen was our second released alpha back in May, and like the Sales view, it had a number of enhancements through the year to get it ready for the public beta.
Projects View: By far our most extensive and complex new screen in Accelo v4, the Projects view was redesigned and engineered using the new architecture. This was our third alpha, released much more recently in late October, and we have been very actively enhancing this screen throughout the alpha period to get it ready for the public beta.
Shared Capabilities Delivered
Within the new view screens, we have a lot of new shared capabilities. These will continue to be rolled out in future view screens, and based on the feedback we’ve already received from user interviews and alpha/beta testers, we're excited about the benefits these improvements will provide to your user experience:
Tasks: Tasks are central to how our users manage their client work and with Accelo v4 we've made a major upgrade to the Tasks experience. Within the new view screens, we have a prominent display of relevant Tasks and a new tab to show Tasks (where appropriate). But more than that, we've implemented a new interface to create and a new interface to view Tasks, both of which are "drawers" that slide in from the right of the screen. The reason for these changes is to make it much quicker and easier for you to create and view Tasks without taking you away from the screen you're on. We'll be rolling this out with further screen upgrades. 
Activities and Time Logs: Similar to the tasks improvements, we've also made a number of improvements to how activities work in Accelo v4. As a function for sending messages, scheduling meetings and logging time, Activities are critical to Accelo, so we've built a new and improved way to create them. This is designed to allow you to create new activities quickly, without taking you away from the screen you are working on. 
Attachments Tab: Attachments are common on a lot of the screens in Accelo, and in Accelo v4, we've upgraded the user interface and technology behind our attachments to make them easier to use.
Related Tab: Managing client work requires an understanding of the relationship between the work you're looking at and other work in your client journey (e.g., a Sale that leads to a Project and might then be linked to a Retainer or an Asset). With Accelo v4, we've upgraded our Related tab to make it more consistent. 
Details Tab: With the ability to create an unlimited number of custom fields, our users needed a much better way to see information about their work than the Accelo v3 screens supported. The new Details tab is now organized and searchable and, in the future, it will support in-line editing.
Behind-the-Scenes Upgrades
Finally, underpinning all of the delivered work outlined above, there are a number of major initiatives of a technical or process nature. In addition to helping bring Accelo v4 to life, these upgrades will also help us to move a lot faster in the future. The key behind-the-scenes elements include:
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New Design and Design System: Because Accelo is a big product, we decided to level up our design approach and technology before embarking on the Accelo v4 journey. This is known as a Design System. For more information, check out our Behind the Scenes: Design of Accelo v4 webinar from earlier this year.
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New Tech (GraphQL and NextJS): When we were creating Accelo v3, different types of technologies were common. With Accelo v4, we wanted to move to the fastest and best-supported technologies to ensure we could be efficient as a team and effective as a product. For more information about the new tech we're using in Accelo v4, check out our Behind the Scenes: Technology and Architecture webinar from earlier this year.
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New Approach to Research and Validation: With so much opportunity for improvement, one of the challenges was to make sure we did the things our users needed the most, and delivered the best, without having to wait until we built it to get feedback. With Accelo v4, we've implemented a new product research and validation process, which we outlined in our Behind the Scenes: Product Research and Validation webinar from earlier this year.
What's Next
With Accelo v4 now in public beta, we're continuing to push ahead on delivering additional view screens and more functionality within the platform. Even if the public beta today isn't ready for your own daily use, we'll continue to deliver improvements with high frequency in the months ahead. Here are the improvements coming up next:
Company View: The next major view screen we're working on is Company view. You can expect a reimagined Work tab to be the front-and-center focus of the Company screen. 
Contact View: Similar to the Company view, we want to help you find important contact details faster when you visit the Contact screen. No more fishing for information or dealing with a clumsy editing process. 
Stream: To match the quality of the Accelo v4 experience, we will also be rolling out continuous improvements to the Stream user interface. This might include more filters and better ways to edit activities or send replies. 
Retainers: Another important release to look forward to is our Retainers view screen. You can expect more of a focus on linked work objects, tasks and Retainer period progress. 
Multi-Assignee on Tasks: By far our most requested feature, we're excited to share that we've built the new task experience to support the addition of multi-assignee, which will be coming soon. 
Insights Tabs: We wanted to get the new view screens delivered for our users as soon as we could, and one of the tabs that hasn't been upgraded to Accelo v4 yet is the Insights tab for Projects (and as a result, Retainers). We'll be working on bringing these into the Accelo v4 view screens and will likely be adding more useful filters for insights into your work profitability. 
Stakeholders/Team Feature: Similar to Insights tabs, we wanted to prioritize new view screens first, but we are committed to delivering this feature in the coming months. 
Rich Text on Tickets and Tasks: Another highly requested feature is rich-text editing on Tickets and Tasks. In the new tech architecture, we're looking forward to bringing it to life in the new Ticket and Task screens.
Upgraded Lists: Looking beyond view screens, one of the most heavily used parts of Accelo are the List screens. With this effort, we'll be upgrading the UI of Lists to use the Accelo v4 design system and technology and making improvements to allow us to retire the Classic and Accelo v3 custom list screens in the future.
Upgraded Boards: At the same time we're upgrading our Lists to be on the Accelo v4 technology, we'll be implementing a new way to see Boards in the product. Some of the things we will be looking to explore next are Sales and Ticket boards, as well as upgraded Task boards.
Upgraded Navigation: Given the priority for Accelo v4 is to make our product easier to use, it would be a mistake for us to skip over the way our clients find their way around! This improvement is currently in the research phase. f you'd like to participate by providing your ideas, please add a comment to this Ideas Forum entry!
Activity Templates: The new Create a Message activity drawer experience doesn't currently support templates with merge fields. But don't fear — we aren't deprecating templates! We are going to bring them into the Accelo v4 experience; we just didn't want to hold off on giving our users the new experience while we continued working on this.
More In-Line Editing: We are continuing to work on allowing more in-line editing (especially from the new Details tab) to make it easier for users to keep their Sales, Tickets, Projects, Retainers and more up to date.
If you want to be the first to find out about the new things we're delivering, join our Community Product Forum (only for Accelo subscribers)!
We want to thank our amazing clients for their partnership through this major upgrade journey, and we look forward to delivering continued enhancements as fast as we can into next year!