We have been putting the finishing touches on one of our most ambitious launches of the year. We’ve overhauled some core features to bring you better client and contact management and a more intuitive and accessible web-based project management experience. Keep reading below to find out what was included in this release and how these updates help you track time and manage tasks.
Additional Fields of Information and the Ability to Create Client Contacts
Each person can have multiple phone numbers, web sites, emails, social media profiles, and addresses. Prior to this launch clients could only have one contact and if you wanted that person to login they would have to be created again as a person (typically as an executive user). Associate multiple contacts with each client and decide whether or not each person has the ability to login.
Granular Access Controls for Executive User Level
One of our most requested features has been the ability to fine tune what the executive level user can and can’t do. Executive level users are typically given limited access to only their assigned projects. However, this has not always been restrictive enough for some who want to limit access even further. Now an executive’s access can be whittled down further to include or restrict a combination of commenting on tasks, viewing time data, viewing financial information and/or viewing invoices. For example, you might want clients to login make comments on tasks without viewing any time data or financial information. This feature allows you to customize the client login experience to your liking and comfort level.
Right-click to do anything and everything
The ability to right-click on a task in the task listing has always been a quick and easy method for updating tasks. Now we’ve added the right-click contextual menus to the person, project, client, and invoice listings. Adding payments to projects, creating client contacts, and updating invoices are now just a right-click away. We’ve layered in right-click functionality just about everywhere we could and we encourage you to use the right-click contextual menus to quickly update information. And if we’ve missed something, or there is functionality you’d find useful in these menus, just let us know.
Timers and Search Dock
We’ve moved the task timers, general timers and quick search to a dock at the bottom edge of your web browser. No more scrolling to the bottom of the page to start or stop a timer in the footer, it’s right there at the bottom of the browser window. The ability to expand and collapse task timers and general timers makes managing them a lot easier from the dock. In addition, we’ve expanded the quick task search to include project notes, documents, milestones, projects, people, clients and invoices.
Import Clients
The ability to import client data is just the first step in making it easier for you to import data you may have pulled from a previous time tracking or project management application, or from the Excel spreadsheets you may be using to keep track of your tasks and projects. The import functionality is extremely flexible in that it will help you map your existing data to the Intervals data format. And it’s very forgiving. If the data did not import properly or you need to redo the import for any reason, you can undo the import and start over. Although you can only import clients for now, we have import utilities in the works for projects, people, tasks and more.
Run Reports by Task
When it comes to running reports, we’ve always been advocates of presenting your data in a number of different formats. From pie chart graphs to tabulated data, from the smallest units of time tracked to aggregated summaries of time, our goal is to provide a robust set of reports and for you to manipulate to suit your needs best. Now we’ve gone and made our reports even more powerful by adding the ability to view each report by task. Find out not only which projects are taking up most of your time, but which tasks as well.
Fully Customize Your Own Theme
Looking for a way to make Intervals more your own visually? Use your CSS skills to customize the look and feel of your Intervals account and bring the interface more inline with the rest of your branding. No longer are you constrained to only the predefined themes. The advanced theme editor empowers you to apply your own CSS rules to any and every aspect of the Intervals interface. Of course, this feature is for advanced web developers only. If you end up making the page disappear, well, that’s your problem ;). The feature is available in the Settings & Defaults section within your account.
Official API Release
The API is now officially out of beta. From here on the API is ready for production use. It’s been battle-tested by our beta developers, whose feedback has been invaluable for putting on the finishing touches. Expect to see more functionality rolled out to the API as we continue to incorporate feedback.
» For more information, read the API documentation.
Additional Improvements
We realize we’ve just covered a lot of significant features but there are a few other notable updates we’d like to mention. In no particular order, here are a few other Intervals enhancements that are likely to make your project management experience even more enjoyable:
- The crosschart report has been extended to include manager as one of the axis options, allowing you to quickly assess how much time each project manager is managing, grouped by client, project, milestone and more.
- Added support for four Chinese locales
- Quickly move through milestones and tasks using “Previous” and “Next” links on the task and milestone detail pages. Paginated results are based on the last filter viewed and if you hover your mouse on the “Previous” or “Next” links additional information will become viewable.
Coming Soon: Mobile Version
Intervals is currently being adapted to a smaller, on-the-go, mobile version for use on any smartphone with a web browser. The mobile version wasn’t quite ready to go beta with this launch, but once we’re finished putting the finishing touches on it, the mobile version will be made available. It will include the ability to start, stop and apply timers and update tasks during meetings, in the field, or wherever else your business may take you. This web-based mobile beta version of Intervals will work on all smartphones OSes with modern web browsers, such as the iPhone OS, Windows Mobile, Android, and Maemo.
