We launched PlannerX v2.0 today. This release adds estimates, start dates and due dates with all project plan items – Milestones, Todo lists and Todos. Gantt charts work much more reliably now and we have included numerous other functionality, performance and usability enhancements. This is the biggest upgrade after our initial launch about a year ago.

The new version helps you plan your Basecamp projects even faster. Here are some highlights.

Smart Estimates

Smart Estimates

Finally you can add estimates for your milestones, todo lists and todo items. Estimates total up automatically, and show up in an easy to understand format. Some examples of estimate’s smartness:

• 2 becomes 2h
• 8 becomes 1d
• 5d becomes 1w
• 160h becomes 1m
• 170h becomes 1m 1d 2h
• Adding estimate for Todo updates estimate for Todo list and Milestone too
• Totaling up updates parent’s estimate only if parent’s current estimate is lower than sum of children
• And there is even an estimate slider in Card view and Batch Update
• You can configure estimate conversion calculations from your account settings

We don’t compare Estimates with Actual Time yet. That’s reserved for another release!

Start and Due Dates

Start & Due Dates

Basecamp added Due Dates to todo items a while ago (this was the most demanded feature from Basecamp!) PlannerX allows you to add due dates for Todo lists and Start dates for all items. We listened you and have added a date picker. At the same time, we have made it easier to enter dates with auto completion. Enter “6″ in a date field in Outline view, and it will automatically convert it to “3/6/10″ (6th March, assuming you are using MM/DD/YY format – configurable from your account settings). We believe you will love it!

Intelligent Batch Update

So far, you could update the assignee name using Batch Update. You can now update estimates and dates as well. Here are some cases on how Batch Update can come in handy.

Batch Update

• You have done your initial estimation. But now need to pad them before submitting to management. Just select all items you want to update, click on Batch Update (or Ctrl + . on keyboard). Then Add 25% to Estimates. PlannerX will automatically do all the calculations.
• Someone left your team and you now need to reassign her tasks to a new hire. Select appropriate items and select the new hire’s name from the Assignee drop down Batch Update.
• Your project is delayed. It’s running about two weeks late and you need to update all start / due dates. This would be a nightmare, but with PlannerX, you can just select these items, go to Batch Update. And add 2 weeks to start and due dates. Save back and you are done!
• Completed a lot of items? Select them all and complete them in one go with Batch Update!

We expect Batch Update will save you a lot of time. It’s especially useful on dynamic (read delayed, troubled, messy – or just about any) projects.

Everything Saved back to your Basecamp

We store estimates, start dates and due dates (for Todo lists) with item names in Basecamp. This way you and all other people on your project can see them. You can edit estimates and dates in Basecamp too, and they will be imported to PlannerX. You could even use any other tool to update / manage this information. This is the best compromise between usefulness and readability. We hope you like it.

Gantt Charts that work

We know you love our Gantt charts. We have made them more reliable now. Many customers complained Gantt charts were not working. We have revamped the whole logic and they work much better now. You can even print big charts spanning multiple pages now! They are not editable (we are not sure if we want to add that complexity yet), but super useful even in the current state.

Same Efficiency, and even better

PlannerX is known for its efficiency. Especially how it allows you to manage your project plan quickly. We have retained all those bits and added some more. You can continue using keyboard to navigate and create new items. We have improved keyboard navigation and even added a “text import” feature that lets you type in a plan just as you would in Notepad. PlannerX will automatically convert it to Milestones, Todo lists and Todo items. We have also solved some annoyances (like “Remember Me” not always working) to make your experience more enjoyable.

Text Import

More coming soon

There are numerous enhancements and bug fixes in this release. But apart from that, it is a significant upgrade to our core. This release also brings PlannerX almost on par with our Planning Module for activeCollab.We will release few more upgrades over the next few weeks. Here are two items on our list:

• A bookmarklet that lets you open PlannerX right in your Basecamp project – so no need to come to PlannerX site
• Better printing support for Outline and Card views

We plan to continue improving PlannerX and look forward to your feedback.

Thank you!

Nirav Mehta for the Apps Magnet Team

37Signals rolled out their new unified authentication system – 37signals ID a while back. The new system required all users migrate their accounts and pick up a new username / password. This username / password will work across all Basecamp sites and all 37Signals products.

I wrote about it in December, and was happy that everything worked smoothly after the upgrade, and PlannerX worked without a change.

But I was in for a big shock (since I don’t read the 37Signals API developer’s mailing list!!)

The authentication system has changed. Instead of username and password, third party applications now have to authenticate via a 40 letter hex token. The token can be found under the user’s account info – hidden normally, available only after clicking a link!

This meant users of 3rd party applications that relied on Basecamp APIs – e.g. our PlannerX – would break. And won’t work until users entered their token as username and “X” as password. Crazy!

This scared me. We did not want to scare our users too! As it is, the dual login (first to PlannerX and then to Basecamp) is troublesome, having to find and paste the token for login would really be the straw that broke our camel’s neck!

I came to know about this today, and the deadline is less than 2 days away! This means, if I don’t do something right now, over this weekend, PlannerX will come to a grinding halt, and simply spit out authentication failed errors to all users.

Really a big price for not monitoring the API mailing list…

I took a few deep breaths and continued reading the mailing list.

Surely, the whole topic led to a lot of confusion and discussions among developers. The deadlines for rolling out new authentication system were pushed back so that all developers could accommodate the change.

But there was a silver lining. A new API was added that would work with the username and password as usual, and provide logged in user’s profile information – name, phone numbers etc.

Along with a silver bullet – that 40 letter hex token!

Bingo!

I just finished an update that now makes PlannerX compatible with the new token based authentication system for Basecamp.

And what’s the change for PlannerX users? Nothing! You can continue using the system as usual! When you login with your username and password, we automatically look up your token and use that for all further API communications with Basecamp.

Simple solution to a complicated issue. Took 15 minutes of development, 25 minutes of testing, and 20 minutes writing this post! Not too bad for such a big change! Was certainly less than what I feared!

If you are using OpenID for logging in, you will have to use the 40 digit token as username and “X” as password while you login to Basecamp via PlannerX.

Cheers! I can now have a good weekend!

(PS: I am onto a whole lot of other upgrades to PlannerX. Watch this space for more!)

I was skeptical about money back guarantees when we started Apps Magnet a year back. Since we were selling installable software, it is easy for people to just buy one copy, ask for a refund, and continue using it.

It was difficult for me, when someone said they wanted a refund. It was difficult to hear that they were getting errors, while I wasn’t! It sunk my heart when someone said they did not find the product suitable / found it disappointing.

We do not advertise a money back assurance for any of our products. Although we provided refunds to anyone who asked for it. I did that reluctantly at the beginning.

Now I am very happy to provide refunds. I don’t know why! Probably it’s because we have received so much praise for our products, it’s easy to hear an occasional rant. Partly also because the % of people asking for refunds is very low. And it felt right to provide refunds – it was giving respect to customers.

I am happy to announce that a 30-day money back guarantee is now standard on all our products. We will update our site / promotional material to include this over the next few days.

We believe our products can provide radical productivity improvements. And we are backing it up with a money back guarantee!

Go ahead, buy one today.

And all our existing customers, thank you for your support and faith!

:Nirav

37Signals rolled out 37Signals ID – a unified, single sign on system for all their products recently. The feature invited a lot of heated arguments, but promises interest integration opportunities.

Transition to the new system was very smooth. A page asking you to select a new username, easy automated checking of usernames and useful suggestions about available usernames, and a one click, quick submission. The email notification too is well designed just like all other 37Signals products.

I was expecting we will have to do some changes on PlannerX for the new system to work. I was gladly surprised that we did not! You can continue using PlannerX with the new Basecamp username / password (the old ones won’t work, obviously). You don’t have to make any change to PlannerX!

Smooth!

First week of November 2009 is going to be eventful for AppsMagnet. Last week was launch of Planning Module 1.2.1 and ac Journal, this week we are launching 4 items for activeCollab:

• Upgrade to Reports module – now with People and System reports
• Smart Backup module – incremental backups for activeCollab
• Housekeeping module – automated maintenance for activeCollab
• Project Template hack – copy pages and discussions when you create a new project from template

Reports module is the biggest item for this week.

After the launch, the latest updates will be pushed to acGarage customers. acGarage customer will get Smart Backup, Housekeeping module and Project Template hacks for free. As a matter of fact, we started Housekeeping module as a special service to acGarage customers and now offering it to everyone.

But the week won’t end there. Near the end of the week, we will also begin a major upgrade to PlannerX. We aim to bring PlannerX close to Planning Module for activeCollab in terms of features. It’s going to be a big upgrade and will be rolled around November end.

The way things are going, AppsMagnet is going to see a burst of activity in the next few months! Here are noteworty items from the last few weeks.

• We upgraded PlannerX today. Fixed a few bugs and added speed improvements. One major improvement is in reorganizing milestones as todo-lists or items. Basecamp guys added a feature to their API on our request and that saved a lot of back and forth. There are still known issues in PlannerX and we are working on improvements.
• Reports module is finding more fans! At the same time, the largest customer support issue has been VIEW creation permissions on MySQL. Many customers reported their server does not allow this. We are working on an upgrade that does not require MySQL views. This may slightly take longer to generate reports, but will work for almost everyone.
• Our feature additions to Reports module – project group level reporting, daily updates etc have also been welcomed.
• Planning module – I was happily surprised that so many people are waiting for Planning module! We released a paid beta to Reports module customers. Many people bought Reports module to get Planning module beta after that! We received some feedback and are working on it. But need more! Will be catching up with all beta customers this week to push it forward.
• iQuotations – our first iPhone app has been downloaded for more than 25000 times within one month of launch. The paid Puzzler has not picked up. We are now readying to launch some paid apps based on iQuotations. We are excited by their value, and look forward to a warm welcome from users!
• As we grow, customer support requests are growing. We will need to dedicate more time to customer support than development after major releases! Will also need better systems to manage billing and customer communications. But we are thrilled with the kind of customers we have. Your support makes us go an extra mile!
• There are other ideas we have in mind for AppsMagnet, more on that in the next update!

Thank you for your support!

Background

PlannerX allows rearranging / reordering items. Either using Tab / Shift / Indent / Unindent or via Drag & Drop. Everything works just perfect when you are creating a new plan. But when you worked with items in an existing plan, things started to break. Reordering to-do lists and to-do items was not much of a problem, since Basecamp APIs support that. But if you reordered milestones, that won’t stick since Basecamp always sorts them by due date again. Yet, the biggest issue is promoting or demoting an existing item.

Cause

When you convert a milestone into a to-do list or to-do item, we can create a new item for it. But what should we do with the milestone? We could just delete the milestone. But what if that milestone had comments? And attachments with those comments? If we deleted the milestone, comments would be deleted as well. And that would be bad.

Enter Zombies!

Zombies are defunct items (milestones or to-do items) that are still there in the system only because they have some comment. Their original item was moved around in a planning session with PlannerX. And since there are no Basecamp API to attach comments with another item, we had to keep old items hanging in with their comments. We mark them as [zombie], complete them and also add a new comment explaining their zombie status.

Can I remove zombies?

If you no longer need the comments / attachments associated with a zombie item, you can delete it. Deleting normal / zombie to-do items with time entries on them does not delete time entries though.

Is there no better way?

We thought a lot before coming to this solution. If you have a better solution, do let us know. We are all ready to improve.

I don’t like the word [zombie]!

We thought a lot about this too. We considered defunct, archived, removed, zombie and a few others. But felt zombie was the closest to our situation. Have another suggestion? Feel free to comment!

I still have problems.

We tested our code with many test cases. It should work well in most cases – though it may take slightly longer to save since we have to check for comments on almost every item. If you face any other issues, do report them with as many details as possible. We will try and fix them at the earliest!

What next?

Keep planning with PlannerX and let us know your feedback! Thank you!

We’ve been spending long hours over PlannerX last few days. As more people started using it, we discovered some limitations. So all time went in fixing those issues and making a smoother user experience. There is one big thing that’s still pending – changing position of existing items in the plan. This worked earlier, with some limitations. But now we uncovered a lot more limitations of Basecamp APIs and have to rework the entire logic. We are nearing a solution, but it’s taking longer than expected.

All this has resulted in delays on the Planning module for activeCollab. We wanted to launch it last week. But have been tied up.

I think all the enhancements we are making to PlannerX, will also make Planning module stronger, so am focusing on PlannerX for now.

Planning module will come soon! Wanted to let you know we are working on it!

As more people signup for PlannerX, our customer feedback has also started coming in. We have discovered some limitations of the system and are working on them. Here are some of the problems that are on top of my list.

• No projects found error. Seems to occur when there are a lot of projects on Basecamp account.
• String can not be parsed as XML error. Occurs due to Unicode encoding issues. Affects people using non English characters – and this is majority of our customers!
• 404 Error on plan save. Occurs when you promote / demote existing plan items.

If you are our customer, I want to let you know that we are working on these items, and will have solutions soon.

I am a little upset and worried due to these issues. At the same time, I am thrilled by the commitment of PlannerX users! Kudos!

We have got a number of requests to add OpenID support to PlannerX. I just tested it, and it works!

Here’s how you can try it:

• Make sure you have an OpenID profile. I use MyOpenID.
• Add a new user to your Basecamp account and give access to her for relevant projects (this is not necessary if you have users configured to use OpenID already)
• Log in to Basecamp using the new user. Go to “My Info” page. Switch to using OpenID with your OpenID URL.
• Save settings. This authenticates using OpenID and saves the settings.
• Once this is done, you will get a “Reveal my special username/password” link right below your OpenID URL.

Special Username / Password for OpenID

• Click on the link to reveal your special username and password.
• Now use this username, this special password, and your current Basecamp URL (e.g. something.projectpath.com) on PlannerX.
• You will be logged in and see your project list (or get straight to the project plan if you have only one project assigned).

What could go wrong? What should you check if you can’t login with OpenID?

Here are a few things to check if you can’t login using OpenID.

• Are you using your special OpenID username and password? Remember, it’s not your OpenID URL that you can use, you need to use the special username and password. The password will be some combination of characters and numbers.
• Are you using your correct Basecamp URL? Again, this is not your OpenID URL, but your Basecamp URL – it may look like yourcompany.basecamphq.com or yourcompany.projectpath.com
• Have you enabled OpenID access for this user? Confirm by logging in with that OpenID to your Basecamp project. Does it work?
• Do you have projects assigned to this user? If you have no projects assigned, you will get a “No projects found” message in PlannerX.
• Does OpenID login work with some other Basecamp Extra that uses Basecamp API?

Still not working? Let us know the details and we will investigate!