Think Big! That’s what I kept experiencing in my US tour in October. A coffee cup would be five times larger and fifteen times costlier in the USA than my office in India. Everyone was talking about changing the world. Everyone was talking about millions. You can’t stop but get infected by this passion.

I returned on 5th November and last 33 days were about catching up with work. Pending deliveries. Revamping code structure. Solving bugs. Adding new features. Brainstorming our plans for 2012. Training new team members. Just keeping the neck down and working hard.

And then there is activeCollab 3. Yes, it’s looking great and is just around the corner! We get access to developer previews and it’s progressed faster than my own expectations over last two months. So I thought we should share our activeCollab 3 plans with you – as it is they are centered around you!

activeCollab team has been working hard too.  Apps Magnet develops some of the most loved activeCollab extensions and hence we’ve had early access to activeCollab 3 preview builds. From what we have seen, aC 3 is a major revamp – both in terms of the user experience and internal programming. And as activeCollab 3 release date comes closer (promised to be December 2011), we asked this question to ourselves:

How can we create a delightful experience of migrating to activeCollab 3 for our customers?

activeCollab 3 Interface Preview

We thought about questions and concerns people may have about upgrading to activeCollab 3:

• What’s new in aC 3?
• How easy will it be for us to learn activeCollab 3?
• It seems to have a completely revamped user interface. How fast is it?
• I have lots of critical data in activeCollab 3. Will that be transitioned correctly?
• Is it reasonably bug free? Is it ready for production?
• Will my third party plugins be compatible with activeCollab 3?
• Is it worth upgrading to activeCollab 3 now? How long should I wait?
• I’ve been waiting for “feature x”, is it there in activeCollab 3?
• Will I have to purchase the upgrade again? Who’s qualified for a free upgrade?
• What’s the easiest way for me to determine if we should upgrade?

Basically, your concerns will revolve around the usefulness of the new version for your organization and the costs of upgrading (time, money, training, downtime…). Since most of you also use our plugins, you’d like to find out when will we release activeCollab 3 compatible versions and if they will be free.

So we’ve thought of this action plan. Do post your comments and suggestions below.

• Within a week of activeCollab 3 Public Beta Release: Showcase activeCollab 3 to our customers via a webinar – screen sharing the new interface with our commentary, and answer questions
• Within a month of activeCollab 3 Public Beta: Ensure our modules are compatible with aC 3 – including Tickets Plus, Planning, Reports, Confidential Items, Assignments Plus, Time Reports Plus, Communication and Hide People
• Schedule another webinar about transitioning from aC 2 to aC 3 when activeCollab 3 is near final public release
• Provide upgrade / transition service to clients who want us to take care of the transition
• Continue working on improving our products on aC 3
• Continue supporting our products on aC 2.3 for another six months
• Be available for any support clients may need in choosing to and carrying out transition to activeCollab 3

What do you think?

How would you like us to support you in reviewing activeCollab 3 and transitioning to it? Let us know via comments below!

Wanted to let everyone know that all our products are now compatible with activeCollab 2.3.6.

We updated Confidential Items Module for compatibility, and even added some bug fixes and new features to Tickets Plus. All other modules will work without a change.

Products we’ve updated:

• Tickets Plus Module (version 1.5.8 – this also adds useful new features and fixes bugs)
• Confidential Items Module (version 1.3.3)

Latest versions of all other products are already compatible with activeCollab 2.3.6

Tickets Plus 1.5.8 Changelog

Enhancements:

• activeCollab v2.3.6 compatibility version.
• Option to include descriptions while printing tickets list

Fixes:

• Call to undefined method “time_to_float” error. Fixed.

Customers can download these updates from our members area.

Enjoy!

We released Tickets Plus 1.5.7 yesterday. If you had a problem with tickets not being created with incoming mail or estimate values, this release will fix it.

Here’s the change log from 1.5.6 and 1.5.7:

• Creating tickets from incoming mail was broken. Fixed.
• Estimate value did not consider minutes. Fixed.
• Assignees were removed if status changed from mass-update
• Default status not set when creating a ticket from Planning module
• Setting assignee to –None– using mass update did not work correctly

As usual, you can download the latest release from our members area.

We are glad to announce updates to five products.

• acHack – Gravatar (v1.3.2)
• acHack – Incremental Backup (v2.2)
• Hide People module (v1.1)
• Tickets Plus module (v1.5.5)
• Time Reports Plus module (v1.3.3)

You can download these updates from our members area as usual!

Here’s a summary of updates in these versions.

acHack – Gravatar (v1.3.2)

• activeCollab v2.3.5 compatibility version.

acHack – Incremental Backup (v2.2)

• Takes database backup of only activeCollab tables.
• Fixed: (Backup returned these errors: Array) email notification issue.

Hide People module (v1.1)

• Removes “Who Is Online” and “People On This Project” blocks from dashboards.

Tickets Plus module (v1.5.5)

• Fixed: Send email notification twice on ticket completion
• Fixed: Attachments are not visible for tickets created using Public Submit
• Fixed: UI fix for filter drop downs in Tickets list

Time Reports Plus module (v1.3.3)

• Fixed: Time records not grouped correctly by billing status (Billable, Non Billable, Billed etc.)
• Fixed: Increased memory limits while generating time reports

Enjoy!

Assignments Plus module for activeCollab lets you kill work overwhelm, get back in control, become super efficient and get things done quickly.

We won’t be surprised if it becomes one of our most popular modules…

Watch “Dave’s Day: how an overwhelmed, overloaded worker created family time” video and learn more about Assignments Plus here…

Two years ago Apps Magnet offered two modules and two hacks. Today, we have 9 modules, 5 hacks. A new module (assignments plus) is nearly complete and we’ll have another module for our desktop/mobile client for activeCollab.

We keep improving our products. New versions add features, solve bugs and reduce our support requests as well. And we’d love for our customers to use the latest versions of all our software.

So I felt if there was an automated system to check for latest versions of activeCollab and installed modules, it would come in handy for our customers.

At the same time, we’ve been running acGarage for almost two years as well. acGarage is our expert service where Apps Magnet staff upgrade your activeCollab installation to the latest versions as and when they are available. acGarage also included all our modules (except Planning, Reports and Communications). It’s a superb value for money, and acGarage customers are extremely happy with the service.

Not everyone has signed up for acGarage though! But everyone wants to keep their systems up to date – as much as possible!

So here’s a gift for you!

acGarage module

acGarage module will automatically check and notify you of available updates to activeCollab and other installed modules. And, it’s a free download for you!

acGarage System Status Screen - core updates, module updates and new modules available

Click here to learn more and download acGarage module…

We hope this helps you maintain your activeCollab setup better. Hope it saves you time and energy that you can spend on something important.

What happens to existing acGarage customers?

All existing customers will continue to receive managed updates from Apps Magnet team. We plan to migrate current acGarage services as “acGarage Pro”, and when we do that, you will be migrated to that as well. You won’t be at any loss – we will ensure that.

Liked our gift?

If you liked our gift, let us know by posting a comment here 😉

We just released Tickets Plus 1.5.4. This is a small bug fix release.

Fixes:

• “Call-time pass-by-reference has been deprecated” in PHP 5.3. Fixed. Thanks to Philip for reporting this issue.
• Display pagination header twice in aC 2.3.4. Fixed. Thanks to Jutin, csBox for reporting this issue.

You can download the latest version from our members area as usual.

Wanted to let everyone know that all our products are now compatible with activeCollab 2.3.4.

We updated four products for compatibility, the others will work without a change.

Products we’ve updated:

• Planning Module (version 1.7.3)
• Tickets Plus Module (version 1.5.3 – this also adds useful new features)
• Confidential Items Module (version 1.3.2)
• acHack – Gravatar (version 1.3.1)

All other products are already compatible with activeCollab 2.3.4

Customers can download these updates from our members area.

Release Notes

Planning Module v1.7.3

• activeCollab v2.3.4 compatibility version
• Items created by people who can’t see private objects will be normal now

Tickets Plus Module v1.5.3

Enhancements:

• activeCollab v2.3.4 compatibility added
• Can now filter tickets based on user – creator, assignee, responsible. (thanks to Dale Daguro of mercola.com for sponsoring initial work on this)
• Quickly update status and responsible person while adding a comment
• Now you can set the default sorting option for tickets list (thanks for your suggestion Damien)

Fixes:

• Status update notification email no longer goes to user who’s making the change
• Even if workflow status was not changed during an edit operation, it was showing in Recent Activities. Fixed.

Confidential Items Module v1.3.2

• activeCollab v2.3.4 compatibility version

acHack – Gravatar v1.3.1

• activeCollab v2.3.4 compatibility version

Enjoy!

We released an update to Quick Add Plus module today. It’s a minor update for customers using both Quick Add Plus and Confidential Items Module together.

Fixes:

Confidential items did not show in parent selection drop down while adding task / time record. Fixed.

As always, you can download the latest update from our members area.