Today, we added support to manage template projects from PlannerX. You can now create full outline of your standard project plan using the friendly and efficient PlannerX interface. Save it back and use that Template Project to create new projects in Basecamp. You get best of both worlds – super quick plan setup for both template project and new projects.

The integration is not yet perfect – milestone due dates may not work as expected, Basecamp does not support due dates on todos in template projects, and you can only assign items to people in the owner company in template projects. But it’s still a big step forward!

Tip: Make it even faster! Use PlannerX bookmarklet to open template project’s plan with PlannerX right within Basecamp.

A big thanks to Tzvi Kaufman for suggesting this idea.

PlannerX is our Basecamp add on that lets you manage your entire project plan using an outline, card and Gantt view. It makes planning projects 5X faster and is loved by hundreds of users!

• I had a family emergency. My dad was hospitalized for a week. He is back home now and recovering. But I was disturbed and could not focus. I was scared about his health. I am now sorted. I am no longer in panic mode!
• We have a lot of things going on. We are working on (long due) upgrades to Planning and Reports modules. We are putting last touches to a membership / subscription management system. We have a lot in the plans, but execution went slow for a few weeks.
• One team is working heavily on Putler. We made some core improvements to the system and have chalked out product strategy or the next 6 months. This took longer, but is looking much stronger now!
• There is lot of activity in our services company too, and that kept me busy.

Here’s the status of our work:

• Planning module: Basic support for print and filtering on Outline, printing Cards view. Still need to fine tune the UI and design of the printed pages.
• Reports module: Improvements to localization system started. Couple of bug fixes in the code.
• acGarage: Going smooth. Most systems are automated. We are planning to add support for more modules soon.
• PlannerX: Happy with the new version roll out, sorted out a few bugs over the last month.
• Membership System: We will be moving to a new subscription management system. We have annual renewals and our current service provider – e-Junkie – does not support this. We love e-Junkie, but had to bring something new to suit our needs. We have almost completed this work, and will roll it out gradually.
• Putler: Putler currently shows trend reports based on your Paypal account balance. We have updated it to show sales trends. We also figured someone else copied our ideas and created their own product, but we know we have a much better product. We also fine tuned our product strategy and have some big plans for coming months.

Overall, things have picked up again and you will be hearing a lot from us over the next few weeks!

Onward!

(Image courtesy Hoeke 05)

Bookmarklet works in IE8

We announced PlannerX bookmarklet last week. The bookmarklet lets you open PlannerX right in your Basecamp page. This makes updating your plans super quick and easy. We had a small issue that prevented it from working in IE8 (thanks Stephanie for reporting it!). We fixed that and even added a visual guide about setting up the bookmarklet with IE8. Enjoy!

PlannerX Bookmarklet in IE8

Login problems solved

Few customers mentioned they could not login to PlannerX despite making sure everything was setup correctly – username, password, URL, API access – everything. This was a puzzling problem, but we could solve it in minutes once we got access to the problematic account. It was actually our mistake. We forgot to handle dashes in Basecamp sub domains in a recent upgrade. It’s now fixed and working fine.

Easier login form

While we were on the login functionality, we also made a small usability improvement to the login form. You now don’t have to enter your full Basecamp URL. Just enter the initial company name / sub-domain part. .basecampq.com is added already. This will even make it easier for people to understand what they need to enter in that field! Here’s how the revised login form looks.

More usable login screen for PlannerX

Bug with new task saving solved

I am glad not many customers noticed this We had a jarring bug that wouldn’t save a new task if both the milestone and todo list were also freshly created. It was another quick fix, but a significant one!

How do all these small improvements measure up?

Here’s what Ben Thomas, a PlannerX customer had to say:

WAHOO!

Fantastic response.
Thank you ever so much. Wonderful.
That is brilliant. Thank you.

Ben

Makes my day!

Here’s how it looks

PlannerX Bookmarklet in action

Activate the bookmarklet from here

What are the advantages?

A lot of users found it inconvenient to open a new browser page and login to PlannerX. We felt that if we could integrate PlannerX within Basecamp, things will be a lot easier. While we were figuring out the best way to do this, Countdown guys released a bookmarklet that opens Countdown within Basecamp. We loved the idea and implemented it for PlannerX. We also revised our login process so that it works well with this system.

With the bookmarklet,

• You can now open PlannerX within Basecamp
• You don’t have to open another browser page for PlannerX
• PlannerX auto detects which project you are working on and loads that up
• If you select “Remember Me” on our login forms, you can go straight to PlannerX next time onward.

This is a significant improvement in usability for PlannerX.

Activate the bookmarklet from here

What is a bookmarklet?

A bookmarklet is a small JavaScript that lets you quickly perform an action. They are typically stored in browser’s favorites / bookmark / links bar. Just like you open your favorite website by clicking on it in your Favorites bar, you load PlannerX within Basecamp by clicking its name in your Favorites bar. You can read more about bookmarklets in this Wikipedia article.

Credits

Our bookmarklet was inspired from the Countdown bookmarklet. And was coded by Malay Ladu.

Activate the bookmarklet from here

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

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!)

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

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!

• 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.

• 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!