February 20, 2014

activeCollab is one of the best web based collaboration and project management systems. activeCollab can handle the entire lifecycle of projects – from requests for new projects, to quoting, execution, collaboration, issue tracking, reporting, documentation and also post project support.

You’d want to integrate activeCollab in as many processes as you can. Your website is naturally going to be one of them. And you may come up with these questions…

• How can I allow clients to submit support requests from my site?
• Can I send website’s contact form submissions to activeCollab as tasks?
• How do I create a login form on my site for clients to login to activeCollab?
• I want my clients to request new projects through our website. How do I do that with activeCollab?
• What are the different ways to integrate activeCollab with my website?
• How can I embed activeCollab’s public submit form on my website? Static / WordPress / or other systems?
• What is the best way to collaborate on a project without giving an activeCollab account to people? For example, sharing a discussion or notebook pages from activeCollab?

Continue reading for answers to all these questions. What follows is the most comprehensive guide to integrating activeCollab with a website.

You may want to send information to activeCollab from your website. Or share information within activeCollab with outsiders.. activeCollab is a secure system. One can not access any activeCollab page without logging in. But there are cases where you would want to give public access to certain items as well.

Let’s begin by listing what kind of things you can bring from activeCollab to your website…

activeCollab and Your Website: What can be made public?

• Project Requests are inquiries for new projects from customers. Communicate with customers before a project is won.
• Public Forms create a new task in activeCollab from a publicly visible form. You can select which project the task will go to, and create as many public forms as you want.
• Public Sharing of project objects – tasks, discussions, notebook pages can be made public so that people who do not have an activeCollab account can also collaborate with your projects.
• Login Form can be shown on your website, so clients can quickly login to your projects’ dashboard.

Sidenote: With enough coffee and determination, you can access almost anything within activeCollab with its API (or straight database access) and show it on your website. For this guide, we will restrict ourselves to things that can be achieved with a single serving of coffee though!

Public Task Submission Forms: posting tasks to activeCollab

Here’s how you can turn on, create and use public task submit forms.

Public Project Requests: inviting new project requests

Here’s how you can turn on, create and use public project request form.

Here’s the documentation about Project Requests on activeCollab site.

Integration Methods: How to link activeCollab with your site?

There are a number of methods. Choose one that suits your needs and one you find comfortable.

Direct Links to activeCollab

This is the simplest integration method. Copy the public sharing URL activeCollab provides (for project request forms, public task submit forms or sharing links for any project item) and link it on your website. You can set the target=_blank attribute on the link for it to open in a new window. You can even link to the main activeCollab URL for people to login.

If you are using direct linking, make sure to use a descriptive / understandable text for the link. You can even put the link/s in header or footer menus of your site.

Embedding with an iFrame

If you want to keep people on your site while they fill a form in activeCollab, use an iFrame. Here’s a sample code you can use.

<iframe name="aciframe" src="public-sharing-url-from-activeCollab" frameborder="0" scrolling="auto" width="100%" height="600"</iframe>

Embedding with an iFrame gives the feeling that activeCollab page is showing within your own website. If you want to modify styling of the page, things can get a little tricky though.

• You can access and change content of an iframe only if both the container page and iframe page are on the same domain – and subdomains are not considered as same…
• If you are using WordPress, there are also plugins that let you insert iFrames or shortcodes that let you insert predefined content blocks – including iFrames.

Showing in a Lightbox

This method is similar to iFrame, but can work even better. Most lightbox libraries allow showing a URL in the lightbox using iFrame. Use that feature to link to activeCollab.

This way, people will be on your site, and then see a nice modal popup for your public submit form / project request form etc. The clear distinction between the container page and lightbox will make slightly different design of activeCollab pages “natural”.

Copying HTML source code

If you want full control over styling, you can open public submit / project request form link in a browser and  copy the actual HTML code. Take only the necessary <div> and format it the way you want with CSS. Make sure you are including “submitted=1″ or any other parameters as necessary in the “<form>” submission.

One trick here…

• Set “target” attribute on “form” to _blank – or another iframe on the page if you don’t care to show result of form submission.

Sending an Email to activeCollab

If all you want to do is create a task (or comment) within activeCollab when a form is submitted on your website, another easy way is to just send an email with form data to activeCollab. Emailing form data is very simple (tons of plugins for WordPress, many themes include it out of box, and ample solutions with other CMSes as well).

You will need to configure Incoming Mails in activeCollab for this to work though. You can hook activeCollab with any POP or IMAP account. Then set a filter for that account to create a new task or comment whenever a new email arrives to that address.

Keep in mind though:

• If the email comes from an email address that’s not in activeCollab, your comments on the newly created task won’t go to the original sender.
• To solve this, you can use our Tasks Plus module. Set it up as a transparent help desk system using the tutorial here if you wish. You then have a flexible and powerful integration that just works!

Using Zapier

If you want to use a form to submit data, and want additional flexibility – without the programming hassle, try our activeCollab Zapier integration.

Here’s how you can create a new task in activeCollab from a form submitted on your site – but sent to Zapier…

• Login to your Zapier account.
• Create a new zap, use “Webhook – POST” as a trigger, and “activeCollab – Create a new task” as action.
• Copy the webhook post URL Zapier provides you and have your form submit data to that URL.
• Connect your activeCollab with Zapier if not already done.
• Make a test post.
• Map fields from your form to activeCollab. You can select a project, a milestone, assignee etc.

Using activeCollab API

If you wanted full control use activeCollab API! Use your favorite programming language to bring activeCollab data to your website or take your website’s data and post it to activeCollab.

With the APIs, you can take form data from your website and create a new task, project or anything else you want!

Other things to keep in mind…

activeCollab needs to be installed on a publicly accessible URL – not on your intranet behind a firewall

For any public sharing to work, your activeCollab setup must be on a public URL. If it’s hidden behind your firewall and accessible only within the office or via VPN, outside public won’t be able to use most of these integration methods.

The only way to submit data to activeCollab in such cases is to use email. Send the email to a publicly visibly domain, and use activeCollab in your network to pull emails and import them in.

Your logo and branding will be carried forward on public page

If you are going to share activeCollab with people, make sure you upload your company logo and make any other branding adjustments. Your logo / branding will be visible on the public forms and will provide additional validation to your customers.

Questions? Experiences? Suggestions?

Have you integrated activeCollab with your website? Got any tips to share with others? Have questions?

Post a comment below to share.

August 8, 2013

Background / Problem

• We operate different brands – Apps Magnet (our activeCollab solutions), Store Apps (our WooCommerce and WordPress ecommerce extensions) and Putler (our sales analytics system).
• While different team members work on these brands, we did not want three separate support ticketing systems / helpdesk systems.
• We’ve used WHMCS for over two years to manage support for all these brands.
• But we always preferred to have something integrated with activeCollab for smoother workflow – and not needing to login to two separate systems.
• More importantly, we wanted customers to feel they are interacting with real people and not a software! We wanted to eliminate all the complexities of a typical support system – auto responders, ticket URLs etc..

Digging Deeper – possible solution and a roadblock…

• We can use our own Tasks Plus module to build an “invisible helpdesk”. That way support requests work like normal emails, but are still tracked and managed within activeCollab.
• We can configure multiple mailboxes, filters and projects. One for each brand. activeCollab will fetch the email, and filter for that mailbox will push the incoming email as a new support ticket task for the “Support – Brand Name” project.
• If we wanted all emails to create a task in the same project, a single filter would do.
• Tasks Plus will also make sure outgoing emails are going from the “support” email address and not individual person’s. So it is a very good fit.
• BUT we wanted emails to go out from the SMTP server of the particular brand. We did not want Store Apps emails going off Apps Magnet SMTP server or vice versa. And activeCollab allows setting up a single SMTP server.

Enter Mandrill!

• Mandrill is “SMTP as a service” offering from MailChimp.
• Instead of sending emails out via native email functions in activeCollab, we could use Mandrill’s SMTP.
• There were a number of advantages in using Mandrill over our own SMTP server. First, Mandrill is from MailChimp. And they specialize in email and deliverability. So we can rely on them to send out email well. Second, Mandrill offers flexible tracking and filtering options. Third, it’s affordable. The free plan offers 12,000 emails per month – which is well under our limits.
• The real bonus was to setup SPF and DKIM records for Mandrill on our domains. This essentially lets the world know that Mandrill is authorized to send emails on our behalf. This step reduces chances of mails getting marked as spam and is a good practice.

Final Solution

• Create one mailbox, filter and project for each brand in activeCollab.
• Use Tasks Plus to mark incoming mails as support tickets, allow receiving emails from people not registered in activeCollab, send comments posted on the task as a simple email reply, set incoming mailbox as the “sender” of replies, and basically integrate with our workflow.
• Use Mandrill for sending out emails. Configure it in activeCollab as the single SMTP server.
• Setup SPF and DKIM entries in DNS for each domain. Proving Mandrill’s authority to send email on our behalf.
• Test and go live!

We are live! Any email you send to support address of these brands, is now landing in our single activeCollab setup. Our team responds to the task, and that comment comes to you (via Mandrill) as a “conversational email reply” – hiding the support system completely. We can now easily use workflow labels, track hours and do reporting on these support tasks!!

Do you manage multiple brands? Want to integrate an invisible helpdesk with activeCollab?

Try this solution then! It works like a charm!

May 23, 2013

Tasks Plus module for activeCollab lets you set up a support help desk system that both you and your customers will love…

Customers Will Love It Because The Helpdesk Is Invisible

Tasks Plus helpdesk system is invisible to customers. All messages look and function like normal email. No more bloated emails, no more robotic auto responders, no more needing to remember another username and password, no more frustrations.

Support Team Will Love It Because It’s Right Within activeCollab

Get all advantages of activeCollab Tasks – workflow labels, time tracking, sub tasks, file attachments, filtering, categories… – and more importantly the same familiar interface. All support tickets from customers become tasks within activeCollab and only your comments (along with any attachents on comments) are sent to the customer. Overall, the support team becomes a lot more productive.

Business Owner Will Love It Because Everything Stays Centralized

You can use activeCollab for project management and customer support both. No need for two separate systems all hassels of integration. On top of it, customers feel they are getting responses from real people and support team is more productive. It’s a win for everyone.

Here’s how a support incident may get addressed:

• Customer sends an email to support@yourdomain.com
• This email is imported as a task in activeCollab
• Support team works on the task, and posts a comment
• The comment (along with attachments if any) is sent to customer as a normal email
• Customer reads the email and replies with additional detail
• The reply email is imported as a comment on the original task in activeCollab
• Support team continues working on it – they may create sub tasks, add time entries, assign it to different members etc
• Support team resolves the issue and posts a comment on the task
• The comment is sent to customer as an email
• Customer is happy with the solution and replies with a thank you note
• This reply too is imported as a comment on the original task
• Support team is happy too, and closes the task

How does this differ from default activeCollab functionality?? How is it better?

You may think that activeCollab already does most of this. So what’s the big deal…

In fact, cleaner emails itself is a big step forward in improving customer experience.

• Tasks Plus solution does not show task IDs or project names in email subjects.
• Emails carry a much simpler, leaner format. They look like regular emails, and not some system generated notifications.
• Client can actually see complete thread of the conversation. It’s much easier to comprehend progress and context.
• This solution reduces the risk of emails being marked as junk / spam – a big advantage.
• Clients don’t get the annoying “new ticket created” or “new task created” email when they write to support mailbox. They also do not get emails when assignees change or any other activity happens with the task. They get an email only when a comment is posted to the task.

Think about the agony and time this can save your clients! Plus they feel a real human is communicating with them. Customer support helpdesk being invisible is indeed a big deal.

And frankly, this is just getting started. We will be adding a number of enhancements to Tasks Plus in future that will make managing support requests even easier!

Setting up an awesome (& invisible) customer support system – walkthrough

Imagine your customer has a question. He writes an email and sends it to your support email address. This email becomes a task in activeCollab – ready for your team to work on. Including any files customer may have attached. Your team can respond by leaving a comment. They can also use all activeCollab task management features – including assignments, labels, sub tasks and time tracking. Posting a comment sends an email to the customer – but in a style that feels human. Just like conversational email. No extra details or formatting. No trace of a software.

Customer’s reply is imported as a comment to the original task too. No need to login to another system or even leave the email client.

On the activeCollab side, team can mark this task as complete, since the question is answered.

That’s it! A helpdesk that’s invisible to the customer, yet gives all the flexibility and power to your support team. Possible only with activeCollab and our Tasks Plus module.

While we are at it, let me also show you how this is setup. Assuming activeCollab and our Tasks Plus module are installed, we need an incoming mailbox set up. The “account name” is used in outgoing replies. And email address is where clients send their support requests. Other details are standard POP3/IMAP settings.

Save and go back to Email settings, then, “Manage Filters”.

This is where we tell activeCollab that all messages arriving on support mailbox should be treated as support tickets. You may set rules for subject, body etc, but the most important is the action. We want to add a new support ticket in a specific project, put it in General category, and keep the workflow label as New. We allow non activeCollab users to send email to this box, so everyone can easily reach out for support.

By the way, if you have multiple filters, make sure other filters do not intercept support emails.

Another thing to ensure is that outgoing emails are sent out instantly. Background sending does not allow simple formating that Tasks Plus uses. You also need to confirm Scheduled Tasks are working, otherwise emails won’t be imported.

The mailing log lets you trouble shoot problems if any.

And that’s all. That’s all it takes to configure this simple yet awesome customer support system.

With that, I invite you to free everyone from the burden of complicated helpdesks. Wow your customers today!

November 9, 2012

Many times you need to update multiple time records in activeCollab. Time Reports Plus makes it super easy to manage these – round them up, adjust them, change billable status and more.

This video walks you through the whole process with Time Reports Plus.

October 11, 2012

Want to add your own logo to activeCollab 3? Watch the video above for a complete walkthrough of setting your own branding with activeCollab 3.

Covers: changing login page logo, invoice logos, activeCollab system name, favicon and more…

August 25, 2012

Practice Kanban with activeCollab. Use Tasks Plus module to print your tasks as Kanban cards and put them up on your Kanban board. Then get into flow!

activeCollab is a great web based project management and collaboration software. Apps Magnet makes extensions for activeCollab.

You can use Tasks Plus module for activeCollab 3 to print your tasks as Kanban cards. Go the Tasks tab in a project, select as many tasks as you want on the left, and click on Print Kanban Cards in top right toolbar. Your cards will be ready to print!

Cut the printed sheet along dotted lines and you get cards you can put up on your Kanban board.

Each card contains the task title, its assignees, project, milestone, the task ID, description, priority, estimate, start date and due date. You also have space on the card to add your own markings / labels.

So why not a Kanban board within activeCollab?

We thought about adding a full drag and drop, Trello like Kanban board to activeCollab. (Yes, there are many Kanban board implementations out there, we personally like Trello a lot.) We haven’t done this yet for a variety of reasons.

• A lot of people use Kanban with physical boards. Physical white boards are intuitive and many people find them more appropriate than software
• Different organizations use Kanban slightly differently – so sticking to one way of grouping task won’t work for everyone
• activeCollab team is considering adding Kanban like functionality too
• Adding print feature would get a headstart to everyone using Kanban. We can always extend this based on user feedback!

New to Kanban?

Watch the videos above – Jimdo’s introduction is an excellent quick start. While Jim Benson’s talk on the Philosophy of Kanban talks covers: Why does kanban work so well? Why do teams intuitively take to it? Why do people’s behaviors change around a visual control? Why does stress decrease? Why do people who currently could not work together suddenly collaborate? Jim Benson will discuss the psychology behind visual controls.

Here are some more helpful resources:

• Wikipedia entry for Kanban, including six core practices:Visualize, Limit Work In Progress, Manage Flow, Make Policies Explicit, Implement Feedback Loops and Improve Collaboratively, Evolve Experimentally
• Excellent introduction to Kanban
• Kanban applied to software development – from agile to lean

Tips & Tricks

• Print the cards on different color sheets to distinguish them
• If you have changed a task details, you can even print Kanban card for a single task – click the Print Kanban Card button next to the Print button in Task detail view
• Use Workflow Statuses / Task Labels in your Kanban process and move cards along the process
• Print Kanban cards for tasks across projects (you’ll need to go to each project and print tasks for it). Then fill up your board to get an high level overview of progress

Share your experiences

Got another tip to share? As a matter of fact, if you are using Kanban with activeCollab, we would love to do a case study with you. Contact us and let us know how you use Kanban with activeCollab!

June 6, 2012

March 20, 2012

activeCollab is awesome, but some people just won’t use it. Why not let them use email? You will be able to set seamless email communication – both outgoing and incoming – for your activeCollab projects after watching this video. We demonstrate everything you need to know about the Incoming Mail module of activeCollab here. So go ahead, get more people on-board with activeCollab!

Transcript

Hello and Welcome to another episode of activeCollab tutorials. I am your host Nirav Mehta. And today we will talk about how you can simplify collaboration on your projects using email.

Over the past 10 years, we have used a number of different project management systems. We have settled on activeCollab for a year. But at all times, some people just don’t use the system.

They are either too busy to log in to activeCollab, hate to remember another password and generally hide under their desks when you come around. If it’s your boss or a client, they may keep asking you questions about activeCollab and use least of the knowledge you provide them. Despite your gentle reminders, they will continue communicating over email.

Sure, activeCollab is not _that_ simple to use. You may need to train and orient users to get maximum advantage. And you can’t afford to do that with everyone.

So if activeCollab is coming in the way of collaboration, why not get it out of the way? The truth is, you don’t really need people to login to activeCollab to provide you feedback.

No, I am not telling you to dump activeCollab! It’s one of the best web based project collaboration systems. What I am suggesting, is to eliminate the need to login to activeCollab to get updates and provide feedback.

Enter the Incoming Mail module for activeCollab.

Incoming Mail – a built in module – monitors email accounts for new messages and imports them to activeCollab. activeCollab sends email notifications of new comments and other important events. Incoming Mail allows notification recipients to reply to the notification. This reply will then automatically be appended to the original discussion or ticket as a comment.

It can even import attachments and works according to activeCollab’s security mechanism.

Incoming Mail module, coupled with notifications, removes the need for people to login to activeCollab to find updates and post comments.

Here’s how it works.

1. Your clients sends an email to a designated email address: let’s say “projects@yourdomain.com”.
2. Incoming Mail module reads that message.
3. According to the rules you set, it creates a new ticket or discussion
4. You can now see this item in activeCollab and post further comments on it
5. New comments are sent via email notifications to the original poster
6. They may now reply to these notifications using email.
7. Their reply email lands up in the email account you setup
8. Incoming Mail picks up this reply and appends to the original ticket / discussion as a comment
9. The cycle continue as long as you wish and for as many items as you wish

Now that we have understood how it works, let’s see it in action.

I am logged into activeCollab as an administrator. I have installed the Incoming Mail module.

Clicking on it’s icon tells me that system is not yet configured to receive emails. It shows my email address there, but I don’t want to use that for activeCollab.

Let’s go back to “Mailing” settings and define an email address and name using which activeCollab will send out email notifications.

Now come back to Incoming Mail and define an incoming mailbox.

You may need to create a new email account using your server’s control panel. Once you have done that, enter that email address, name of this account and mail server connection information. Test the Connection to ensure it works.

Every unknown message in this mailbox should create a new ticket in a project we have created for incoming mails. We also want to accept mails only from our activeCollab users. You can set this up as per your needs. Click Submit to save.

We now have one mailbox created. We can use the icons on right to list messages in this mailbox. Let’s check what it has.

As expected, there are no messages yet in this mailbox.

Let’s send a new message.

Let us now refresh this page and see what we have. Superb! We have our message in there.

ActiveCollab uses the “Frequently” Scheduled Task to automatically check for new mails. Make sure your Scheduled Tasks are working properly. Let’s run it manually for our demo.

This should import our email as a new ticket. Ok, task run. And yes, it’s created a new ticket from our email. Let’s see the details.

Amazing! Everything looks perfect!

Now let’s send another email. This time we will send it from a different email account.

Run the frequently task once again. Come back to Incoming Mail.

Surely, we have the new email imported as well.

Click to see the details. You can see that both Albert (sender of the message) and Nirav (Project Leader) are subscribed to this new ticket.

Let me post a new comment.

That comment will come as email notification to Albert. Here it is.

Albert can reply to this notification using his email client. Just the way he would respond to any other email.

When the frequently tasks are run next, his comment will be added to the ticket. Superb, isn’t it!

I am happy with the work now, so I can go ahead and complete this ticket. Of course, Albert will be notified of this as well.

So it worked, and it worked really well!

Getting the Incoming Mail to work is straight forward. If you ensure the requirements are met, you can set everything in just a few minutes – like how we did.

And then you can configure it the way you like.

You can setup multiple incoming email accounts. You can setup project specific accounts so that all messages coming to that are created as new ticket / discussion in a specific project. Or you can use it as a help-desk system.

You can also create different Automated Actions for different mailboxes.

BTW, Subscribe users to your tickets / discussions for them to get notified of updates. This will even let them reply to your comment right from their favorite email client. You can click on “Manage / Add” to manage users who are subscribed to this ticket / discussion.

activeCollab does its best to process incoming mails. But there may be conflicts. E.g. when mails bounce or an unknown sender emails your project email address. Such conflicts need to be resolved manually and when they happen, you will see an alert with the number of conflicts in the top bar.

Hey, we saw a lot in this video. Incoming Mail has helped us greatly. Our clients can now communicate using their familiar email client. Even the quality of communication has improved after we started using this. We are very happy with Incoming Mail and recommend it to you too.

Finally, Thank you for watching this video. Visit us at activecollab.appsmagnet.com for more.

May 19, 2011

Do you need to update a group of time records in activeCollab at once? Fear not. Time Reports Plus can do this in a jiffy!

Adjust Logged Hours on Multiple Time Records

Here’s an example of how you can adjust logged hours for multiple time records at once. You can use the same method to do a whole lot more!

• Load a report with Time Reports Plus
• Ensure “Show Time Records” is ticked.
• Check a few time records using check boxes to the right of each time record
• Locate the Batch Edit drop down at the end of the time records list. Click and open it.
• You will notice an “Adjust to %” option after “Round to 30 minutes” option.
• Select that. You will get a prompt asking you the new percentage. 100% is default – which means leave things as they are.
• If you put 120% here, all selected time records will be increased by 20%. If you put 80%, they will be reduced by 20%.
• Enter the desired percentage amount, and Submit to apply the update.
• The page will reload, and show you an update confirmation message at top.

Batch Update Actions Available in Time Reports Plus

• Round up hours to 5, 15 or 30 minutes
• Adjust to % – up or down
• Mark as Billable / Non-Billable / Billed / Not Billed
• Move to Trash

May 17, 2011