A couple of new things in Basecamp: Work with milestones on the Dashboard + Writeboard email notifications Mar 03 2009
12 comments Latest by Justin
This weekend we pushed a couple of new features to Basecamp. One was long overdue (email notifications on Writeboards), and the other is a sign of things to come (working with Milestones on the Dashboard).
Milestones
When you log into Basecamp you are dropped onto the Dashboard. The Dashboard is information rich but functionally poor. There’s a lot to look at but not a lot to do. We want to change that.
The first thing we wanted to tackle was milestones. Milestones show up in a few places on the Dashboard, but mostly you’ll see them right at the top of the screen. They are either overdue or they’re due in the next 14 days.
Prior to this update, if you wanted to change the date or check off a milestone you had to click on the milestone. Then you’d be taken deep into the project so you could do your thing. That’s fine if you only have one thing to do, but if you want to complete a few milestones or move a couple back because the schedule changed it was a hassle. You had to move back and forth between project and Dashboard repeatedly. It was click consuming and frustrating.
No longer. Watch the video to see how we solved this problem:
This is the first step to “flattening” Basecamp. We want to bring more functionality to the Dashboard so you don’t have to click deep into a project to take care of common tasks. We’re exploring more ways to implement this technique in more places.
Writeboards
Email notifications are a big part of Basecamp. Every time someone posts a message or comment or uploads a file or creates a to-do, they have the option to notify other people on the project via email. Basecamp sends out hundreds of thousands of these notification emails every day.
But there was a weak spot. A dusty little corner where email notifications were nowhere to be found. Writeboards.
It’s a long story, but let’s talk about the ending: Now you can now let people know that you’ve added a new comment or made a revision to a Writeboard. This works in both Basecamp and Backpack (since they both integrate with Writeboards).
We hope you like the new stuff
Thanks for your continued support. The new milestone quick window stuff has been very well received so far. We ironed out a few small bugs on day one, but now we’re full speed ahead.
We look forward to announcing more new features and improvements in the coming weeks.
Got a web design project in mind? Find a web designer on Sortfolio. Browse by visual style, portfolio, budget, and geographic location.
Over 1 million people use 37signals' simple web-based software to collaborate on projects, track contacts, and organize their business with an intranet.
12 comments so far
James Head 03 Mar 09
Nice work – nicely executed.
(It might be nice to have the ‘quick edit’ on the deeper pages too, – not just the dashboard.)
JF 03 Mar 09
It might be nice to have the ‘quick edit’ on the deeper pages too, – not just the dashboard.
We agree. First things first, though ;)
Anonymous Coward 03 Mar 09
The links to associated threads (messages) seems to be busted. The url looks like this (personalized parts removed):
https://xxxxx.grouphub.com/projects//posts/#####/comments
It should look like this:
https://xxxxx.grouphub.com/projects/#####/posts/#####/comments
So it looks like you’re missing the project number.
Dave Rutledge 03 Mar 09
Oops, didn’t mean to be anonymous, in case you need to confirm anything on that, it was me.
Michael 03 Mar 09
Are you guys consulting/taking on client work?
SS 04 Mar 09
Thanks Dave. I just deployed a fix for that.
JF 04 Mar 09
Are you guys consulting/taking on client work?
We don’t do client work anymore. Stopped taking on external work sometime in 2005.
Jade Ohlhauser 04 Mar 09
Hi. What software and hardware do you use to make these screen recordings? They look and sound great.
Dave Rutledge 04 Mar 09
Excellent, I confirmed it’s working for me now.
Tiago 04 Mar 09
I am a long time reader of SVN and have never commented. After you published the results of the last survey, which I took the time to read and notice that, a good amount of people, have complained over SVN being 37signals billboard or making use of quotes too much instead of those great technologies articles you have written in the past.
Anyway, I have agreed with them and, unfortunately, have not seem a slight change over this issue. I mean, SVN has changed and it was not good.
I am leaving you guys. Hope in the future you could listened better to your public. Pardon any bad english… portuguese is my mother language.
Regards.
Grant 05 Mar 09
Nice work – definitely something that had caused issues for me in the past – so it’s nice to be able to push notifications now.
Justin 10 Mar 09
Someone form 37S once said that “overlays” like the milestone edit box loses context. Why did you decide to NOT use inline editing?
Comments are closed