Twproject 6.4: API & Webhooks

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Today we are so excited to announce that you can now add and access Twproject data using our simple stateless API.

The Twproject API lets you build a variety of applications and scripts to integrate Twproject with your business systems, read Twproject data insert and update data from different locations.

Twproject 6.4 release includes some important security fix, check them from the complete changelog:

Twproject 6.4 Changelog

What is an API?

API stands for “Application Programming Interface”. It allows software like Twproject to exchange data with other softwares. For example, when a new customer is created in your CRM software, the API can be used to create a new task in Twproject for managing pre-sales activity. Or Twproject can tell to your accounting systems via its API how many hours you spent for that purpose. The communication goes 2 ways.

Why an API for Twproject?

The main purpose of an API is to make your life easier by “synchronizing” data between the different software you use to run your business. Twproject is good at managing projects, your accounting software is good at counting moneys. With an API both software can finally talk together, and bridge the functional gap between them.

What can the Twproject API do?

Thanks to the new Twproject API you can finally integrate your existing services with Twproject, you will be able to create/update/delete all the main Twproject’s objects like task, resources, assignments, issue and so on.

The Twproject API is designed to be as simple as possible for other developers to work with.

Twproject API authentication is based on an API key that can be generated by every Twproject enabled user, but in case you are calling the API from portlet/widget running inside Twproject itself it is not required, the current https session will be used for authenticating your requests.

Inside your Twproject instance, in the admin panel you will find a dedicated section with a test tool to try your request and see the actual response.

Twproject send data in JSON (two standard data formats) and can receive data from other applications in JSON.

API & Webhooks

Together with Twproject API we are also announcing our new webhooks to be notified via HTTP-POST if something happens on your installation.

You can configure several webhooks for different events.

All events available can be cheeked from the admin API panel in “Webhooks configuration”.

 

If you have any question about Twproject API and webhooks, please post them on Stack Overflow with “twproject” in the title, we are monitoring that channel and we will answer you promptly.

Thanks again to everyone who contributed feedback and waited patiently for the API to become available. We can’t wait to see what you create.

For more information about the API and Webhooks, have a look at the API documentation.

Donwload now Twproject 6.4

Get it now!

Twproject Certified as a Great User Experience Software for Project Management

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We are really happy to announce that Twproject has been recently reviewed by FinancesOnline’s experts, winning not one but two awards!

Finance Online is one of the most popular reviews platform sites for SaaS and B2B services. Thanks to them thousands of users can find the best software available counting on updated and refined reviews.

When FinancesOnline informed us that we won the Great User Experience award for 2018, we cannot be more pleased as it went beyond our expectations, especially after it coincided with our inclusion in their list of 10 project management software tools. This distinction recognizes software solutions that provide an especially pleasing user experience to users due to its ease of use and intuitive interface.

We worked really hard in the past years on this purpose, to help our users face the complexity of project management in a friendly and usable environment. This is one of the reasons why we were also highlighted in their purpose of project management software article, and we are so happy that FinancesOnline prize our effort.

What we appreciate the most is that the review captured the real aim of Twproject: manage complexity with simplicity.

Twproject also won the prize of Rising Star award for 2018, with a user satisfaction of 100%.  This is another confirmation that what we are doing here is providing the best user experience and support to all our customers.

Please visit FinancesOnline.com to post your own review of Twproject!

 

Twproject 6.3.63004

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Twproject 6.3.63004 is out with a redesigned project statistics page. Thanks to your feedback, with our design team we decided to remove the project full editor moving it in pop-up, redesigning statistics and moving button on the right bar.

Now the page is so much easy to read, button on the right open the pop-up to change task data:

Another great feature we added in this new release is the possibility to add file in chat, images, videos, pdf, everything you need to share with your colleague, that you can then check or download.

The complete list of changes is available on our changelog page here:

https://twproject.com/twproject-changelog/

Get Twproject Now!

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Twproject 6.3.63003

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A new Twproject release is out with several improvements and new features. This is a free upgrade to all our customers of version 6, no database changes included.

One of the feature we like the most for this release is the new gallery for scrolling images attached to issues:

Thanks to this you can now browse your images with a simple click.

Get Twproject Now!

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The complete list of changes is available on our changelog page here:

https://twproject.com/twproject-changelog/

Twproject 6.3: Simplify Communication with Integrated Project’s Chat!

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Today we announce a great new Twproject release that includes an integrated Chat tool that will simplify your company way of communication about projects.

The new release includes also some other interesting features, free to download for all customers of Twproject 6, let’s see them in details:

Twproject Chat

Twproject chat will finally replace all your external tools centralizing project communication and increasing productivity. Conversation is the natural way of work and finally all your chats will be directly connected to your projects. Decisions, doubts solved, all saved in the task history.

Creating a new chat is easy, just go in the project editor, you will find it on the right sidebar.The chat can be created for the entire work group or just for the selected task assignees.

Once created you can just start sending messages to your colleagues that will receive notifications on their desktop (if you enabled https) and at the top right of Twproject  page  .

Chats can be seen in a pinned mode allowing you to continue working on projects without leaving your context, chatting with your colleagues and working at the same time.

We discuss to take decisions, and decisions need to become things to do easily, with the new chat you will get just that, your boss asked you to do something? Just go on the message and click on the bug icon, issues will be created in a minute. Twproject chats can be created also within colleagues,  connected to any project, to talk about work but also about personal things, chat log will be visible by participants only. Twproject Chat is included for free to every plan.

Gantt History

Another great feature of Twproject 6.3 is the Gantt history slider that will allow you to move back in time with your Gantt seeing how your projects has changed from their start. Clicking on the clock the slider will appear and you will be able to pick a date and see what was the status of your project at that date and its progress, a small lighter bar will appear below every task.

Moving the slider these bars will move too, showing changes of the project tree.

This feature is free for every customers with enterprise license.

Download now the new release!

Get Twproject 6.3

Several Other Improvements

In Twproject 6.3 we introduced several other improvements like a special filter from the headline to see all your issues to be done today, with Twproject will be even more easier now to manage your deadlines.

We also introduced a new task status for managing tasks depending from other. The new status is called “waiting” and it is managed only by the application through dependencies (not visible in dropdown). Thanks to this the “suspended status” became completely free for usage and acquire more powerful meaning. Suspended task does not alarm you anymore and are not counted anymore in resources workload.

Last but not least we implemented a way to customize interface color easily(task status color too).

If you think that this is not enough you can find the complete log of Twproject 6.3 release here: https://twproject.com/twproject-changelog/

Please refer to the dedicated support page before upgrade: update-twproject-6-3

 

Let’s check all these new features

Get it now!

Critical Path in Project Management – How to

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The Critical Path Method (CPM) is an algorithm used to plan a set of project activities, its purpose is to highlight the steps involved in the longest path that determines the project end date.

To use this method, you must build the model by paying attention to:

  1. Define all projects’s phases
  2. Highlight dependencies between phases
  3. Calculate the duration of each phase correctly

The critical path analysis allows you to highlight what activities are “critical” but also those that can be delayed without increasing the project lifespan.

If you have never used this methodology, let’s try to apply it to a simple example: imagine we have to install a shelf in the house.

First, you need to split the project into phases:

  1. Buy the shelf
  2. Buy the fixing bars
  3. Choose the wall and the height
  4. Make the signs on the wall
  5. Do the holes with the drill
  6. Install the fixing bars
  7. Mount the shelf

Once you define each steps, you can try to identify the dependencies: at a first analysis you immediately realize that some activities can not be started until others are completed, for example, you can not do holes with the drill until you make the signs on the wall, also the shelf can not be placed until the fixing bars are fixed. At the same time you see that the choice of the wall, the purchase of the shelf and fixing bars are activities that you can do in parallel. Here is the Gantt of activities with dependencies:

This type of activity can be easily planned using the Gantt diagrams that also shows the critical path calculation in red. The chart shows the sequential activities, they are in orange because suspended waiting for predecessor completion.

All these sequential activities are the fundamental steps that determine the length of your project. The critical path of the projects is the longest sequence of activities.

It is essential to pay close attention to phases on the critical path to manage the timing of your Gantt. For example, if you have a task that lasts 100 days, a 5-day delay on one of the sequential activities will result in a total delay of 5 days for the task.

Another important aspect to consider is the human resources availability, for example, we have said that some phases can be done in parallel such as buying fixing bars, shelf and choosing height in the wall, but these can be done in parallel only if you can count on three different resources available, in case you are alone to complete the project the Gantt changes drastically. Phases become all consecutive.

So, project critical path can be calculated according to tasks dependencies, but to determine task end dates it is necessary to identify the resources at your disposal and the correct duration of each phase. Only after analyzing these two aspects will you be able to handle project times by using a Gantt diagram and see a correct schedule.

From this simple example it is clear that critical path analysis is not trivial, this method is particularly used for complex but predictable activities.

In the real world, in fact,  it is difficult to follow exactly the established plan, moreover,  you can have external new requirements or constraints not considered at an early stage of planning.

In our example, if you did not find the fixing bars in the store and you have to order them online you could introduce a delay that could reflect on the overall project’s duration, even if this phase was not in the critical path.

Conclusion:

To keep track of the progress of your plan, you must:

  1. Update your data frequently.
  2. Carefully monitor the steps on the critical path, but also the ones outside.
  3. Keep the availability of resources under control.

That’s why, relying on a software that manages easy-to-update Gantt diagrams, it’s crucial to quickly add dependencies, as shown in the previous images, but also to include phases duration and calculate the end date automatically. An interactive Gantt diagram will also allows you to quickly re-schedule tasks.

If you rely on a project management software such as Twproject, which includes, in addition to the interactive Gantt with critical path analysis, also a tool to monitor resources, you can easily manage the load to provide the flexibility you need to act promptly on any critical issues and finally have everything under control.

 

Start now planning your projects easily

Try Twproject!

Twproject 6.2.62001

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I’m really happy to announce a new great Twproject release. This release includes an important fix related to task statistics and totals.
You can download the installer here

Download the new Twproject release.

We also work and improved a lot the plan and operator load page.

Operator Load: The Ideal Trend

In this new release we’ve introduced a checkbox to see the ideal workload of a team without considering the time elapsed and the work already done.
The standard workload load calculation in fact spread the remaining work to do in the remaining task days. This view is very important in case you do not use the time sheet functionality.

OLoadIdeal

And More…

We introduced also some other feature like the Gantt collapse all and expand all, and the possibility to see on the plan page the entire task tree.

Check the list of improvements and fixed bugs.

Twproject Changelog

Want to know more about Twproject?

Try it now
One try is worth a million words.

Twproject as CRM: In Practice

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It happens that Twproject customers ask us if they can insert in the resource list just the users that have an active login in. Twproject, actually, can be used to insert also all your contacts and customers. This is a great feature that let you use the system like a CRM.

All resources inserted without login, in fact, are not counted in the license count, so you can have many.

What if we see it in practice?

The first contact:

Say that you are at one of  your yearly trade fairs and, after some hours, you meet John James from ACME SPA, he is smart and you talk to him for a while about your company services, he is very interested. You talk about his boss Mary Stuart, and also about the last NBA Match Boston – Cleveland, he roots for Boston Celtics. At the end of the conversation he gives you his business card.

Well, if you are using Twproject project management software, it’s time to save all these information, and you can do that very easily. For example I would simply take my IPad and create a new resource. I would create a new lead for John James from ACME SPA, I would record that his boss is Mary Stuart and all the other information written in his business card. I would also save in the notes that John roots for Boston Celtics…we never know.

ScreenShot094

Follow the lead

Now that your lead is inserted, you can search for the project you use to save pre-sales information and insert a new activity for the conversation you had, just to remember everything you said.

ScreenShot090

At the moment what you have is just a lead, so there is no need to create a specific task for this activity, it could be just a phone call. The best way to manage this situation is to create a new pre-sales activity (a new issue in Twproject), a reminder, to call John after a week and talk about what your company can do for him.

ScreenShot095

After a week the system will remind you about your call, thanks to the link you can check all resource’s detail and may start the conversation with the Boston Celtics. If your conversation is profitable you can finally create a dedicated pre-sales task for ACME, for registering in details your first contact, maybe a demo, your offer and the final contract.

A new Pre-Sales Project

Now that your lead has become a real pre-sale project you can insert it in Twproject to check its progress.

ScreenShot096

Thanks to Twproject all pre-sales activity can be monitored, managed and saved like all the other projects:

  • Contacts and projects together
  • Agents assigned on pre-sales activity
  • Pre-sales progress monitored
  • Pre-sales budget and expenses management
  • Pre-sales effort registered for future report and considerations

All this because, with Twproject, you can have both a CRM software and a Project Management software, together.

CRM software and a Project Management software, together.

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Twproject 6.2 – A Brand New Mobile App

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Twproject 6.2 is finally out with a brand new mobile interface.
We are so proud of it and we really hope you will find it useful and practical as we do.

In the last few months we listened to all your comments and feedback and we realized that having a new app that could be more operative was crucial. Twproject is now used worldwide by thousands of companies: shared teams, flexible environments, enterprise customers that need to access everyday  Twproject just with their mobile devices. Now, with this new release, creating tasks, adding assignments, documents and issues is easy and fast and its all in your hand.

The design of the new mobile interface is easy to understand and use, we worked a lot on this aspect and I think we found the right compromise between powerful functionalities and usability.

A closer look to the new mobile app:

To access Twproject mobile just navigate with the browser to:

your_twproject_address/mobile

and add the page to your home.

It runs perfectly on every mobile devices, IOS, Android, Windows without installing anything new.

Login with your Twproject account and, on the dashboard, you will have exactly the same information you find on your desktop version. Things requiring attention are on top, marked with a red line, and then your open tasks, your issues and your approaching milestones.

twproject-mobile-screen1

At the top left of the page you have always the menu icon, opening the main menu to access projects, issues, resources, agenda, documents and file storage, worklogs ad expenses.

twproject-mobile-screen2

On every list you will be able to add new items and save, or to go back to the previous page (bottom bar). Twproject security model is applied on the mobile app too, so you can do here everything that you can do on the desktop application.

twproject-mobile-screen3

The mobile app is very practical for inserting worklogs, closing issues, using timers just with few clicks. On projects and issues in fact, you have a swipe menu to easily insert worklogs or expenses.

twproject-mobile-screen4

 

With the new Twproject mobile interface you can access your contacts, read project documents, check your agenda.

Twproject mobile is free to all customers of previous versions and included in the free Twproject trial.

The power of Twproject wherever you are.

What’s new in 6.2?

The new release includes also a lot of small improvements and bug fixes.

Al details are available on the log here

Twproject Changelog

Want to know more about Twproject Mobile app?

Try it now
One try is worth a million words.

3 Project Management Templates – Free Download

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The series of post we recently  created sharing project templates has been highly appreciated by all our readers, so we thought to share some new templates that can be of great help in the first adoption/testing phase.

Production Project Template

The first one is related to a sample production project: this project starts with customer requirements, that are the starting point for prototyping. Then, after the customer approval we proceed with the first production that is then tested and controlled, ready for the final release. The projects is almost consequential, so tasks have dependencies with each other.

Of course, this is just an example, something that you can use to start writing your own production project structure, with all your peculiarity. Twproject includes a very friendly yet powerful Gantt tool that can help you creating your project structure easily, even very complex one.

Once you import the project, you can add several other phases, you can change tasks duration, dependencies, also with lags. The chart will be adjusted automatically reflecting all your changes.

ScreenShot062

Click to download the production template

Scrum Project Template

The second example is relative to a typical scrum project. In this case I’ve added also a list of issues/activities that are all collected and prioritized in the backlog task and that are then re-scheduled in consecutive sprints (the list of activities are not included in the export).

The example contains just 2 sprints but of course you can add as many as you want, a sprint can be a template as well so you can create a new one with a click.

ScreenShot061

Click to download the Scrum template

 

Software Development Project Template

The last template is the one we proposed in our last post, in case you missed it, here it is:

https://twproject.com/blog/project-template-software-development-template/

This post shows also how to import this Json file and how you can use them as templates.

Twproject has a very powerful functionality for importing and exporting tasks, using them as templates saving time and energy. If you want to try twproject just click below!

Try Twproject now

 

 

How to Introduce Project Management Software & Succeed

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One of the biggest challenges, a project manager can face in a new team, is to change things for the better and let this changes take effect without the resistance of the team.

One of the most frequent examples is when a project manager decides to introduce a new tool for project management.

This moment of change, even if it is felt like very stressful,  is actually a great opportunity for a company to improve its strategy and organizations.

So,  what if you are that project manager? What if you really want to change things in your company organization with a new project management software?

Fix your expectations:

One of the most important things you need to do, before introducing a new software, is identifying your goals. You have to answer these 2 questions:

  1. Which are the main reasons that bring me to search for a project management tool?
  2. Which are the key features of the tool I chose?

these very simple questions can let you analyze what you are missing in your team now and which are the milestones you want to achieve in the future. Here are some examples:

“I really need to let everyone see what they are working on, stop wasting time with e-mails, pointing out problems and delay. The software I’ve chosen has great dashboards with the list of active assignments by priority.”

“I started searching for a project management software because we really do not know how much our projects cost. We wanted to track time and extract reports with resources costs. We chose the software that lets us manage resource costs easily, together with a time tracking tool”

Once you have your goals in mind be realistic and set some small achievements for your near future. Having realistic expectations is very important, actually it is a key point, if you expect to achieve unrealistic goals  you will immediately face a sense of fail in your team, and this will bring the software to fail.

At the same time, if you do not communicate your expectations, no one will understand how much  helpful will be this change and they will abandon the software.

No one said it was easy….

stereotype metapher leadership or exclusion

stereotype metaphor leadership or exclusion

Team communications, change is for the better..

The other key point about introducing a new software in a company, is to let everyone know, that this will actually help everyone working better, not just the project manager.

This, in some cases, is very difficult.

If you are the project manager of a cohesive team, maybe this will not affect you, but now I’m talking to all those pm, having a big team to manage, maybe a distributed one, with several people working in different ways. So, how to let them feel that changes are for the better?

It is not a software to control who is working and who is not. It seems a bad thing to say, but most of the time, these kind of software are felt like tools to control. They are not and you have to tell them clearly. It doesn’t matter if in the future you will get amazing reports of all worked hours, or if, thanks to the software, you will be able to see who is overloaded. The reason for changing is not to control, or at least it shouldn’t be ;-).

Be your own pm and organize your work better. Once the project manager has created the structure of the task, with dependencies and time frames all the team will be able to check their priorities, organize their to dos and manage their work in autonomy. If you, as pm, are able to let them understand the utility of this new responsibility you will have them on board.

These are just two examples of what you can point out to your team to let them know how helpful can be a project management software, let them know that is a tool for the whole team.

Get the best from the software

Following this easy yet effective strategy to introduce the new software in your company you will get in time amazing results. If your team will use the software, inserting and updating data with no effort, you will get something like:

Inserting estimation and worklog -> team workload and cost tracking

When the software is well introduced you will start inserting projects charts, assigning your resources with estimation and hourly costs. Thanks to this, and having your team inserting worklog you will be able to see your resources workload, control tasks progress and check costs, all data updated in real time.

Managing teams and agenda -> meeting and documents sharing

If you start using a shared agenda, you will be able to share appointments and create meeting easily according to task work-groups. check unavailability and the same connection will be created to easily share documents.

Read more here about managing distributed team agendas.

Using task checklist -> self management and responsibility

When a pm software is introduced, it can give you also the possibility to track to-do lists connected to projects. This is a very useful way for all users to organize, prioritize their work, finally they will stop using notes on the desk and no ideas or messages will be lost.

If you feel that your team needs a more structured way to work, it is probably time to introduce a project management software. Yes, it will be a big change but you can really get results if you follow our strategy. Our software, Twproject, can really give all the results mentioned above, all those features in one software only.

Introduce your team to Twproject.

Try it now
One try is worth a million words.

Happy Holidays from Twproject’s Team

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2016 has been such a great year for Twproject’s team, we worked very hard on our software and we met so many new great customers along the way, we couldn’t be more grateful.

Despite all that it is happening around us, we know that the world is full of great people, working with passion and getting things done everyday.

Twproject changed a lot during these last months: we improved the user interface, made it more secure and faster. That said, we still have a lot of great ideas to implement in the future.

We want to thank all our beloved customers for their support, the software is becoming more and more successful thanks to you. Again, Thank you so much!

We wish you a wonderful Christmas time and a happy new year full of interesting new projects and goals to achieve 🙂

 

_tw-xmas-card-2016

 

Happy Holidays

Twproject’s Team

Twproject 6.1.61008 – Even More Secure

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Twproject 61008 is out with an interesting list of features and improvements. Before checking them in details a special thanks to Larissa from Hornbach that revise our German translation entirely. The improved translation is available in this release.

We have significantly improved performance in saving big Gantt charts and introduced a lot of small improvements like filtering assignments list, moving in timesheet page with arrows, full task path in all pages and notification and several others.

The entire list of features introduced, bug fixed and improvements is available on our change log.

Even More Secure

The new big feature introduced is that now you can set a default number of login attempt before asking for captcha.

This, in case  your Twproject is exposed online will prevent external attacks making your Twproject more secure than ever.

The number of attempts can be set from the administration page:

ScreenShot016

and this is what you will have in case of too many wrong attempts: the user will be asked to confirm he is not a robot.

ScreenShot017

This new features is included in Twproject 6.1.61008 that is a free upgrade for all users of Twproject 6.

Download Twproject now

How to be an Innovative Project Manager (Infographic)

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Despite what people think, being a project manager requires a lot of creativity. A project manager has to be creative managing his resources and their productivity lacks , emotions or peculiar ideas,  be creative in communication with his own bosses, be creative managing large projects with unexpected delays…

So, how to stay creative even when your are managing complex projects? Here there are some suggestions:

Do meditate and don’t stay up all night – this is good suggestion in general. To be more productive and yet creative, studies show that you have to rest at least 6 hours per night. In addition to this, learning to meditate, can teach you the art of patience and to avoid to much stress accumulation.

Do be a sponge and don’t wait for inspiration –  project management methodologies are there to try them out and find the best one fitting your projects.  Agile methodology, waterfall, GTD, these are just few examples of methodologies to experiment. Try to be open minded to new strategy and learn to walk on unknown paths, teams are generally positive to a more structured organization that let them feel more secure and followed. If you are facing problems managing your projects and checking their progress you can use a project management software like Twproject that lets you work in different ways according to your needs.

Do trust yourself and don’t go it alone – even if you are the project manager do not forget about your team opinion. Trust yourself ideas and creativity but ask for their opinion too before going forward with an important decision. If a choice will fall back on your team too, it will be easier if they participated to the final decision. This will reinforce your team culture.

Do pay attention and don’t pass judgement – projects, from start to end are like a big creativity process, that requires your attention constantly. In this sense, you need to pay attention to everything happening in your company, if there is a problem that can impact on your projects too you have to operate immediately even in a creative way.  Never stop analizing your delay and their causes because they may happen again, and a deep study can help you facing them in the future.

Do say “Yes, and…” and don’t say “That never works” – Do push back and don’t argue – here we are talking about team building, because you can’t be an innovative project manager if you do not have an innovative team and a team can perform its best if everyone is free to express his opinion, and you , as projects manager, have to learn to listen to them, even if you do not agree. To have the most innovative team you have to look outside of the box.

“Old pattern only bring to old results”

“New ideas require risk. People need to know it’s safe to express new thinking”

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Source Entrepreneur.

Tips & Tricks: Create Projects by E-mail

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Even if I’ve worked with Twproject for several years I get surprised every day by  its number of hidden features. The one that I show you today could really help you, if, for example, you cannot access the application and you have to create a task to save information that you can loose otherwise.

Twproject is able to create a task, with document attached and assignments simply reading an email written in a specific yet simple defined format.

Example:

Email Subject
NEW PROJECT Twproject Mobile Release 3.0
Email Message
CODE TW_MOB3.0
START 08/11/2016
END 15/03/2017
A complete redesigned user interface and functionality for Twproject mobile app.

This email will create a task with name “Twproject Mobile Release 3.0” and code “TW_MOB3.0”. As you can imagine this task will start on the eight of November and it will end in the middle of March.
All the text of the message will be saved inside the description, and last but not least, in case you attach documents to this e-mail, those will be saved as document in the task.

Twproject security model works also in this case, the sender e-mail, in fact,  needs to be related to a user with task create permission.

ScreenShot005

Is that simple, isn’t it? You can even create a template of your message that you can use to compose it in seconds!

 

 

How To Manage Distributed Teams – Sharing is Caring

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These days, companies has to face an ever growing need for dynamic teams, shared groups of people working together through the internet. This need increases hand by hand with the difficulty of managing team dynamics and project updates.

For this reason, using conventional software like Microsoft project, built for managing projects in their best case scenario with clearly identified teams, could not fit the needs.

Many Projects – Lots of Teams

Big companies, and small ones too, with a high number of projects can see their number of teams increase accordingly, and when I say team I mean people that are actually working on the project.  Even if your company has just seven colleagues like ours, and you have one team working on several different projects,  you can face the same problem: a meeting for a project, a meting for another, uncounted e-mails refer to a projects, many refer to another, what a mess!

For this reason we cannot underestimate this trend and we better try to manage it.

Sharing is Caring

Actively work on a project often involves sending  tons of e-mail to keep everyone updated on what is going on, share documents and information about progress and commitment, schedule meeting with customers and colleagues, share the list of to-dos to get the project done.

This continuous flow of information assumes that you have always in mind all those who compose a specific team. How many of you spend more than a minute checking the list of attendees to be sure that everyone has been added? What if someone is forgotten?

Distributed Teams – Somebody Help!

It’s clear now that we need something helping us managing distributed teams. But what if I told you that the solution is at one step distance? Dynamic teams are implicitly defined by your projects. No one knows better, who is involved, than project management software.

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Node by node, different people could be assigned and different information could be shared. Simply looking at the team from the project’s point of view, you will see the work-group changing.

This simple yet effective idea, let you start from the point of view of your project: when you have an information to share you just need to focus on which is the specific project related, your team is already there!

Just open you projects management software, your changing teams are saved there!

If you have not introduced a project management software in your company you can try Twproject that solves this problem with a suite of functionalities that starts exactly by the work group created on a project.

Finally we will have the distributed teams problem solved and nobody will be forgotten.

If you want to read more about how to introduce a project management software and succeed you can read this post:

https://twproject.com/blog/how-a-project-manager-can-introduce-a-significant-change-and-actually-succeed/

We have the tools, we have the culture.

Try us for free!

Twproject 6.1.61007: Three Features You Cannot Miss

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Twproject  6.1.61007 has been just released with a huge list of features, fix and improvements that you can read here in details. This new release includes 3 amazing new features that will improve your every day usage of Twproject.

As always this is a free upgrade for all users of Twproject 6.

1) A brand new Dashboard

Twproject dashboard has been redesigned to improve readability, helping your team getting things done. Task requiring attention are now more visible, appointments are easy to read and find.  Twproject customizable dashboards are your home to check open tasks and things to-do and we are always at work to get it better and better.

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2) Documents: easy to add, share and move

Attach documents to your projects has never been so easy, now you have a dedicated editor for each kind of document you want to add.

You can simply drag and drop your files to upload them in your repository, or  you can create a link to an already uploaded file, available in your file server. With Twproject you even create a link with a repository available on Google drive, Dropbox, GitHub, every service exposing an URL. Last but not least you can create brand new text documents with all the information you need, authoring, versioning and locking available!

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The new release include also documents’ bulk actions, move them to projects or resources can be done with a click.

3) A new UI for inserting worklog

In these latest releases we have changed the way of inserting worklog trying to find a better way for you to record your time. In this new release we finally did the last step introducing a contextual box for your registrations, the same that you will find in the issue list, and all over the application.

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We believe that inserting worklog is one of the most important yet hardest thing to do, and this is the reason why we have always done our best to let you insert worklog with the minimum effort possible. We hope that this new release will do the trick.

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Let’s check this new feature.

Get it now!

To all Pokemon Trainers!

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We are thrilled to announce that a legendary Pokemon has been sighted inside Twproject site. We have seen it only once, and it never showed up again, please help us finding it!
Articuno, one of the three winged mirage Legendary Pokemon, is somewhere inside Twproject website, hided very well in one of its pages. It seems he has found the perfect hideout! We really need your experience as Pokemon trainer to find it out!

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To the first one, sending us the screenshot with the Articuno Pokemon on our site, we will give 5 yearly license, totally for free!

What are you waiting for?

“Gotta catch them all!”

Save cost of interruptions with Luxafor

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“Got a minute?”

How many times do you hear that phrase in your office? Interruptions are the most common reasons for low productivity and it is very hard to avoid them, lets’ say that, simply you can’t say no.

Here at Twproject we studied a lot about productivity, in order to help people boost it, staying organized and having everything under control but we suffer the same problem, there is nothing that helped us managing continuous interruptions.

“I’m an efficiency expert. Time, which is money, is a precious commodity that we can’t afford to waste.”

Work interruptions can cost you 6 hours a day. The Washington Posts

“You don’t just give up a minute. You sacrifice your energy, enthusiasm, and work enjoyment.”

The Hidden Costs Of Interruptions At Work. Fast Company

We are a small and enthusiastic team working in a big open space, working all on the same project. It comes natural to ask for others opinion quite often with the risk of wasting a lot of time. We tried with empathy communications, cards or posters and also with rude ultimatum without success and finally we found Luxafor.

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Luxafor is a very stylish and useful productivity gadget, a led flag that you put on your computer to notify your colleague about your status. Red Flag? You are too busy to get interrupted. Green flag? Let’s have a chat. Simple isn’t it? Not just simple, smart!

Luxafor speaks with your productivity tool and can automatically get red when you are using them. It can also be managed manually so that you can change your status on your own. All of this through a really simple and friendly application that you can install on your Windows or Mac. We connected it with our development tool so that, while we are developing, we are not interrupted anymore (finally!).

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Luxafor can be also customized to work in a notification mode, making the led flash when new emails or messages arrive.

Luxafor is available with the USB cable for connecting and recharging, you can also ask for your company logo engraved which is pretty amazing, we had our own with the Twproject hand impressed.

Since we started using Luxafor we have increased our productivity a lot, we are a really connected team and even with the red flag on we cannot avoid some interruptions but we are now aware of the problem and we try to respect people will.

Luxafor is shipped world wide and is approved by the Twproject team so stop wasting your time and order it now 🙂

If you want to have more info about our experience with Luxafor just write us at info@twproject.com.

 

Twproject LoVe Startups

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Twproject love startups and thinks that great ideas deserve to be supported.
We have been a startup too and we know how hard is to stay organized when you have a low budget, few resources and tons of great ideas in your head.

When we started Twproject we were just a team of few smart guys with a clear idea in mind, a great idea that we strongly wanted to make real.
Years has passed and now that we are a little bit older 🙂 we understand how lucky we have been, we were able to stay focused and ship our product,
at the beginning, in fact, time seems to fly away and if you don’t fix a realistic plan, you risk to delay your shipping date forever. We remember that feeling very well and this is why we want to give you  Twproject for free.

There is an important difference between a team with a great idea and a successful company, and the difference is that the second one has been able to transform an idea in something real. Organize your work could be the key to achieve your goal.

How to apply for a Twproject free license for startups?

This is really easy, just click the link below. To qualify, you simply need to have been in business less than two years and have under 5 employees. Send us your details, we will get back to you within few days. If your request is approved, we’ll send you an email to welcome you to the Twproject family with the free license for one year/5 users/unlimited projects and a short html link that you will need to add on your website.

Apply for a Twproject free license.

APPLY NOW!

Twproject will help your startup grow, we really want you to have the best possible start in your business. Apply for a free license now!