Last night my team did a release, which means they updated JibberJobber with new and improved “stuff.” I’ve been talking about this release for a long time, but it got stuck in the QA process as my QA team has been intent on releases without bugs.
Just minutes after the release an outplacement firm in Australia emailed me and said “Nice work – looks great!” This is just minutes after the release… it was pretty cool that someone noticed that quick! I asked him what he noticed, and it is exactly what I want to blog about today. Below this list of enhancements that will impact you is a list from my QA team, reporting what has been fixed/released.
Thing One: Action Item Notifier (on top-left of every screen)
This is an enhancement that really enriches your experience with JibberJobber. Now, on every page, you’ll be able to see how many Action Items you have pending in the next two weeks. This makes JibberJobber more of a follow-up tool. I talk about “follow-up” and “nurturing relationships” a lot… and we’ve provided tools and reports for you to see what you have coming up, but this is the most blatant, in-your-face enhancement to show you exactly what you have so things don’t slip through the cracks. You’ve probably already noticed this, when you login, on the top-left:
The “6” means that I have six Action Items coming up in the next two weeks. Click on that little icon and you will see those six Action Items in this view:
Here are some things to help you get more value out of this widget:
#1 – this allows you to click and drag to resize this view.
#2 – this closes (or, hides) the widget.
#3 – notices each Action Item is listed with a checkbox to the left… that way you can close multiple Action Items at once, or you can print one report with all that you have checked. (NOTE: You can close or edit each one… when you mouse over an Action Item, icons will appear on the right to close or edit)
#4 – these are the actions you can take for each of the checked Action Items. For example, click on three of them, then click the close icon (the clock), and those three will be closed. Easy.
This enhancement should make your JibberJobber experience much richer!
Thing Two: The Log Entry and Action Item screen is cleaned up.
We removed some of the superfluous wording and white space, and made it more compact. This should make it easier to add a Log Entry. This was a small, marginal change, but I think the impact will be big, and make it easier for you to create Log Entries and Action Items.
Notice we moved much of the “stuff” (create an Action Item, associate this to other Contacts, Companies and Jobs, etc.) to the bottom. It works pretty much the same, but it’s just cleaner.
To create a Log Entry, simply put in a date, the title, and the details/comments. To create an Action Item, or associate Contacts, Companies and/or Jobs, simply click on the icons on the bottom. Cleaner, more intuitive, easier.
Thing Three: more use of the width of your monitor
This is the first of a few changes to use more of your monitor. A while back we did a UI “enhancement” which left, for some wide monitors, a few inches of white space on each side. I hated that… JibberJobber needs space! So we opened up the List Panels and then extend from one end to another, without inches of wasted white space. There is still more to do here, and we’re working on it. This was just the first step.
Other Things: This is the list from my QA team. It might not make sense to you, but it’s all important stuff.
- Import contacts (bug with companies): there was an issue when you imported Contacts, with Companies, but the Companies didn’t import and associate right. This should be fixed.
- Bug of custom fields on Jobs (reported by Chris R)
- Bug on IE uploading images: apparently Internet Explorer was having issues with the super cool way we bring in images on a Contact or Company.
- Bug on email2log (when was adding the secret email as other contact): Sometimes when you used the Email2Log feature, JibberJobber would create a new record for your own ultra-secretive email address… which was not supposed to happen. This is now resolved.
- Bug on email2log (about formatting): In a prior release we kind of goofed up… some of your Log Entries created by the Email2Log feature stripped spaces between paragraphs. This made the Log Entry look all bunched up. This is now fixed.
- Change of wording to Coach Dashboard: We are going to change a lot of the functionality here, but for now we needed to change this from My Coach Landing Page to Coach Dashboard. Very small change but will make it more intuitive. This is for anyone who coaches others, or is an accountability partner.
- “Log Entries and Action Items Report” To remember the session variables: when you customize the Log Entries and Action Item report, we didn’t save your preferences… we are now.
- Allow edit on Log Entry view in the shadow box: when you opened a Log Entry to “view,” there wasn’t much more you could do than view or print. Now you can easily edit it from right there.
- Pre-populate fields correctly when I add a Contact after a search: on my weekly webinars I noticed that if I did a search for a Contact that doesn’t exist, like searching for “Fiiiiiirst Naaaaame,” I would click “add Contact” and then it would enter it in all lower-case. This was a pain because I’d have to change the first letter to upper-chase each time. Bleh. This is now fixed. Another really small enhancement, but you can see the level of detail we’re going for.
- New interface on import contacts from file: We spent a lot of time cleaning this up and making it more intuitive. It’s still not the most intuitive thing in the world, but it’s getting closer.
- Bug with payments of one year with Paypal: we had a problem with people who upgraded for one year on Paypal… the system wasn’t recognizing the upgrade and they sometimes emailed us (before we could manually upgrade them) asking “WHAT THE HECK?” This was an issue of trust… if you pay us money, and you don’t get upgraded, what else won’t work?? Fixing this non-high-profile bug allows you to trust us more.
- Minor wordings and change of tool tips throughout the system: when you mouse over things, we cleaned up the little messages you see.
Have things you would like to see? Let us know!
The new “Action Item Notifier” is an awesome update.
Had I not had SO many action items show up for me, I might have had more time to comment the first day I noticed it, which was right before it was announced to look at it!
Keep up the great work, Jason and Team…. In support of your continued success! Jane
Thank you Jane! I am getting a lot of comments and email about it … why did we wait so long??