A couple of hours ago we pushed the new dashboard to the live servers, so if you haven’t seen it yet, login to your company space and have a look. The new dashboard is an improvement over the last one, by removing the things you don’t need (People and Projects, that are still available on the sidebar) and focusing on the things that do matter - what you have to do and what else is going on with your company.

We’re not done with the dashboard yet (we’re firm believers that no product is ever “done”, though). We’ve been getting great feedback as to how you and your clients would like to use the dashboard, and we’re going to make some extra changes to it to include some of those suggestions. We’ll keep you updated right here on the blog.

We’re really happy about Goplan. We think it’s a beautiful product, and we’re delighted about the feedback we’ve been getting from you guys - you being happy makes us happier. Still, there was this one screen we weren’t that thrilled about. On top of that, it is one of the most critical pieces of the application - your company dashboard. Yesterday, while thinking about the dashboard problem, I tweeted:

Quite a lot of people believe that making a product better means adding new stuff. While that is sometimes the case, sometimes you can make something better by simplifying (Maeda’s laws of simplicity come to mind immediately - read that book if you haven’t yet). That’s what we’re doing with the dashboard redesign. The new dashboard will have less stuff than the current one does, and the thinking behind that move is quite simple. A screenshot first:

There are two main things you need from your dashboard on Goplan. You need to know what’s going on in your company - which is what the activity feed is -, and you need to know what you need to do - which is what the todolist bit is. The old project and people lists are gone. How often do you need to use those? Companies don’t add new projects or people every day, so they’re basically just UI pollution. Off they go.

A penny for your thoughts?

We’re still not done with the dashboard redesign. We’re constantly thinking about it, and before we launch the update, there will likely be more changes to both its design and functionality. But we do want your opinion. What do *you* need off of your Goplan dashboard? If you have any comments, feel free to send them in, either by commenting on this post, or sending us an email at our support address. Thanks!

(PS: we’re aiming to launch the dashboard update by early next week)

Good news for people who love development-related news. We just rolled out to the live servers the new version of the Goplan API. This means that developers out there now have the necessary tools and resources to build cool stuff on top of our data and functionality. The API documentation is available at goplanapp.com/api.

We’re also launching a contest for developers who want to build apps with the API. It runs until September 30 and gives you the chance of winning a full year of our Unlimited plan. There’s a bunch of details about the contest on the contest page, so check it out here if you’re interested. We can’t wait to see what you guys come up with.

Oh, and here’s something for your OSX Dashboard

As a simple example of the kind of stuff developers will be able to build with our API, we built (and are now releasing as open source) a timetracking dashboard widget for your mac. It lets you use our timetracking functionality remotely, so definitely give it a go if you’re interested. If you’re a developer, feel free to look under the hood for inspiration on how you can use the Goplan API. You can download and install this widget by clicking here. Have fun! And do submit bug reports if you find any.

As you may know if you’ve been following our recent posts, we’ve been working (first in secret, now not so much) on bringing Time Tracking into Goplan. And while we’ve kept moderately quiet about it until now, we have good news. Time Tracking on Goplan 2 is launching next monday, and more importantly, it’s going to be available on all our plans for no added cost.

We’ve been getting huge amounts of feedback since we first launched the new version of Goplan (for which we’re extremely grateful) and one of the most requested features has been Time Tracking. So we’re really excited about finally being able to say “it’s done, and it’s coming on monday”.

A few extra thoughts on features and updates

We’d like to make an extra comment about the way we’re managing Goplan’s development. We’re huge believers that you shouldn’t coast along once you get a number people using your application - something we often see other products do. As such, we have been keeping a backlog of feature requests and improvements that we’ve been tackling week after week (as we’ve mentioned before). We’re really proud of where Goplan is going, and we hope you are too. As always, we welcome your feedback and thoughts on the product or its features. If there’s a reason why we’re working on this product, that reason is you guys.

Time tracking. So essential for project managers and teams around the world that we get several emails a day asking us to implement it. And, as we announced two days ago, we are! Time tracking is coming to Goplan soon, but before we roll out the new functionality we want to make sure it makes sense for the majority of our users. So, we’re collecting feedback from people who typically track time in their projects, either in order to bill clients or just to keep tabs on what is happening and how long each thing takes.

Do you use an application for time tracking, or plain old paper sheets? If you use an application, is it online or a desktop app? Do you do track it in real-time, or create a report every day/week/month? Does your organization have one person who keeps tabs on how long someone takes to do something, or does each person do it for themselves?

We’d love to hear from you. If you have any thoughts or requests on time-tracking, please leave a comment, or send us an email to support at goplanapp.com. Thanks!

Note: Love those wallpapers? We do too! They’re the work of Mike Stimpson, who totally rocks at taking photos of toys. Check his Flickr set for high-resolution versions of these photos.

As some of you might have noticed, we’ve been introducing small updates and changes to Goplan 2 since we launched, mostly based on your (both awesome and very welcome) feedback. Now that things are running smoothly, we’re considering an update schedule moving forward. From now on, we’ll be doing bi-monthly updates to Goplan with new features (or feature updates) as well as the ongoing bug-fixes (should there be any).

Coming June 29: The first of these functionality updates is coming on Monday, the 29th of June, where among other things (for which we don’t want to ruin the surprise already) we’ll be updating our milestone functionality quite a bit, making it easier for project managers to assign tasks to given milestones and manage them effectively. The second of these updates will be coming 2 weeks later, and so on.

We’ll be using this blog more often to tell you about both small and large updates to Goplan 2, as well as share some of the tips and tricks that users much like you have been sending in. Do send us email if you have any feedback, we are extremely happy about everything we’ve been hearing. We hope you’re happy about the product as much as we are. Coming next week: hints on future functionality.

If there’s one thing about the current Goplan that remains similar to the previous version is our payment system, which relies on Paypal. Since we consider Paypal to be - in this case - a bit of a hassle, it makes sense to explain why we have to stick with it for the time being.

As you may know, being a european startup makes it so we can’t use a payment gateway like Authorize.net - like we’ve done in the past for other products whose legal representation is in the US. Truth is payment gateways in europe are subpar, and we’re looking for a solution to this problem. Until we finally find a solution, we have to apologize for having you use Paypal - which means you need an account on their system to have your company on ours. We know that sucks and we hope the product compensates for that bit of a hassle. We’re on this, and hope to have a solution soon.

You were waiting for a definitive date, and here it is. Goplan 2 will be officially launched to the public on May 15. That means that in about 2 weeks you’ll be migrating to a much improved project management solution. We’re very excited about finally being able to show everyone the result of our recent months of work.

In the coming two weeks we’ll be working on a series of videos showcasing the new functionality and some of the hidden features we haven’t mentioned on the blog yet. We’ll also start talking about some of the other exciting things we have lined up for post-release - particularly integrating with other applications and (you may have guessed it) an iPhone application. We’re excited, and we hope you are too! Look for more posts very soon!