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Desktop Widget
Any plans to produce a desktop widget for faster/simpler time entry. I saw some talk of it in 2008, but nothing since. I'm just signing up with Copper. After WAY too many hours and WAY too many failed alternatives, I finally ended up here (where were you guys earlier :).
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The more people who like this idea, the more it gets noticed.
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Thanks Realisedesign, thats an awesome post! You know, you've hit the nail on the head with your comments about the desktop widget, and the main reason why we haven't added one sooner is for the very reason you've outlined, people tend to give up the usage of it. It would need to be used by 80% of the Copper population. Which is what this post is for.
Our focus is on building the best productivity application possible, which requires a few simple rules that MOST of the SAAS providers forget.
Rule 1. That you adhere to the product principals. For us this is offering 20% of the functionality for 80% of the effect.
We'd love to add every feature requested, but we know this doesn't equate to profits. Often we'll hear "you'd be crazy not to add [obscure feature X] like [overbloated SAAS operator Y], you'll be mega-mega-rich if only you just add it".
This new community excites me no end knowing that the community at large can vote up (or down) the requested features.
2. That the product actually MAKES you more productive, rendering itself indispensable. I'm not sure we're there yet, but we're having a massive crack at it!
The other things on the table right now are:
Better email integration
An API and integrations to tools like basecamp, twitter, facebook, freshbooks, xero.
An iphone app that scales to ipad.
Bolstering of budgeting/timetracking/reporting features within Copper.
To answer your other questions, we're one of the longest serving SAAS apps around (we started in 2002), and our continued growth and attention to detail is the one key reason why we believe we'll be around for years to come.
The roadmap is currently an internal process, based on external feedback (email, posts on this forum, usage stats) and the company vision for the product. However, this community here is SPECIFICALLY about being more transparent about what we're thinking of doing, and getting real-time feedback about these decisions. So the more popular this area becomes, the more informed we'll be about which features get the nod in future versions. So I guess that answers your last question too.
In short, you can be sure that so long as guys like you are supporting the product and have a voice, that we'll listen. So thanks.
I’m excited
The company thinks
this is one of the best points
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Hey Ben
Great to hear you're signing up and joining the world of Copper. Welcome aboard!
Where have we been? Good question.. where/how did you find us AND where were you looking prior? Your reply will only help us help others like you come into the Copper fold sooner :)
Re: Desktop Widget - There's a mountain of development priorities at present but leave it with us and we'll see if we can't just squeeze it into the next round or two...
Cheers
dh
I’m Optimistic
The company thinks
this is one of the best points
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Inappropriate?Hey Ben
Great to hear you're signing up and joining the world of Copper. Welcome aboard!
Where have we been? Good question.. where/how did you find us AND where were you looking prior? Your reply will only help us help others like you come into the Copper fold sooner :)
Re: Desktop Widget - There's a mountain of development priorities at present but leave it with us and we'll see if we can't just squeeze it into the next round or two...
Cheers
dh
I’m Optimistic
The company thinks
this is one of the best points
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Inappropriate?I started my journey on Google. I was overwhelmed by the variety of options (at one point in the process I had identified more than 75 similar project managment applications and rated them in a spreadsheet, CRAZY)! I quickly switched from straight googling to looking at Top10Reviews and other such sights to try to key in on other user's favorites. I ran across Copper failry early on, looking at top lists/favorites, but ruled it out initially as my starting priority was toward tracking employee time and Copper didn't have a desktop gadget. Specifically, my concern is that some of my employees are not really sophisticated and the simpler the time entry is, the better. But then, everything started to change.
During my learning process, my expectations evolved as I started to see the benefits of full project management coupled with time tracking (I'll use this information for planning and job costing). As my wish list broadened to include functional project management with time tracking I started to narrow my field of contenders. Many options did not have multi-level tasks (sub-tasks), dependent tasks, or a gantt charting function, or a timer function (big deal for me), or no dates/times/estimate for tasks/jobs (essential for real pm and scheduling), no resource management, and no user permission management. Others did not emply web 2.0 features and had all kinds of popups and such which really hurts user experience. Some just looked bad and were not invting.
Lastly, several had most of what I was looking for, but were WAY too expensive (I don't know who goes for those when an option like Copper is available). I needed something that had a very reasonable starting price that won't get crazy when I expand to 10 or 20 employees logging in to see their scheduled tasks and track their time.
Based on the above criteria and my evolved expectations, I picked Copper VERY QUICKLY the second time I gave it a look. When I was just looking for time tracking, it didn't really shine since it didn't have a simple desktop gadget for my employees. When I considered evertything Copper does have, i was more than willing to sacrifice this one feature to get EVERYTHING else. Copper really does shine, and after spending all of this time looking, I'm glad I gave Copper a closer second look!
I’m excited
3 Comments Add a comment
This is one of the best points
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Great feedback thanks Ben, much appreciated! Any chance you sending over that spreadsheet? dan (at) elementsoftware (dot) com
Also, keep an eye out in the near future for our affiliate/referral program.. Uncle Copper Needs You!
Cheers
dh -
I hear your pain ben, we came across copper through a recommendation in twitter and joined pronto after exploring the vast array of options
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Hey Saul! Good to see you in the community! Help us spread the word and feel free to tweet til ya heats content!! btw our Twitter account = @copperproject Cheers!
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This reply was removed on 02/07/10.
see the change log -
This reply was removed on 02/07/10.
see the change log -
This reply was removed on 02/07/10.
see the change log -
Inappropriate?A time tracking widget for Mac OS is the only thing preventing us from using Copper for our organisation.
Even if there was a solid roadmap with one planned in the future we'd be a fair chance as a starter.
1 Comment Add a comment
This is one of the best points
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Thanks Dale, please get in touch at ben at copperproject dot com. I'd be happy to fill you in on roadmap and work out something.
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Inappropriate?I'd like a desktop timer gadget - that would help. But like anything it needs to be well designed to be useful.
I used to use a program called Standard Time which has some nice features on the desktop timer. One of the biggest surprises for me was how useful the reminder was. If it wasn't recording on the timer would pop up a reminder every 15 mins to start recording time. Whilst this was pretty irritating (you could turn it on/off or configure it) it was actually good news as it forced me to put in a lot more time than I would have remembered normally.
I'm sure there could be a less annoying way to do this than playing a shrill noise every 15 mins!
Also something else that would help would be a dialogue box at shutdown... so if you've not put any time in during that day, when you go to shut the computer down it would ask whether you want to record any time. It's this kind of day to day help with gathering data that makes a massive difference to us scatty creatives in my experience.
I'm also evaluating Copper for use in our business versus Studiometry, Studio Manager, Function Point and Streamtime. All of these are more complete studio managers than Copper, some with varying combinations of CRM, email marketing, estimating and quoting, invoicing, accounts and/or integration with Quickbooks. We're also creating our own spreadsheet to evaluate this - but it's pretty heavy going without knowing each package inside out - which frankly is how you find the icebergs that really derail things. Quickbooks integration is a classic minefield. Quickbooks... which version? The UK version had a different database structure before 2008. It has to handle VAT and all that. Just syncing contacts between Outlook and Quickbooks makes me lose the will to live.
I'm realising that getting all this stuff to work for your business is a massive investment... In which case, we're very interested in knowing two things over and above Copper's current feature list:
1. Is Copper going to carry on being around and supported?
2. What is the roadmap?
3. How much can we contribute to the development (I've already discussed this briefly with Ben).
Thanks for listening!
I’m unsure
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Inappropriate?Thanks Realisedesign, thats an awesome post! You know, you've hit the nail on the head with your comments about the desktop widget, and the main reason why we haven't added one sooner is for the very reason you've outlined, people tend to give up the usage of it. It would need to be used by 80% of the Copper population. Which is what this post is for.
Our focus is on building the best productivity application possible, which requires a few simple rules that MOST of the SAAS providers forget.
Rule 1. That you adhere to the product principals. For us this is offering 20% of the functionality for 80% of the effect.
We'd love to add every feature requested, but we know this doesn't equate to profits. Often we'll hear "you'd be crazy not to add [obscure feature X] like [overbloated SAAS operator Y], you'll be mega-mega-rich if only you just add it".
This new community excites me no end knowing that the community at large can vote up (or down) the requested features.
2. That the product actually MAKES you more productive, rendering itself indispensable. I'm not sure we're there yet, but we're having a massive crack at it!
The other things on the table right now are:
Better email integration
An API and integrations to tools like basecamp, twitter, facebook, freshbooks, xero.
An iphone app that scales to ipad.
Bolstering of budgeting/timetracking/reporting features within Copper.
To answer your other questions, we're one of the longest serving SAAS apps around (we started in 2002), and our continued growth and attention to detail is the one key reason why we believe we'll be around for years to come.
The roadmap is currently an internal process, based on external feedback (email, posts on this forum, usage stats) and the company vision for the product. However, this community here is SPECIFICALLY about being more transparent about what we're thinking of doing, and getting real-time feedback about these decisions. So the more popular this area becomes, the more informed we'll be about which features get the nod in future versions. So I guess that answers your last question too.
In short, you can be sure that so long as guys like you are supporting the product and have a voice, that we'll listen. So thanks.
I’m excited
The company thinks
this is one of the best points
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