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)

Today is a big day for us. A few hours ago we pushed quite a few changes to Goplan which we’re really excited about - here’s what’s new:

Calendar: The calendar now includes a weekly view in addition to the existing Monthly view, which makes it much easier to plan things out on a week-by-week basis. The new view (available on the Calendar sidebar) also includes the javascript goodness you were used to in the monthly view, like clicking and dragging to create new events. Oh, and here’s something you might not know. On text fields that take dates, you can use real text like “tomorrow” or “next saturday” or “two weeks from now”. Give that a try, it’s awesome!

Person view: Something quite a lot of people have requested in the past (which makes total sense, by the way), is a way to quickly get a glimpse of the activity from a particular user. That’s the new person view. Anywhere you see someones name or alias, you’ll be able to click through to a page, which lists assigned items (tasks and tickets), latest status updates and latest activity for that particular user.

More RSS feeds: Many of you are using RSS readers to stay on top of project activity. But sometimes, keeping up with the full feed of project activity can be a daunting task, so we added separate feeds for tasks, tickets and discussions - you’ll find them in each sections page, ready for you to subscribe.

More speed: We changed a few things under the hood to improve our caching mechanism (for the techies, we started using a cluster of Memcached servers), which causes the app to be much snappier. We hope you enjoy the extra time you get to actually manage projects :-)

Cosmetic changes: There were quite a few other changes throughout the app, particularly in support of our users who are using Internet Explorer (please consider our recommendation of switching to a browser more ‘up-to-date’ with the latest standards, like Firefox 3 or Safari 4)

Final notes

Good thing about these updates, is that we already have a few new things up our sleeves for the next few weeks, so do keep an eye out for more news. We wouldn’t be updating the application so frequently if all of you weren’t being so prolific at sending in great feedback. We really appreciate all the love we’re getting. Thanks!

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.