In every business and in many other aspects of life, what people resent the most is staying idle. The old saying, “time is money” is quite literal, to say the least, and by staying idle, businesses tend to lose. In a constantly changing world, the race against time is the one thing that never changes. When it comes to business owners, we know how much they value their time, which is exactly why we have one of the best project management softwares out there. What does that have to do with time saving? Our product is designed to help people organise their businesses and to improve collaboration between associates and clients by saving them as much time as possible. By bringing people from all over the world into activeCollab and by keeping their tasks and projects organised, our system allows our customers to focus directly and strictly on work.

As we always look for new ways to improve our product and services, we have recently introduced a new feature within activeCollab that is guaranteed to save our customers even more time. This new functionality is our Auto-Upgrade feature. Before the introduction of this new feature, upgrading to a new version of activeCollab had to have been done in one of two ways; by using the Manager application, or it had to be done manually.

The Manager application has become replaced by the Auto-Upgrade feature itself. The way that the Manager would conduct an upgrade to a newer version of activeCollab is that it would take that new version directly from the activeCollab.com website. Then, it would unpack it and upload the files, one by one through FTP or SFTP. After the upload of those files has been completed, it would begin the installation. The Auto-Upgrade, however, would only take one file between two, much faster servers. It would unpack the file and begin the installation immediately. You can see that the difference between the two methods of upgrading is quite drastic.

Besides using the Manager, upgrading to a newer version of the system could have been done manually.  Manual upgrade meant that the user had to take his or her time to conduct the upgrade by themselves. This meant that precious and productive time would have been spent on simply upgrading to a new version, thus eliminating the possibility to focus on work for the duration of the upgrade period.

With the Auto-Upgrade feature, not only do we manage to save our customers time, but we simultaneously save them effort as well. Now, in order to upgrade to a new version of the activeCollab system, you will only need a few clicks and a few seconds of waiting! By simply clicking on the Administration icon, you will see if you have the latest version of activeCollab installed. Here, in the Administration window, the latest version will be displayed, and a button to upgrade to it, if you haven’t done so already. If your system is running in the latest version, the button will be in green, otherwise, the upgrade button will be red. In a few simple steps, you will be working in the latest version of activeCollab, and with practically no effort, you can continue on about your daily tasks.

Besides time saving, what the Auto-Upgrade feature enables us to do is to introduce more frequent releases. This means that we can release one or two new versions of activeCollab per week and by simply clicking on the upgrade button, you always stay up to date on the latest version of the program. By doing this, new features and fixes would be available more frequently to our customers, eliminating problems and bugs, and making your activeCollab setup even more efficient than before.

Friday – the best day of the work-week, by far! We look forward to Fridays throughout the whole week, and when it finally arrives, do we really want to work? The answer is: “Yes!”

I know that we all feel the same and just want the weekend to begin, but just think about it: if we leave Friday’s workload untouched, we will have more to do and a harder time getting to work the following week.

At our office, Fridays seem a bit special, to say the least. Everyone is more relaxed, wants to have more fun, but we all still still finish all of the required tasks, so it’s quite bussy as well. I do believe that we have some sort of an unwritten and an unplanned Friday “code” and although it is not written, nor is it enforced, everyone tends to keep by it. Here are some things that we do on Fridays:

• we always finish a task and never leave it for the following Monday. This way, we do not have the weekend to worry about what will be waiting for us when we get back into the office.
• another “rule” on the code is to not start a task with a client, if you cannot complete it the same day. This ensures us that our clients will get the fastest and the most efficient service that we can provide for them. If, for example, we were to start working on a ticket on Friday, and we left the workplace, our clients would have to wait two full days to get what they need! Instead, we like to complete such tickets as quickly and as efficiently as we can. If this is a massive issue, there are two things that we do – either check our email during the weekend (if we know how to help), or ask the customer if they can hold on until Monday, so that their issue gets resolved first thing in the morning.
• Fridays are great to plan what you are going to be working on, the following week. By doing this, you will show up on Monday and you will know exactly what to do and when to do it. Yes, I know, Mondays are hard enough to just get out of bed, but if we are already talking about priorities, by planning your next week on a Friday, these priorities will be handled with ease.

This is what our Fridays usually look like. Do you have a certain routine that you keep by on Fridays? How do you usually conclude your work-week?

We hope to hear some good suggestions, so feel free to share your experience.

Enjoy your weekend, and see you on Monday!

We all know that after a job is completed, it is not really over until someone receives a paycheque. In essence, we all work for the payday. Nothing is more satisfying than a Client who delivers the money efficiently and right on time, every time. However, this is not always the case. It can be quite annoying to a company when having to chase customers with overdue invoices.

It might have been a holiday, or the money did not go through to an account. There could be a number of reasons why the paycheque was not received and the invoice remained overdue. A reminder to the customer is not essentially needed right away (within half a day of a payment due), but after a day or two, if the money is still not on the account, someone needs to be notified. This way, you get paid quicker, and you learn the reason why your money was late.

In activeCollab, you are now given the option to send reminders for overdue invoices. You are free to customise the duration period between these emails and the message within the email. There should be only 1 to 4 of these reminder emails, seeing that after the first one, a payment should already be made. You can also configure these emails to start off as just reminders, to slowly progress over the next few days.

Here is an example of how and what you can do with overdue invoices. The first reminder email should be mild, and just like it states, it should be a reminder that the invoice is due. It is not a crime to tell a customer that their payment is late. In fact, it might even be helpful, just in case the customer forgot all about it. The second email can be sent a week after the invoice should have been paid. In this email, you should restate that the payment is late, and nudge the customer to proceed with the payment as soon as possible. A few days later, another email should be send. This email, however, should be more pressing and urgent. The final email should state that if an invoice does not go through, that you will be going the extra step and escalating the situation. By this point, if the invoice was still not received, I would personally begin calling the client. This process is more personal and it involves more effort, but it is the client’s responsibility to come through with the payment.

As stated above, there is nothing  more frustrating to a company than having to remind someone of an overdue invoice. It is a real hassle to keep calling customers for them to pay you. A lot of people simply try to escape this process, but by ignoring it, they become at a loss for their own money. activeCollab helps you by completely automating this setup. This means that the system can send reminders even when you are sleeping!

It is said that exposure to nature improves physical and mental health. Yet many of us live and work in urban centres, away from any nature. We spend every day in the so called, concrete jungle, where any traces of green have long disappeared. Why am I saying all of this? It is quite simple; this phenomenon is especially clear to us when the snow has melted and when the trees regain their leaves. Correct! Spring is finally here, and we, at A51, are starting to feel its presence all around us.

We are quite lucky, to be honest, since we have two balconies in our office. Escaping the office environment is very relaxing for us, yet we still retain the same working attitude. Due this fact, on our balconies, we have a small table and a few chairs. Anyone that is willing, can go sit, take out their laptop, and continue with their daily tasks with the sun in their backs. And do not think that we are slacking! No, no, no. By working outside, we actually improve our emotional stability and our extend our attention span. The sun gives us over 90 percent of our Vitamin D, which is the essential vitamin for staying happy. And by being happy, we, at the office, increase our productivity and retain our positive attitude! 

My office, in particular, has been blessed with one of the balconies and I share this office with two of my coworkers, Ivana and Marko. Come to think about it, it seems that the three of us have developed an every day ritual. The first person in the office would open the balcony door, put on some music and sit back and work. Not only does this lift our spirits on busy days, but we actually get more work done than we initially plan. Our office has become the go-to “hang out spot”, since most of our colleagues make their way to our office at least once a day. This creates a friendly environment and brings our team closer together. I do wonder if this “hang out spot” would exist if we did not have a path to the outside world, straight from our office.

Nevertheless, it is quite safe to say that working outdoors, even if it is just on the balcony, lifts our spirits and pushes us on throughout the day. We enjoy the days a lot more and, believe it or not, we have increased our productivity noticeably, since spring came knocking on our door. We, at A51, are super busy this season, with the release of our new system and with planning of a whole new set of projects, and if it wasn’t for the friendly, relaxed environment in the sun, we would have a difficult time completing the tasks that are ahead of us.

Did you know that on average, a human will spend up to a year in his lifetime looking for misplaced objects? It is an amazing fact which makes you wonder; if you had not misplaced them, how would you have used that lost year? Similarly enough, in the business world, how much time would you have used productively if you had kept track of everything you did? Time management is one of the most important skills that you can possess in every aspect of your life.

In the business world, managing your time will help you with your priorities. Organisation means that you will keep a track of the things that you need to complete. By managing your time, you will see which things you will have to do first. That way, you will get the important tasks out of the way immediately. Most importantly, managing your time will allow you to focus more on quality work. By knowing what to work on and how much time you will spend working on it, you will be more focused. Better focus means better quality, and you will immediately see a drastic change in your performance.

We all have things at work that we dread doing. They may be difficult, they make take up a lot of time, or they may simply be boring! It does not matter! These tasks still need to be completed. By writing them down, you will be forced to do them. Managing your time will put a time limit on those tasks. You will not spend more time working on them than what you have initially planned. This way, even if they are not completed, rescheduling them for a later time will still enable you to keep on track of what you have missed.

While being on the topic of keeping yourself on track, there is nothing better that time management can do for you. SImply put, time management keeps you on track. By stating your plans and goals and by estimating your time, staying within this time limit becomes a more reasonable option. Of course, certain things do come up, However, by increasing your time management skills, you will be able to organise all the overdue hours with ease.

To finish it up, you have to realise that time is something that no one can control, and no matter what you do, you cannot get it back. Due to this fact, constant improvising in your daily schedule may be necessary, and fussing over overdue goals will not make a difference. Therefore, you will always need to have a positive attitude. Time management will help you discipline yourself and it cannot do you any harm. Every business focuses on deadlines, and so does your everyday personal life. Time management is a part of everyone’s life cycle. The only difference is that those who are aware of it and those who organise their time will feel its benefits, while the ones that don’t will suffer its consequences.

Two heads are better than one, and three are better than two. Working alone does have its perks, but let’s face it, when working in a team, ideas and knowledge get shared, productivity increases and work becomes more interesting.

Some people prefer to work alone, mainly due to the fact that they want their own ideas to be recognized and by fearing that their contribution will not be used. However, working in a team does not foreshadow the individual. By collaborating with others, all team members work together. At the same time,each individual is allowed to have their interests heard and used. Every individual brings to the table their own knowledge and expertise. By putting these different skills together, the team becomes an unstoppable force, even when faced with adversity. Due to this fact, many companies around the world promote collaboration among their employees. Collaboration produces an increase in profitability and project goals become much larger. This means that the business capabilities expand, thus promoting future expansion.

By promoting a diverse working environment, collaboration between team members brings to the table many different ideas.  Having many ideas in one place can be of great use to any company. Brainstorming and agreeing on the final outcome makes for a wider range of options to be used, and errors along the way become fixed quickly and easily. To make teamwork even more productive, the use of collaboration tools has become very popular over the years. These tools come in handy especially within companies who work with clients in different time zones.

Without collaboration tools and programs, working in a team who is scattered across the world would become a real problem. Time and distance would prove to be an escalating issue. However, with the introduction of these collaboration systems, new working environments and virtual offices are being created, and they can be used anywhere, at any given time. Although face to face communication is still the desired form of collaboration, collaboration tools try to connect people who do not have the option to be physically present. They allow for the sharing of information, team organisation and individual contribution, which when put together, create the perfect working environment.

Along with these benefits, collaboration tools allow for one of the most important advantages in the business world today; outsourcing. By outsourcing, companies are not limited to work with people who live in their surrounding areas. They can employ individuals who are living half a world away. Companies can have a team of employees who are all residing in different countries by bringing them into their virtual office. This fosters an environment that makes it seem as if they are all in the same room, at the same time. Collaboration programs create more jobs and get current jobs completed in a faster and a more efficient manner. Today, over 43% of IT companies outsource, and over 80% of those companies have recorded better productivity rates since they began to use outsourcing as a means of employment. Outsourcing continues to grow rapidly, and eventually, it might become the leading form of employment within larger corporations. Therefore, collaboration tools will become more important than ever before. However, as the business world constantly changes, the said programs and systems will have to adapt to the needs of their users and the new working environments in order to survive.

I was always aware of the fact that time management is crucial when going on about your daily activities. Going to university also forced me to organise my tasks so that I would not fall behind or forget to hand in an assignment. Little did I know that I had it way easier back in those days.

Entering the working field has opened my eyes to a whole new world of project management. I have recently acquired an employment position here in A51, a company that has created one of the most efficient project management and collaboration softwares out there. Looking back at the handful of projects and assignments that I had to work on back in university seems a little humorous when I look at the amounts of work that my coworkers and our clients have to do. Now, more than before, I see time and project management and collaboration with your fellow teammates to be one of the most important things you can have.

The product that my coworkers and I work on is called activeCollab. To simply put it, it is a virtual office that allows you to work with people all around the world, and on top of that, it organises all of your projects and tasks in a way that you see fit. It should come of no surprise, then, that we at A51 use activeCollab, and to be quite honest, we would have it no other way. My first day at work was, well how should I put it, a bit intimidating, to say the least. Having to complete many projects, I did not know where to start, or even where to end! With around 20 people on our team (and growing), doing just as much work, organising our tasks and working tightly together would be pure chaos if we did not use activeCollab. Sitting back in my chair and reminiscing about the university years, staying on track would have been the least of my concerns if I had activeCollab at my disposal.

Getting straight to the point: by us using activeCollab, our customers can rest assured that they are getting one of the best, if not the best, task management and collaboration tools out there. In a world where businesses grow rapidly by acquiring partners and associates, staying on track can be one of the hardest tasks to complete. We are aware of this fact which is why we, at A51, want to help every business out there with the most important part of their work; organisation.

Programmer: an organism that turns coffee into a software – Author Unkonwn

There are a lot of stories and urban myths that programmers are run by a coffee. It seems like they are drinking a lot of this delicious drink and that it helps them get into “the Zone”. There are also large number of discussions on this subjects all over the web.

I can’t really speak for everyone, but I know for sure that coffee is a No1 beverage in our company. In A51 coffee is drink to help us wake up and start our work day, to make us more focus on the job we’re doing, to make a break, or to refresh us while we’re discussing about new projects. It is something that is always available and always around.

We have mentioned before that we’re moving into our new office. We have moved but we’re not completely settled yet. Our workplaces are equipped and fully functional, but there’s still some polishing left to be done in other rooms in the office. When everything is set, we will be ready to show you how it all looks like, but we won’t reveal anything until then.

One of the first things that was installed in our new office was an espresso maker. This was completely reasonable decision, because our programmers are run by coffee, for sure.

This machine can make a cup of espresso from the freshly grounded coffee beans, make a cream out of your milk, or just supply you with the hot water for your tea or instant coffee. So there’s something for everybody.

Since programmers are not really famous as a good coffee makers, our guys have decided to brake this prejudice and they are all give they best to make a perfect cup of espresso. They are trying to find an optimal measure for the coffee, cream the milk on exactly the right level… It’s a real pleasure to watch them and enjoy in the coffee they are making.

Now that we have all we need – new spacious, nice and comfortable office and lots and lots of coffee you can rest assured that we’re doing our job the best we can. And if you’re in the neighborhood feel free to drop by for a cup of fresh coffee.

In December 2010 we have decided to extend range of our support tools and introduced Chat as one of the means that you can use to get in touch with us. What started as a pilot project has become great experience and really useful support helper.

How to find our chat? Simply visit www.activeCollab.com and click the Chat link in the main toolbar. Myself and Dusan are here to help you out with all activeCollab related questions, issues and dilemmas that you may have.

At the beginning the idea was to use chat only for the pre-sale questions, but then pople started asking some simple things about activeCollab functionality that we could easily answer, and we have decided to help anyone we can. When we came across a more complex issue we simply direct people to our help desk where support programmers will help them out. In this way we help people find a solution much faster. They know that there is someone here who will listen to them and help them find a solution, one way or another.

By being in close contact with our current and future customers on a daily basis we have learned a lot about the way they are using activeCollab and the things that are the most useful, or confusing to people when they meet the system for the first time. It really helps, because based on that feedback we can improve the product. Such information can come in handy for designing some new features, or improving existing ones – because you know exactly what people are asking for.We have also get some ideas on how to improve our website, write new articles in the Documentation section, etc.  We have even created a whole new set of articles – activeCollab Tutorials, based on some of the most frequent questions we get on the chat.

Besides solving problems quickly and receiving really valuable feedback, the best benefit that we have from the chat is a happy customer. It is really great when you know that people are leaving chat with the :) We do our best to be open and help resolve all the problems that customers may be experiencing. After a while it has really become an enjoying task. Besides, it’s also a great opportunity to get to know our customers better.

So far, the whole chat experience was great. We have all learned a lot and get so much positive energy from all the people we talked to. If you wish to talk to us about your business and how activeCollab can help we’re here, so feel free to get in touch.

We all know that small things can often make a big difference in our lives and business. This is a story about how that rule works in our case.

Some of you might have noticed the support request submission form on activeCollab website. Here’s how it looks like:

I need to mention that this is not something that we came up with – this is a request description box that HelpSpot offers to it’s users to be posted on the contact page.

It is not a secret that we are using HelpSpot to manage our customer support, and this type of contact form is one of the thing that turns out to be surprisingly useful to us. It makes communication with our users much, much easier.

When you are in trouble only thing that matters to you is to find a way out, you don’t think much how did you get here in a first place. It’s a similar situation with customer support requests. When people are asking for help they often don’t know what exactly went wrong and which part of the application they don’t understand. They just wish to see it working in a way they want. Because of that it is can be really hard for us to help people without knowing what really happened with their activeCollab.

This is where the contact form on the support page helps the most! Such type of contact form may seem confusing to people at first sight, but they still go along with it. In most cases users are trying to fill out all the fields and to give us all the answers. These answers are the key of figuring out where the problem is. We can reconstruct their actions and find out what they wanted to accomplish. The rest is easy – we simply give them instructions on how to set the thing properly, or which is the feature that they should use, or… Anyway, we manage to help people effectively and quickly.

Communication, as one of the most important aspects of quality customer support, is something that we have to be good at. People often don’t know what are all the info they need to provide us to help them solve the problem and that’s why they can’t say everything in a simple email message. And when we don’t have all the info we have to ask, and by the time we find out all relevant facts there are already 4 to 6 emails in the inbox that haven’t solved the real issue. In most cases we have managed to avoid this situation by using a different support request submission form.

When problems are solved with a first reply email, you can get:

• a happy customer
• a lot of positive feedback
• less time spend working on support requests (we all work on many different things in A51, but customer support is our top priority, and as soon as we clear our inbox, we can devote to other tasks)

It’s a win-win situation for all parties! And all because of a small and insignificant thin, such as custom contact form.