Our today’s post is an answer to the most popular question we have received from you so far, the one outlined in the title. Today I’d like to answer it and share our plans for the future releases. Our development process is moving along in high gear. During the recent 3 months we’ve implemented both noticeable updates (multiple languages support, backup restore utility, AMI) and minor functionality improvements. Till the end of this year we’ve scheduled two releases. So, what can you expect from them?
Interim Mid-November release
The most interesting updates are as follows:
- Branded portal URL. Have you ever wanted to customize your portal URL to look like http://mycompany.com ? It will be possible to edit your portal address whatever you like.
- Basecamp import. This will allow you to make a seamless move to TeamLab if you are not at all happy with basecamp service.
- Notifications via IM. You will be able to customize your portal notifications delivery method and get notified via instant messenger or email.
- Time tracking. It will be an optional feature within Projects in case you need to track employees work time and get specific reports.
Apart from that there will be several other improvements that will simplify your daily work with the portal. The largest number of them will be introduced within the Projects module:
- Categories, tags and sorting will help easily organize your projects, tasks & files.
- Enhanced reporting functionality will provide you with a greater level of work progress analysis.
Major December release
It’s by no coincidence that the release is called Major. We are going to introduce a totally new as well as some long-awaited functionality. And here is a quick overview:
- Documents. A separate module allowing you to store, share and co-author files. Also, it will be possible to create and edit text files right from your portal. There will be NO Google Docs integration. It’s not because we don’t like Google
We are using our own technology based on virtualization. - Group Chat. Conference functionality will be finally available to you. It’s been requested by many of you and I think further comments here are unnecessary
In the end, I would like to anticipate possible questions regarding pricing. All these new features will remain free for you. Paid functionality will be introduced in the Q1’11. And there will be a separate post about our monetization strategy.
So, I hope, now you have a pretty clear vision of our plans for the nearest future. Do they meet your expectations? Share your opinion! You know we take your feedback seriously when improving TeamLab 😉
Update: Since it became necessary to test out the new technology more thoroughly, we’ve decided to postpone our major release till the beginning of the new year. We will post a message in our blog when the new functionality goes live. Please follow our news!
I’m really, really impressed with what I’ve seen so far.
One thing that would make Teamlab an even more killer app for me is “task lists”.
Task lists exist independent of projects and can be copied into any project.
I’ve used both Basecamp and Activecollab in the past, and in my opinion, this feature is one thing they did right.
– Darrel Hawes
Darrel, thanks!
We are thinking about the possibility to add tasks independently from projects. And this feature very likely will be implemented in the H1’11.
Hi we’re using teamlab for an non Profit Organization. Teamlab is great for us. Missing Functions are:
1. GroupCalendars or even Calendars. http://phpicalendar.net/ or smth. like that.
2. iPhone APP like that for Huddle – I even would pay 5 EUR for this APP I think this would be a big add-on
Are there any Plans for that?
Best regards Udoy
Sure, we have plans to implement a calendar and mobile app, but it’s for the next year.
iPhone and Android apps would be awesome. I would pay 20€ for an iPhone app without thinking twice if it works properly.
Our organization is non-profit (for-loss more precisely) and we are looking for teamwork platform and this seems like a winner.
Virtual Bookshelf for documents would be nice since we have lots of data in PDF, ODF, DOC and XLS formats that we need to access all the time. Linking the files in the bookshelf to projects makes more sense than filing them under different projects. It’s just easier to see them all in one place.
Hello Matti,
We plan to introduce API for iPhone apps in the first quarter of 2011. As to your second issue, it will be possible to share and edit most document files in our new Files/Documents module that is also due in the first quarter of 2011.
I’m w/ Darrel on the task list feature. In addition, where is the sub-task feature? You’ve already implementing categories, tags. Please please please consider implementing sub-task feature. You only have to have 1 and 2 level of sub-task for it to be useful, IMHO. Thanks for the great software so far.
Thanks for the request, we already have sub-task feature in our wish-list. And we will think of implementing it in the next year.
sub-task – аdd my 5 kopek to that wish!
+1 Subtask in a must have feature. 😉
Thanks TeamLab for the great project! We are particularly pleased for introduce a group chat.
Svetlana, do you plan add notifications by RSS? Sometimes it is more easy-to-use.
RSS functionality is already available. Though RSS icon isn’t displayed on the portal pages, you can find it in FF, Opera, IE browsers’ address bar. You can easily subscribe to the desired news feed by clicking on that icon and choosing an appropriate feed.
Chrome doesn’t support RSS feeds subscription by default. You need to install an extension: Chrome RSS Reader.
Sorry, but I can’t see RSS icon in the address bar (not in IE and FF)
http://www.onlinedisk.ru/view/540771
Sorry, it’s my mistake. The thing is that in our company we are always using the most recent TeamLab version for the testing purpose. And RSS functionality is already in there. For all our users RSS will be available in the nearest release in November. Once again, sorry for the confusion.
That’s all right! Thank you for your replies. It’s a good news for me too!
The RSS Feed will be implemented in open-source version too?
wow
I will promote this site/engine to my company management, we still use ugly e-mail for project coordination
What about new features:
– forum hierarchical (tree) view ?
– sub-tasks?
– access limitations?
– thinner view (no extra buttons/images)?
Amazing, tree-veiw is implemented for project and task discussions, but not for the community forum…
Tree-view is implemented only in the comments section. We currently don’t have plans to implement hierarchical (tree) view for the forum discussions. But added to our wish-list.
Yeah, there definitely should be an option to specify dates to tasks, not only through milestones…
Thanks for the suggestion. We’ll take this to consideration for the future releases.
Access restrictions will be implemented in the Q1’2011.
As regard thinner view, could you please describe this feature in more details?
I like what I see of TeamLab. You guys are doing a great job. What I don’t see (and I accept I may be missing it) is a way to categorize files and discussions into categories (e.g. phases of a project, different departments, etc). I’m also wondering if it’s possible to substitute the term “Department” with another one (e.g. ‘group’, ‘client’, ‘organization’, etc).
Really… Love what I’m seeing. Keep up the great work!
Talib, thanks for the nice words! Project categories will be implemented in the mid-Novemeber release.
Customization of the portal user interface and terminology will be introduced the next year.
Hi,
this type of customization will be implemented in open-source version as well?
Hi Ananka, sure all updates will be available in the open source version as well! 😉
Hi, we’re having trouble uploading Excel files. No problems with .doc, .pdf. etc, just .xls files. Could this be a bug, or are we doing something wrong?
Best regards,
Stuart
Hello Stuart,
Could you please check whether your excel files have umlauts or similar characters used in the name of the file? Currently there is a minor bug, which prevents from uploading files with such symbols in the file name. In case you don’t use umlauts in your file name, please let us know what exactly happens when you try uploading XLS files? Any error messages?
Stuart,
Try switching from the Flash uploader to the HTML uploader. Sometimes I need to swtich between the two in order to upload certain files to my portal.
Hope that helps!
To Shawn and Victoria,
Thanks for the quick response! Fact is, the problem seems to be at our end, not yours – it only affects one user. Anyway, we’ll try your suggestions and get back to you if necessary.
Best regards,
Stuart
Stuart, you are also welcome to contact us at support@teamlab.com if any questions or problems arise!
Hi, idea here:
I believe it would be great if you would change the “Employees” term with “Co-Creators” or “Collaborators”
Thank you
Hello, Luca!
Thanks for this suggestion. We will forward it to our developers, so that they could consider implementing this in the future
Great suggestion, Luca!
Great suggestion. To make it suitable to everyones wishes, you could add an option to the settings page where you can rename ‘projects’, ‘milestones’, ‘departments’ and ’employees’. This would be a great improvement!
Hi Niels, the option for customizing tabs (and other customization possibilities) is now definitely on our roadmap as well! 😉
Great Job !!! I’m changing from my old collaboration engine !!! The only thing I’m missing is inbound mail for forums, blogs posts and comments.
Hello Bruno,
We are glad to hear you like TeamLab!
Could you please clarify whether you meant that you need a feature to be able to reply to comments, blog posts and forum discussion via e-mail (without necessary accessing the portal)?
Hi Victoria,
Basically, one would be able to “reply” to a blog post (that was received by e-mail) for example, and his comment would be “added” to the respective blog.
Bruno, thanks for explaining. We will forward this suggestion to our developers for sure. In the meantime, we can advise you to subscribe to comments, blog and forum posts that interest you, so that you could receive e-mail notifications when a new comment or post is published.
Currently our team uses google groups and many older people receive daily digest of discussions every day. Many people also do not have iPhones but instead Nokia E-series phones, so web browsing on the go is out the realistic capabilities.
Those two groups (who make up the majority) would prefer to not log in to our TeamLab portal just to start or take part in a discussion.
Having somekind of inbox for whole team in TeamLab would solve the issue. It would also enable newsletter subscriptions that are important for us.
How it might look
https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B8P2wWeYrKtSZTRlZjg4MjEtY2U5YS00MWQ3LWEwZTAtNDQ0N2EzNTM4Mjg3&sort=name&layout=list&num=50
Hello Matti,
Thank you for the feedback. We will definitely forward your suggestion regarding discussions to our developers. However, could you please clarify what exactly did you mean by “inbox for whole team”? Also, unfortunately, we failed to open your link – please check that it’s privacy settings are adjusted accordingly for us to see the data.
Will “document collaboration” be available in the OpenSource version for download?
Yes, Guillaume, there will be an open source version of that TeamLab release as well!
Great!
I was lucky to find this http://www.teamlab.com web site. You truly can write and teach and inspire. Keep writing – I’ll keep reading.
+1 sub-task feature is indeed a must have feature. 😉
I’m also keen for an updated roadmap. In particular, it would be great to know when email integration will be available!
Grant, we’re working on email integration now but its release date is not determined yet. Currently our prime priority is CRM module that comes the next month.
Matchless topic, it is very interesting to me )))) tHANKS http://www.teamlab.com tEAM
Well, I’m glad I found you. I think it’s a great idea to have no user restrictions. Compared with other products, this way you allow a good testing phase, and for starting groups, like mine, it is really useful (to grow, we need a functional tool, and when grown and with money, we can upgrade secondary needs).
Our requests:
Calendar: We would like a way to make a timeline (maybe time line view) in the calendar for the next two years (please year view!), and we don’t have always hour or day, just month…
Another wish-area: We would like to have integration with iCal. Maybe a back-syncro with googleCal?
thnx a lot for this great tool, you are giving us a big help
Andres
Andres, thanks for your feedback. We’ll consider your request about the “year” view mode. Concerning the integration with iCal and Google Calendar, they will be synced with TeamLab Calendar. This option will be available in the spring.
Few of the updates that are increasing your modules.
1) Possiblities to add modules/Extention by the third party. This will call on huge think pool.
2) Filters like dotproject. http://www.dotproject.net and status of the project. Proposed, Planning, Execution, Drop, Halt, Win.
3) File attachement in Discussions/Comments. Again Status could be updated like Active/Close. Like in Discussion, you could also add Ticket. technically, Ticket is Discussion with Ticket Number, specified line of task and describing specific issue/BUG [ :)]. May add Priority, and ‘accept’ feature, like in task.
4) Space Optimization in Dashboard. [I really like your dashboard.] like in VtigerCRM.
5) File Search could locate Files from multiple projects. [This is very very very important for the Cross Functional Team.]
I really like your time adding feature, very user interactive. your design is also good.[GUI].
Harshal, thanks for your feedback. Good news is that some of your wishes will be realized in the next TeamLab release. So keep track of our news 😉