Etelos Projects™: Customer-driven innovation

by Don Campbell
published on: 11/15/07 10:24:43 AM

Recently we released Etelos Projects for Google Apps, which is an on-demand application that allows you to manage and collaborate on your projects in our web interface and using iGoogle or Google Apps as an interface.

Thanks to those of you who tried out our app and took the time to review Etelos Projects, and blog about us. This kind of thoughtful and objective feedback helps us make our product better. This is our very first release of Etelos Projects, and we believe in continuous improvement of our on-demand apps. Since Etelos Projects is brand new, we realize we have a lot of areas to improve on. We use it internally for all of our projects (we're currently managing more than 40 of them) but fresh, objective feedback is huge for us. Our philosophy is very Web 2.0 centric: release early, get feedback, iterate, get feedback, iterate and continue the process.

In the spirit of that, we've made several changes already based on our initial round of feedback, and have more in the works.

Improved Signup Process
Some of the folks who tried it out found the process was cumbersome. Since we're a Marketplace that contains many applications, we ask users to create a userid/password for the Marketplace, and then they get a new one for each app. Well, from the user perspective, all they care about is getting a free Project Management app. So we've streamlined this process in several ways:

• Once you sign up, you get an email with a link that takes you directly to the provisioning of your app. You can then change your userid/password if you want, and get started very quickly.
• If you like the free version and want to upgrade to a paid version to manage more projects, the upgrade process is much more seamless now. We take you directly to the upgrade page, and once completed you can start adding new projects immediately.

User Experience and Discoverability of Features
There are a number of cool features that people didn't know existed. We need to work on the discovery of these features so they are more obvious and easier to find. For example, Tasks can be edited "inline" right from the Task view or Timeline view without having to open them up.

You can also drag and drop them to reorder them.

Improved Task Quick-Add user interface. Quickly adding tasks to a project was clunky, so we changed the style and I think it is a lot smoother to use now.

Many people didn't see these features, so we're working on ways to call attention to them in the interface.

The entire user interface needs improvement; we realize that and plan to improve on it. We're also talking to some partners with good design experience to take over and improve the app. In case you are interested, this FAQ shows some screen shots and descriptions of the features such as the Time Recorder, Task Importing and Exporting, Archiving Projects, File Management and more.

Google Apps Integration
And based on the great feedback we've received, we're planning some additional changes that will be rolling out in the near future. Many like what we had done with our Google Apps integration, but want more.

• Some asked for a "specialized front-end for Google Apps services." We share this vision, but are somewhat limited by the current Google APIs. For example, there is no way to enumerate a list of Google Docs today (there is for Spreadsheets though...) They are improving all the time, and we are working closely to implement new APIs as they come available.
• For example, we've added some nice integration with Google Calendar that allows you to to schedule a meeting directly from your Project Summary screen.
• We've also got some nice "collaboration" capabilities. It's very easy to invite co-workers or friends to your project by email address, using GMail if you want. This easy collaboration on projects and tasks is one of our strong areas according to our users.

So thanks again for your review and feedback, it's great and we're making our product better because of it! We consider it a blessing whenever someone takes the time to write down their feedback on our product.

What Do You Think?

If you have any suggestions for us, leave comments here or on Etelos Ideas - we'd love to hear them!