We were never completely sure what Google Wave was going to be when it grew up,  but we know that people were excited to use it to collaborate with each other.   Although we do not offer the keystroke by keystroke functionality of Google Wave, WizeHive does have dozens of compelling features that allow groups to effectively work together.   We have a powerful task manager, shared notes and activities, file sharing with version control, tight email integration, and many other features.

To cushion the blow of losing Google Wave, WizeHive will give away more than $250,000 worth of WizeHive software!   Right now!    Simply sign up for a free WizeHive account at http://www.wizehive.com (just fill in the new workspace button and get started) and be one of the first 500 people to send an email to WaveGoodbye@wizehive.com and we’ll turn your 30 day free trial into a WizeHive standard account for one year absolutely free!  (That’s a $588 value!).     Just make sure your email is the one you use when you create your account so we know who you are!

(Offer is good for new accounts only.  If you already have an account please contact us).

We have been independently working on a number of higher-end technologies to help people solve their business workflow and processing issues. Until this version of WizeHive we were doing them somewhat independently of the core WizeHive but with the release of 2.0 we are integrating them together.

If you go to our website you can see that we now have a number of WizeHive “editions” that are focused on:

• Project Management and Collaboration
• Deploying client extranets / portals
• Processing applications for:
  • Foundations
  • Contests
  • Resumes
  • Other funding organizations, like Venture Capital Firms

To do that we have released a number of new, higher end, WizeApps (they are the smaller tabs inside your workspace). There are standard WizeApps and Custom WizeApps. They come bundled with some of the higher end WizeHive editions but you can add any of them to your plan on a “mix and match” basis.

Here is a highlight of each WizeApp now available in the system.

Standard WizeApps available to all users

Recent Activity:   Provides an audit trail in the form of an active feed of everything that happens in the workspace.  Also where you can enter notes into the system and hold discussions around various topics.

Tasks:   Provides an easily storable and configurable place to enter and track tasks.   Tasks can be assigned by person, can have due dates, can include discussions, tags and many other features.

Files: Provides a place where you can create or upload files and then share them with others.   You can also maintain folders to store and organize your file data.   You can lock (check out) files, keep versions, link to google docs and more.

People:  Allows you to see who is in your workspace and invite others to your workspace.    Also allows you to create and set up groups (coming july, 2010).

Calendar:  Provides a calendar view of your tasks and allows you to enter and manage other events.   Provides a data feed to ical compatible calendaring systems.

Links: Provides a place to store links for your workspace.  Includes a bookmarklet you can drop into a browser to capture data easily from the web and send it straight into Wizehive

Data Fields: Provides a data management tool where you can create fields to track and record custom activities for each record in your system.

Resume Review: Provides a screen where you can rate and review resumes coming into the system (if you use this for resume processing).   Allows you to easily sort, rank, review and communicate with candidates.

Questions:  Provides an applet where you can pose questions to the rest of those in your workspace and have them stay open until answered (and completed).

Advanced WizeApps (availalble for an additional fee)

Schedule: (Different from our standard calendar WizeApp):  Allows someone running a recruiting process, contest, or other application process to easily schedule groups of interviews without the need to go back and forth through email.

Actions: Provides a screen where you can send mail merge emails and move data in bulk from one folder to another or one workspace to another.    Typically used in conjunction with the review system for emailing resume candidates or applicants.

Assignment Grid:  Advanced feature that allows you to  assign multiple people to review one application and tracks their progress in an easy to use grid format.

Reports: Allows you to create custom reports from data contained in application forms, internal forms, web forms, notes and activities.  Data can be printed or exported in a spreadsheet format.

Recommendations:  Provides a module for application processes where the applicant submits contact information for people they want to write a recommendation for them.

Privileges: Provides advanced privacy and data viewing management allowing you to hide certain data from certain users or types of users.

3d Tasks:  Provides a grid from where you can easily view and manage complex task lists in an easy to see 3d format

Workflow: Allows you to set up workflow actions, triggers and special “smart tasks” to automate many functions that should occur within the workspace.

Custom WizeApps available as part of an upgraded package

Our custom WizeApps are tools that you can use to build your own WizeApps:

Text Boxes:   Allows you to create as many internal applets as you want with standard text boxes.  Great for sharing instructions about the workspace with co-workers.

Internal Form: Allows you to build as many internal forms and checklists as you like with our drag and drop form builder and deploy inside of your workspaces.

WebForms:   Allows you to build and deploy forms on the web to collect information from third parties.  This may be used to collect contest submissions, customer data (as a sales entry form) and similar.    WebForm data can be routed through WizeHive and collaboratively reviewed, tracked or managed through the system.

Application Form: Allows you to build and deploy forms on the web to collect information from third parties.  This may be used to collect contest submissions, customer data (as a sales entry form) and similar.    WebForm data can be routed through WizeHive and collaboratively reviewed, tracked or managed through the system.

Webforms & Application forms can be customized to present in different languages and can also be configured to take payment via PayPal or via credit card.

We are thrilled to bring you an updated version of WizeHive.    Here is a list of some of the most significant changes.

Interface

The biggest thing you’ll see when you log in is our streamlined interface. Here is a picture of our old interface (top) and our new interface (bottom). And explanation about some of these changes are below the pictures.

First, instead of scrolling workspaces across the top of the screen we display 5. You then have a “more workspaces” drop down. From here you can type a few letters to find a workspace, or look at a list of them. You can also use a feature there to rearrange the order and those 5 that display.

The Wizeapps (smaller tabs) have also been streamlined We think the look is nicer but we also have a more drop down that comes up if you get too many of them and you can select one and/or re-order them in the same way.

You will now also see that next to the workspace box and the pages box there is a dashed arrow that lets you collapse the section.

We did this in part because of another feature discussed later called tags that is now also shown on this list.

Also, you now add pages and groups from the drop down menu in the pages box:

Also, for those that used page groups (folders) to organize pages… you can now drag and drop them to re-order them from the “Manage Pages and Groups” link.

You can also see below that we have streamlined many of the controls and buttons to remove clutter and freshen the look. (before and after):

New Features

Tags:

From a features perspective the biggest addition to our standard product are tags. They work like tags in twitter or similar products.

When you are entering a note or task you can use the # symbol to indicate that you want to create a tag. For instance, if you are talking about a new project called Project ABC you could type #ABC to create the tag. After you save the item you can see the tag “ABC” as part of the text. (see picture).

Some related notes:

• The tag also appear in the tag box on the left side menu..

• To find all items tagged “ABC” you can actually just click on the ABC
• A note or task can have as many tags as you like.
• If you don’t tag the item while typing you can tag it later by hovering over the note and clicking on tag.

One cool use of tags is to be able to assign multiple people to an item (since our task list only allows individual assignment).  If you tag a task with two different people, either can click on their own tag to filter to their own todo list.

Copying Workspaces

When you create a new workspace you may create a copy of an existing workspace, using the existing workspace as a template. Copying the workspace will copy the colors, logo, pages, page groups and task lists. You can do this by going to “create workspace” and telling the system to copy, or you can do this from “Manage” by the workspace logo and then looking for “copy.”

Managing Administrators:

An administrator can now change the status of a person from member to administrator (or back) directly from the screen rather than from the actions drop down.

Google Docs Integration:

From the files tab you can now link to google docs you may have already created and add create google docs from right inside of WizeHive!

Page Groups:

In the past if you wanted to reorder page groups you had to do it by putting numbers into the page groups. Now you can simply drag them up and down from the “Manage Page Groups” area of the system.

Folder names:

In the files tab you can now also change the name of a folder:

It’s been way too long since we blogged and released a new version.  Our goal is to release regularly but for various reasons we accumulated a lot of new features into one version.     Keep ready…the new version should be here tomorrow!

We are pleased to share with you a number of new features for WizeHive:

Activity Window Threading: You may turn “threading” on in the activity window.  In this case replies will show along with their original note rather than separately on the main window.   As new replies are added (and the screen is at some point refreshed) the notes with the latest replies will bubble up to the top, similar to how Gmail works.    You can toggle threading on or off at your will and you can always see the thread without turning this on from the “view” link.

Inviting Others: We have made a small but useful change so that when you invite others to share a workspace you can now add a personal message to the email.

Printing ToDo Lists: In the past when you printed your todo list it would print what was on your screen. We have added an additional filtering option so once you choose to print tasks you can specify the same layout and selection criteria as shown on the screen (in case you want to change it for what you print).   We have also improved the layout of todo lists.   We don’t get too many people asking about printing but if you have other requests or suggestions here please let us know.

We are pleased to share that you can now login to WizeHive and/or signup for WizeHive without needing to create or use a WizeHive ID and password if you have and use a Google account.

When you come to the login screen simply click on “Login using your Google ID” and you will be able to go through the normal Google login process.    The first time through Google will ask if it is OK to let Google talk to WizeHive.   If you are already logged into Google you will be taken right in once you tell Google it is ok to associate your WizeHive account and your Google account.

I’ve collected some great stories from customers telling me how WizeHive helps them collaborate and manage their workflow.  Read the Success Stories – they may give you ideas about how online collaboration and project management can help you become more efficient and more productive.

The Haas Foundation has staff and volunteers all over the world. Using 31 workspaces, the executive director can facilitate collaboration amongst departments and all hands, and keep her hand on the pulse of all activities going on across the board.  Zig Marketing collaborates internally with different departments creating various campaigns and then communicates with their clients via dedicated, secure workspaces. The president of Tech9, an IT consulting firm, monitors his customers using dedicated workspaces and then tracks internal tickets with another workspace. At a glance, he can see everything going on both internally and with his clients. A copywriter collaborates with his graphic designer in one workspace and communicates with his own personal clients in another, while he’s working on launching a collaborative website for Jazz lovers in yet another. The Engineering and Manufacturing team at Novitá Technologies was able to shorten the production cycle for automotive original equipment from a year to an impressive ten days, thanks to WizeHive, which  allowed them to put together a fully comprehensive plan and execute it without losing a detail.

TechCrunch50 and DreamIt Ventures are using WizeHive in another way. Using the Applicant Manager version of WizeHive, they streamlined and organized their entire application process from acceptance to collaborative ranking to scheduling candidate interviews, saving a huge amount of time in reviewing and organizing their applications.

I hope this gives you some ideas for your projects and groups… please continue reaching out (fernATwizehive dot com) and letting me know how WizeHive helps you, or maybe how we CAN help you if you haven’t tried it out for yourself yet.

We have a handful of very useful upgradings coming tonight.

First and foremost is one that I’ve wanted for a long time…which is the ability to turn emails on or off on a workspace by workspace basis. So if you have 10 workspaces and you want to get emails for 7 of them but not for 3 of them you can do that now.

You still determine what emails you get on an account by account basis from the “Manage Accounts” link…but now you can determine whether you want them for one or more workspaces in two places.  First, you can set it from “Manage Workspace” as you can see below:

Alternatively from inside “Manage Accounts” you can click on “Personal Profile” and then to “list all” by the email address field to manage notifications on/off for individual workspaces.

Another very highly useful upgrade is the ability to now add files to existing messages and tasks. In the past you were able to upload or add a file to a new message only.   Now, if you have an existing message and you edit it, you can add files or images after the fact.    This also works for tasks… So if you have an existing task and want to add a file after the fact you can do so.

In addition, last release we added the calendar to the “ALL” workspace for those of you that have more than one workspace so you can see all calendar entries in one place.     As you can imagine, for accounts with multiple busy workspaces (like mine) there are a ton of items on the calendar and previously you had to click on the item and bring up a box to view information about what that item was.   Now a tool tip comes up when you hover over that item:

We still have a ton of new features coming soon.  Keep watching for updates!

I’ve been talking to some of our customers lately. Wanting to get a feel for who is using WizeHive, what industries you’re in, and how WizeHive helps you solve a problem, I’ve started reaching out to some of you and have received great feedback from great people.

Talking to copywriters, engineers, marketers, CEOs, students, foundation directors, musicians, designers  and more, I’ve been learning firsthand why people need project management software, what makes them tick, and how WizeHive can make their lives easier and their workflow more productive. From simply assigning tasks to members of a team, to enabling file sharing and group collaboration amongst foundation volunteers around the globe, to tracking the status of open issues, I’m thrilled that WizeHive is providing a much-needed and efficient solution to communities and networks of colleagues, associates and friends worldwide.

One of my favorite stories was from a VP of Operations who actually projects his WizeHive workspace up on the wall of the conference room during his weekly production team meetings so everyone can review the project plan and task list together and provide feedback to keep the project on track successfully.  Talk about efficient collaboration!

I think I’ll share some of these stories with you over the next couple of weeks, so stay tuned and find out how WizeHive is helping people Work Smarter and Work Faster.  And I’d love to hear from you too! Please drop me a line (fern@wizehive.com) and let me know how WizeHive helps you. Looking forward to chatting with you soon… thanks again!

The flow up updates has been slower this past fall as we spent time catching up and laying the foundation for our future growth.    That is about to change.  We have a slew of new features ready to go and hope to put updates out every week or two.   We have a number of small features that we plan on releasing or upgrading for the next few weeks and then we will focus on different areas – tasks, files, calendars, and so on.

This week we are pleased to release a few new features and upgrades.

1. Page List: The page list has undergone changes behind the scenes.  We found that our prior version worked well with certain browsers but got very slow when people had large lists of pages in Internet Explorer.  This version should work the same but generally be a bit faster.   Please let us know if you see any problems with it.

2. Desktop Client:  We have fixed some bugs and made some enhancements to our Adobe Air based desktop client.   If you use the Desktop Client and want to upgrade or are interested you can download it from our home page.

3. Task List: When you group tasks by person, list, priority or any other method, you can now “collapse” or “expand” the group by clicking on the + or – sign in front of the group name.   You can also see a count of tasks for each group in the yellow bar.   This should make navigating and working on longer lists easier.

4.  Calendar Control: We have added a calendar control to the “ALL” workspace tab (for those of you that have more than one workspace).   You can now see all calendar entries across all workspaces on this tab.     After implementing we realized that this may cause you to see a large number of tasks on a calendar without knowing at a glance which workspace they belong to.  So for our next release we will implement a few features to make this more obvioius.

5. File Check-in / Check -out: This is almost ready (we hoped to have for this release) but may get released tomorrow (Monday) or Tuesday.   The idea is that when someone downloads a file for editing they can set a flag indicating they have “Checked out” the file.   This will put a small red lock icon by the file so someone else will know that the file has been checked out.    It won’t stop a 2nd person from downloading the file but if  they choose to download it anyway, they will have to bypass a message sharing this information in another way.    When the file has be re-uploaded it can then be “checked in” again.

6. Workspace Tab font:  We made the workspace tab fonts a little smaller so that you can use a few more characters in the name of your workspace.    (Although the change to display more characters still needs to be uploaded).    Therefore you should be able to see about 12 characters displayed instead of 10 from before.

We have about 50 items planned for the next 3 or 4 weeks.  If you have a favorite request please send it in to MikeL@WizeHive.com and I’ll try to make sure it gets on this list or a subsequent release.