Digital Design Solutions » CRM

37signals enhances Highrise linking feature

Jarrod Skeggs — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 13:37:45 +0000

37signals, some of the greatest Web 2.0 pioneers on the planet today in my opinion, announced a really awesome enhancement to their Highrise web based CRM product today. It’s now easier than ever to link an Email or a Note to a Case or a Deal in Highrise. I highly recommend that you take a moment and watch the video that they’ve posted. There is a link below to the full post. Here’s a quote from the 37signals Product Blog…

Today we launched a new Highrise feature that makes it a lot faster and easier to file a note or email under a case or deal. This new feature will save you clicks and time — especially when filing a lot of notes/emails one after another.

One thing that I note related to this new feature is that it appears that you must be in Excerpt view in order for the new feature to work. I was trying to do this from the List view and it doesn’t seem to work from within that view. I have queried the guys at 37signals about this and I’ll update any information that they provide.

Forgot to bcc your Highrise Dropbox? No problem

Jarrod Skeggs — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 19:06:33 +0000

One of the biggest benefits of using Highrise as a CRM solution is the ability to capture and link email correspondence related to Contacts or Companies in your database. If you’ve used Highrise for any length of time and have used the Dropbox feature, you’ve probably sent an email to someone and forgotten to bcc your Dropbox at one point or another. Don’t fret, you can still link that email you sent to the correct Contact or Company using the Dropbox. Here’s how…

Within your Email client, navigate to the culprit email. (That would be the one that you sent without bcc’ing your Highrise Dropbox and it should be located in your SENT folder).
After locating that email, hit the Forward button in preparation to forward it on to your Highrise Dropbox.
Before you forward the email to your Highrise Dropbox, you’ll want to go and change the From information. At present, it should show that the email was from You. You’ll want to edit this so that the email shows From the Contact or Company you wish to link it to in Highrise. Here’s how:
Email currently shows this information: From: Me
Edit this information to show the Contact name and email address that is in the Contact record in Highrise, ie: From: First Last
Once you have edited the From information, make sure that you have entered the forwarding address to go to your Highrise Dropbox.
Hit the send button and then check your Highrise Dashboard. You should see the email there, linked to the Contact or Company that you specified in step 5.

Highrise is an amazingly efficient and easy to use Client Relationship Management application that is completely web based. Click the Highrise graphic above to explore Highrise in a little more depth and find out how to get your 30 day free trial. We offer Highrise Implementation and Consulting services so feel free to call on us if you need assistance.

Helpful relevant links for this post: Highrise, CRM (Client Relationship Management), Highrise Consulting Rates

We’re moving…to the cloud: DigiDSolutions.com – A little background

Jarrod Skeggs — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 14:00:21 +0000

So, you’ve heard by now that we’re moving…to the cloud. Throughout this series of blog posts we’ll be explaining and sharing our entire experience with you. This post should really frame everything and give you an overall perspective on why we’ve decided to make this move.

A little background

Our move to the cloud really began in late 2008. During our end of year review and planning one of our biggest topics of discussion was our website and blog. At that time, we were using a very capable WYSIWYG, (What You See is What You Get), Website design software package called Rapid Weaver. We chose Rapid Weaver as our Website design software shortly after we began business. Our primary reasoning for making this choice was the WYSIWYG feature because at that time, we knew just enough HTML and CSS to be dangerous. Rapid Weaver had the ability to create a blog page and we initially used that feature until we quickly realized how inconvenient it was to use. Essentially, every time we wanted to add a new blog post, we had to open up the software, draft the blog, and then re-publish the changes to the website. While this is not a huge deal if you only have one person blogging, it is quite inconvenient when there are multiple authors.

In an attempt to make it easier for both me and Kevin to blog at will, we opened a Typepad account, largely because it was web based and either of us could access it from a web browser (and because Kevin really liked the iPhone interface). Our dilemma with that however was that we had a fairly static website at one web address and our blog located at a completely different web address. So, if we got traffic to our website, people didn’t have access to our blog content, and if we got traffic to our blog, people didn’t get a lot of the important information they were looking for about our company. Plus, we were paying a monthly fee for Typepad as well as paying a monthly hosting fee for our website.

So, to bring this back around to the subject at hand, we discovered and began investigating the WordPress platform late last year. Both Kevin and I had heard about WordPress in the past, but had never really given it much consideration because we thought that it was quite similar to Typepad. What we learned was that WordPress is quite possibly the most innovative Content Management System platform in the world. As we began to investigate and learn more about WordPress, we realized that it was exactly what we had been looking for when we started our business three years ago. We realized that WordPress had become much more than a blogging engine, and could function as our Hub on the web and be a central place where our clients and prospects can connect with us.

In the next post, I’ll be giving you some examples of how we are utilizing WordPress as our Hub.

In case you didn’t hear, you can win one (1) of four (4) Web Presence Development Packages that we are giving away by simply following us on Twitter. If you haven’t done so, go there now and follow us. The drawing for the Web Presence Development Packages takes place on August 1, 2009.

Daylite touch/Daylite 3.9 workshop

Jarrod Skeggs — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 12:00:27 +0000

We’re at it again. We’ve scheduled our next Daylite touch/Daylite 3.9 workshop. This workshop will take place at the Apple Store, North Point at 7:00 p.m. on Thursday, May 14 ,2009. Come and see Daylite touch in action. You will be excited and amazed. Daylite touch takes productivity to the next level with your iPhone.

With the Daylite touch application you can manage your business on the go without the bulk of carrying a notebook computer. Some of the features of Daylite touch include:

Multi-user Calendar management
Contact management
Opportunity management
Project management
Task management and delegation

We hope you’ll come out and join us as we demonstrate how Daylite 3.9 and Daylite touch compliment one another.

Daylite Touch updated to 1.0.1

Kevin Gilbert — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 22:06:13 +0000

Marketcircle today announced immediate availability of a minor update to Daylite Touch, the companion application to the award winning Daylite for Mac. You can get the update through the App Store on your iPhone or iPod Touch or in iTunes. Stability and bug fixes are reported as reasons for the update.

Daylite touch first impressions

Jarrod Skeggs — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 21:00:11 +0000

Holy Cow!!! This app will change my life forever. Both business and personal.

I’ve had just a couple of hours of hands on use so far but everything works as billed. I can’t believe that the folks at Marketcircle packed so much into this app. I love the fact that even the emails that are linked to my contacts, opportunities, or projects are included in Daylite touch. Very, very powerful. I will be putting it to the test over the next few days. Check back in shortly for more detailed information.

Daylite 3.9 first impressions

Jarrod Skeggs — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 19:48:13 +0000

Fast, fast, fast. Can you say fast?

The biggest thing that I am noticing is how fast the database loads and refreshes now that it is running on PostgresSQL instead of OpenBase. I connect to our Daylite Server over the internet and my up bandwidth tops out at about 384K. (Yes, that’s a “K” so not very fast). When Daylite was running on OpenBase, (you know, 4 hours ago), my usual routine was to start the login process, go grab a fresh cup of coffee, make a pit stop at the restroom and return to my desk to wait another minute or two while the login process finishes. Not the case now. Less than a minute.

I also notice substantially increased quickness as I navigate around the different objects in the Daylite 3.9 desktop app.Delegation and notification updates are happening in a much shorter time span too. So basically, if another user invites me to a meeting or delegates a task, opportunity, or project to me, I’m getting notified within just a few moments. This is great.

More to come…

What’s coming in Daylite?

Jarrod Skeggs — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 17:22:24 +0000

This time last week we were officially introduced to Daylite 3.9 and Daylite touch, the companion application that enables iPhone/iPod touch users to access their Daylite database in true mobile fashion. During last week’s meeting we learned about some major changes that are taking place, including some “under the hood” adjustments that will be made. As of now, we are free to discuss some of the great things that are ahead. Here is a brief summary…

Goodbye OpenBase, Hello Postgres – Through Daylite version 3.8, the back end database engine that the application runs on is OpenBase. In its prime, OpenBase was an excellent back end. At this point however, it is rapidly approaching antique status and is honestly very problematic from a support and reliability standpoint. Postgres on the other hand is also open source and standards based. It is used by many businesses from the Enterprise level down. There are two big benefits to the Postgres migration. First and foremost, is drastically improved stability and synchronization. Second is much better performance for the Daylite application overall.
Daylite touch – Of course the big news is the Daylite touch application which offers the ability to be truly mobile and access your database over any wifi, 3G, or EDGE connection. Offline databases will still be supported but will likely become a thing of the past as the adoption of the iPhone and iPod touch becomes more prevalent.
With the release of Daylite 3.9 the structure will change a good bit. As depicted below, there will now be Daylite Server, Touch Server, and the Postgres database. Standard Daylite licenses will stay at the same great price and the Touch Server license will likely weigh in at just under $100 for a license.

If you have any specific questions you’d like to ask, feel free to email us and we’ll be glad to schedule some time to discuss them with you.

MWSF 2009 – Day 2

Jarrod Skeggs — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 10:13:22 +0000

Day two on the show floor was a bit more focused for us.

We are prepared to sign on as potentially the first Partner for a product called Elements SBM which is developed by Ntractive. Elements SBM is a small to medium business CRM application. The application runs in a custom browser that accompanies the product. Further, the database is a fully hosted solution and the client database runs in Ntractive's data center. They are also working on an iPhone interface for the application.

We attended a press conference at 3:00 p.m. yesterday that officially announced the Partner program. We believe that this product fills a void that we have needed to fill for a while in our business model ibecause we have worked with clients in the past that wanted a hosted solution that lives in the cloud. While there are many like this, none are as full featured and intuitive as the Elements SBM product.

We hope to sign on with them within the next month or sooner if they have all the details fully ironed out. Kudos to Dale, Amy, and all the Ntractive staff that have been working so hard to get this to market.