Notification options and see tasks assigned to your company or anybody
Hi Friends,
This entry is to announce two exciting features in Apollo:
- Advanced notification options (with daily digests available!)
- Possibility to see, in My tasks, tasks assigned to "Anyone" or to your company
As a member of staff at Applicom, I got to use these features well in advance and I just couldn't believe how much they helped me in my day-to-day work. I can see why a lot of users requested them!
So, here are the details.
Advanced notification options
This is a big step forward for Apollo. If you go to Personal Settings -> Notifications, you will see something like this:
First of all, note the email address there. As the help says, "This is the email address where you will receive notifications for this workspace". Going one step back, you know that you can login onto multiple workspaces using your Applicomhq login name/password pair. This is very convenient: you only have one Applicomhq account to remember and manage. However, imagine that you have two workspaces, one owned by your company and one owned by you; you will probably want to receive email notifications to different email addresses, to keep things separate. This new option allows you to do just that: you can now decide where notifications are sent per workspace. Two important notes: first of all, by default the workspace-specific email address will always default to your Applicomhq email address; second, you can change your "master" Applicomhq email address by going to Settings -> Account.
But there's more: look at the "Available notifications" section, where you are given a good set of options. The most important one is the "Daily digests". I find them immensely useful: it's a daily email that will give you a detailed list of anything outstanding in your workspace: personal, project and contact tasks. You can elect to use receive these digests only Mon-Fri (as you would for a work-related workspace).
The last two options allow you to receive reminders for tasks due in less than 12 hours, and receive notifications when somebody assigns you a task. These options will give you great flexibility in terms of what you will receive -- and even better, they work at workspace-level.
Possibility to see, in My tasks, tasks assigned to "Anyone" or to your company
The heading says it all! One of the main complaints we got, in terms of tracking tasks, was that things assigned to a company or to "anyone" were hard to track: you had to open the right project and task list and find them. Users told us that they considered tasks assigned to the company, or to anyone, as theirs. So, we did it: if you go to Settings -> Other settings, you will see this:
From here, you can decide what you will see in My Tasks.
27 comments so far
Nestor
Thu, 03/10/2011 - 04:07
This is very convenient. I appreciate the 12 hours notification and it is very helpful. No other system that I have tried have this feature.
Good job!
Nestor
Tony Mobily
Thu, 03/10/2011 - 11:18
Thanks!
Ben
Fri, 03/11/2011 - 00:50
Nice, but will there be a way to add files somehow? E.g. to tasks or projects?
This is a missing feature.
And I would like to know if there are details about the pricing plans when and how they will be applied before I start using it.
Thanks.
Ben
Fri, 03/11/2011 - 01:07
My bad, I found the attachments :)
But pricing is still something I'd like to know before diving into Apollo...
Inna
Sun, 03/13/2011 - 21:02
Hi Tony,
First of all - good job - it's a pity that a project went to the back burner, but concentration is a core of success - it's impossible to do several things good simultaneously. Or at least I always failed even with Ubidesk :-).
Tony we are searching for a better option and heard a lot of good things about Apollo. Unfortunately, I cannot get invitation code your mail server reject my letters.
Would you please so kind to share one code with me?
Thank you,
Inna
Andrea Di Clemente
Mon, 03/14/2011 - 01:11
Hi Inna,
I sent one to your email address
Have fun,
Andrea
Annon
Mon, 03/14/2011 - 06:47
Have you guys seen http://www.useapollo.com/ :) slight rip off
Tony Mobily
Mon, 03/14/2011 - 10:27
Hi,
That's OK. Apollo is a good name!
NowApollo and Apollohq are very different things -- they don't do project management; it seems like a great tool to get proofs approved!
Bye,
Merc.
Filip
Mon, 03/14/2011 - 23:00
Hi,
When will I be able to export my calendar to iCal? This function is vital for me, otherwise is the Apollo calendar quite worthless...
applicomhq
Mon, 03/14/2011 - 23:05
We are working on it, it's a top-priority feature!
Wayne
Tue, 03/15/2011 - 16:20
Great to see the new features. Loving this app more and more each day!
I second Filip with ical exporting/syncing... though not such a necessity, just a desire. Would really, REALLY appreciate being able to link calendar appointments with contacts for meetings et cetera. It works through tasks, but I just feel doing so through calendar would be so much cleaner for me!
Love the work!!!
Konstantin
Wed, 03/16/2011 - 22:02
Hi!
I`m sorry, but my question is not about notifications :)
Apollo looks pretty good, it`s definitely a very viable platform. It`s already better than basecamp. I`m going to use it for my company. But I`m a little concerned about possible payment plans. Can I expect you`ll not link them to number of users? Will they be like basecamp`s plans, for example? I mean affordable price and everything unlimited except number of projects.
Tony Mobily
Thu, 03/17/2011 - 10:24
Hi,
I sent you an email about payment plans half an hour ago!
And yes, whiteboards are in our todo list, although we are working on more urgent things right now!
Bye :D
Merc.
Konstantin
Wed, 03/16/2011 - 22:07
One more question. Are you going to add chat? Writeboards?
Tony Mobily
Thu, 03/24/2011 - 10:54
Yes, it's one of the planned features!
Steven Hambleton
Thu, 03/24/2011 - 09:12
Being able to use Google Apps for email seems like a good idea as you can then track outgoing AND incoming emails without the annoying BCC address which is missed when someone replies..
Tony Mobily
Thu, 03/24/2011 - 10:55
Hi,
We are looking into Google App integration soon. However, whichever reply-by-mail policy we follow, will need to be completely independent to the email system you use -- yahoo, hotmail, your own, etc.
Merc.
Marcus Fehn
Thu, 03/31/2011 - 21:32
Hi,
would you mind sheding some light on the user groups feature? I thought this would allow me to assign tasks to specific groups within a company. I further thought this would allow me to "hide" certain company-tasks from everybody who's not in that group.
However, none of my groups show up in the "responsible" popup menu...
Thanks for a great tool nonetheless. :)
Greetz
Marcus
Tony Mobily
Fri, 04/01/2011 - 09:40
Hi,
In Apollo, you cannot assign a task to a group. You can assign it to "anyone", or to a "company", but never to a specific group of people. This is very unlikely to change as it would add a level of complication to Apollo that would lead to user errors and bugs.
This also applies to access control...
Bye!
Merc,
Marcus Fehn
Fri, 04/01/2011 - 12:24
Hi Tony,
thanks for your reply. I agree that assignng tasks to groups would add complication, and it's probably the right choice.
However – what IS the use of groups then? :)
I didn't find any info about groups anwhere.
Thanks
Marcus
applicomhq
Fri, 04/01/2011 - 14:33
Hi,
They are used to access CRM notes, cases, deals, etc. :D
It's likely that we will expand their use throughout Apollo though!
Merc.
Kelly
Sat, 04/02/2011 - 05:34
Is there a way to set it up so I get email notifications when someone logs time on a project? It would be so much easier for me to track time if I didn't have to go through each individual project in order to find project hours for each day. Thanks!
Tony Mobily
Mon, 04/04/2011 - 10:51
Hi Kelly,
We are not planning on sending an email. One of the issues is that the time that was logged can be changed/edited at any point later. We would have to send an email out every time a change is made.
We are making changes so that it's possible to link a contact to a project, to facilitate reports.
Also, we are working on reports so that you can see exactly how you spent your time. However, they are very much a work in progress at the moment!
Bye,
Merc.
Nestor Centeno
Tue, 04/19/2011 - 01:04
Does the system allows to send an email when a comment is posted? Any way of follow up on pending matters through email?
Regards.
Nestor
Tony Mobily
Tue, 04/19/2011 - 12:37
Hi,
> Does the system allows to send an email when a comment is posted?
Yes. All you have to do, is "subscribe" people to the task, by ticking their name at the bottom.
It reads:
--------------
KEEP PEOPLE NOTIFIED
The people you select will get an email when you post this comment, and will also be notified by email every time somebody adds a new comment.
--------------------
> Any way of follow up on pending matters through email?
This is "reply by email" (so you don't have to login back into Apollo). It's coming soon!
Merc.
Michelle Holder
Mon, 08/15/2011 - 23:18
Our company is interested in using Apollohq. How can we get an ivitation code?
Thanks!
applicomhq
Mon, 08/15/2011 - 23:41
Hi Michelle,
No need to get an invite -- just sign up and use it for free for 30 days!
Merc.