Happy Deepavali

We have a small surprise feature for you on this Diwali. Its actually an easter egg which was created long ago, but we are bringing it to light now.

If you want to point to a file in the task, which is already a part of the service, i.e. make it a link in the tasklist, we now have to a way to do it. While creating a task, within the content of the task, please include the filename in the format given below -

${exact-file-name}
(the initial $ symbol and the ending curly brackets are important.)

When you save the task, the filename appears as a link. When somebody clicks on the link it downloads the latest version of that file, that has been attached to the service. This approach will have an issue if you have multiple files with the same name attached to a service (not as versions but as different attachments), which I presume will not be the case. In such a case, the one that has been uploaded first will be downloaded.

Lets say the task is as follows -
- Fill the Form - 32

If you wanted to link the form32 template uploaded as a part of the service, you would need to write the task as
- Fill the Form - 32 (${Form32.pdf})
which would appear to everybody as -
- Fill the Form - 32 (Form32.pdf)
where Form32.pdf would automagically, will turn into a link pointing to the latest version of the file that has been uploaded in the files section.

Hope you will like this and use this. One obvious use is to use this in your service templates and automatically create links to proper format files in the tasklist in the corresponding services which use these templates.

Papilio Launch

Papilio 1.0 - Its here!

Thank you for being there with us through this journey. We are extremely proud and happy to release our new product version. And as always this is not the end, but just the beginning.

Couple of important announcements that we would like to make -

1. Soapbox has been moved out of Papilio. This means, that you will still be able to access it through http://soapbox.papilio.co.in but not through the application as it used to be. We will be reworking on soapbox from a new angle and bringing it back to you as a full fledged marketing tool in the next three months.
2. The Dashboard of Papilio has been downgraded as well. We are in the process of redesigning this feature to make it more useful. Hence the calendar and the milestones have been removed, but they will be reintroduced in the new design in a better form.

Some exciting new features -

• Now you can prioritize your services by marking it with a star.
You can now upload multiple files with a single click.
Personalize the look and feel of your Papilio account by uploading your own logo.
• On the same lines as tasklists and messages, you can mark the files as private, so that they are not visible to your clients.
• Now you can better analyse your reports in graphical form.

You can find out more about them on the what's new page. We hope you will like the new look and features, and as always, will let us know of your comments/concerns.

And now its party time!

User Categories

Its been sometime since we last wrote to you. We hope Papilio is helping you do better. We have just released a long lasting request - to be able to categorize your members into teams. And now you can!

Now you can categorise your users by teams, departments, geographical locations or anyway you wish. Every user can be tagged with multiple attributes or categories, and can be searched against those categories.

To set up the categories:

1. Go to Admin >> settings.
2. Under 'User Categories', you should enter the categories in the textbox provided. If you want to create more than one at a time, enter multiple names separated by commas.
3. Click on the 'Add' button to create your user categories.
4. If you want to delete the user categories, a list is provided in the same place with checkboxes. Select the user category you want to remove and click on the 'Remove' button (Only that user category(s) will be removed and not, categorised users).
5. Now when you edit any user, you would be able to select the categories for that user.

Currently we are providing user category search in service's people page where we associate users to service.

How to use:

1. Go to Service page, Select an service Click on 'People' sub-tab. Click on 'Associate User ' link.
2. If you have created user categories, it will be displayed with checkbox selected by default.
3. If you want to see only users of particular user category(s), then select only that category and un-select all others and click on 'Refresh'. The list of users provided at the bottom will be refreshed with users under selected user category(s).

More updates are on the way. As always, please let us know about what you need and what your pain points are. We will be more than happy to address them and work on providing you a world-class application. If you like Papilio, please let others know so that they can try and use it, in their business and improve their productivity.

Regards,
The Papilio Team.

Papilio on your mobile phone

We are happy to announce a sleeker and leaner version of Papilio so that you can take Papilio along with you even on the road. The mobile interface is designed with a goal of fast loading and minimalistic feature set. You can start using it by pointing your mobile internet browser to http://papilio.co.in and automatically it will be routed to the new UI. Hope you enjoy this!

Please let us know what is the next feature that you would like us to implement. We were thinking, "My tasks", "Completing tasks" and being able to enter "Timelog" would be good candidates.

Amazon AWS introduces Singapore region

Amazon's AWS service introduces their singapore facility. We were extremely thrilled with this news. Why you ask? Because its closer to home and closer to you. And so the number of hops that your request goes through to reach papilio servers is a lot less. In turn, the latency is lesser and that makes it faster!

We have moved the servers to their new Asia-Pacific home in Singapore over the weekend. Now we are serving you from the singapore facility. Please let us know if you observe any changes, both good and bad.

Introducing Soapbox

Soapbox is a utility that lets you send email notifications to all your clients or specific targetted ones with a simple and friendly UI. Its a tool that works in conjunction with Papilio, and gets all the needed information from Papilio.

How to start?

• Everything is in place for you to start writing articles right away. No need to register. All the administrators have access to this tool by default. If you want to change this, please go to the profile of that particular user and you can enable or disable the access to soapbox.
• You just log in to papilio. You can see a tab on the right side saying "Soapbox". Just click on the tab it will take you to soapbox in new window.
  

How to use?

• Once in soapbox domain, click on the button showing "Create new article". It will take you to a page where you can create the article.
• Here you can see the list of all "Company types" and "Categories" you have defined in Papilio.
• Select the company types/categories of the client companies to whom you want to send this article.
• Fill the Title, Summary and Text (with an editor) to create your article.
• After you create your article either you can save it, or you can publish it right away. Saving the article will allow you to edit the article further. You can come back to the article when you click on it in the list. If you publish the article, it will queued for posting through email to everybody.

In case of any doubts/issues/concerns, please feel free to talk to us through our live support. We will be very soon adding SMS support to this and making this more useful. As always, your continuous support and feedback helps Papilio, and now Soapbox to serve your needs. Please keep posting your valuable suggestions to us.

Attachments to your service using email

You can now attach a file to your service using your email. Instructions below.

Prerequisites -

1. The service should exist and should be active
   
2. The user from whom the email is being sent should be associated to the service. In other words, the person sending the email should have access to the service.
   

Procedure -

1. Create an email with the desired attachment (using your email account whose id you use to login to Papilio)
   
2. The subject of the email should contain the service id and the word "attach" only. Example => #S1016V1743: attach
   
3. The service id can be found in the overview page, as a prefix to the service name just below the tabs on the right side. It is usually in the format of #SV
4. The body of the email will be ignored and the attachment will be uploaded to the service, and can be seen in the Files sub-tab
5. The background service runs once every 30 mins. So probably this might take about 30 mins. to appear in your service.
   

Live Support feature is down!

We had to bring down the live support due to technical difficulties with our ISP. The support software runs on a different ISP than the papilio application. They seem to have trouble sustaining the support application and have suspended our account.

We will come back to you with our service on an alternate hosting arrangement as soon as we possibly can. We are sorry about this and we are working hard to restore the service. Until then, please direct your queries by email to info at indygo dot in or by phone to 080-26762020. Thank you for your patience.

Update: As of today (21-Jan-2009) morning, the live support has been restored. We would be more than happy to hear from you on that channel.

Upcoming features for 2010

Some of the upcoming features for this year -

1. Invoicing
   
2. Fine grained permissioning
   
3. Activity Logging
   
4. Bulk emailing to your clients
   
5. Video help content
   
6. General Search functionality
7. SMS Alerts
   
8. Bulk messages by your office through SMS and Email
   
9. Importing and exporting of service data
10. More relevant reports
11. Features required for nurturing and growing a community
    
12. Integration with Google - using their open-id platform, gadgets etc.
    
13. Time Estimation of Services/Tasks

Some of these are already in the oven baking, while some are on the drawing board. Do let us know if you find your pet requirement missing from the list. We will try to add it to the roadmap.