We've been working hard to find new ways to improve the user experience which in turn helps you to improve your productivity. Even in these days of collaboration, we find that many people tend to fall back on email rather than shared online work spaces. And this being the most popular demand from most of our users we've included this feature as part of our recent update.
Let's see what's in store for you :
Post Comments in Forums with Attachments
There may be an interesting topic going around in the
project forums and you may wish to quickly post a comment. Previously,
you had to login to Zoho Projects and then post a comment. But now you can
simply do so through an email.
Add Task Notes with Attachments
We've
provided
a unique email id for each and every task. Go to task details page. Now
copy the email address and compose a mail along with your notes and
send it. You can find your notes automatically added for this task via
email.
Add Notes for Meetings with Attachments
Similarly you can add notes and attach files for a
scheduled meeting through email. Also you can add notes for
an existing meeting through a reply mail.
It's simple, isn't it ? Learn more about the new feature addition at Communicate with Projects via Email
We feel that communicating via email in Zoho Projects will be extremely useful for virtual teams as this encourages
informal communication and team building. It's
not
just about a new feature addition - it's how you thoughtfully
apply it. So find ways for your team to play with it and you'll be amazed at how quickly they find new ways to
apply them to their work process.
We hope you'd start using these features in Zoho Projects and share your experience with us at support@zohoprojects.com
We wanted to let you know about two feature enhancements done during the recent update of Zoho Projects.1. Task Details View
Until recently, in Tasks & Milestones, you needed to dig deep
to add notes, log hours or associate documents to a task. If you have a task for which you may need to frequently do these operations, then it makes sense to have all these options accessible easily. Hence we've introduced the Task Details page where you can
add
notes, associate docs, log time for a task - all from a single
place.
To view the task details page :
1. Go to Tasks and Milestones tab
2. Click on the particular task to display the task details page
Here's a sample screenshot:
Apart from this, you can also set status, priority, percentage completed for a task. You can also take a print out of the entire task details page.
Now, you can see overdue milestones of your project from two different places2. Overdue Milestones View
b. From Project Dashboard
As you may know, we
have APIs for many of Zoho's services. And we have a good many services
implementing our APIs. This allows both Zoho's and our API partner's customers to be mutually benefited. A sample list of API Partners here.
Today,
we're excited to announce the API for Zoho Projects. Developers
can extend the project management and collaboration capabilities through our APIs and can build their own customized applications for their business needs. We've tried to make the API follow the REST (Representational State Transfer) principles and generate a XML/ JSON object which
allows you to access / read / write Zoho Projects data from third-party
systems like Google/Yahoo gadgets, web
sites, billing & invoicing systems, other web-based products and do much more.
How can you access and use this API ?
It's simple. To get started with Zoho Projects API,
1. You need to first get the API Key and Ticket ID
2. Fill in the required details mentioned to access your API
http://projects.zoho.com/portal/[portalname]/api/private/[format]/methodname?parameters
where,
portalname your project portal name
methodname is one of the API methods.
parameters are query parameters passed as POST
input.
format is one of the required output formats
(XML/JSON)
For more information about this API, please visit our Zoho Projects API Documentation.
Here goes a sample implementation of Zoho Projects gadget built using Zoho Projects API. The below gadget can be embedded in Facebook, Orkut, iGoogle and Gmail.Stream of latest activities - for all users in a project
This opens up a new chapter for Zoho Projects, and it’s just a start. With the Zoho Projects API, you will be able to build a customized CRM system with Projects, billing systems, document management, time tracking tools and other web-based products. In the coming weeks, we’ll continue to post example uses and implementations for everyone to check out. We hope you will join us to share your ideas, tips and tricks with other developers in the community, through our API forums at Tips and Ideas for API.
As always, we'd love to hear your queries regarding Zoho Projects API at support@zohoprojects.com.
Here is a request from one of our customers:
Hi,
I mentioned this before but is there any chance you can implement this feature:
It's a great function to be able to export a time sheet, but without the total time, it is useless!
Please???! :)
He is not alone there as we had a flood of similar requests from many of our customers. So we've implemented this request in our latest Zoho Projects update. From now on after exporting your timesheet data into xls/csv format, you will be able to see total log hours of your project.
We are also very much excited to announce few enhancements which we felt would be quite handy for you while using Zoho Projects.
1. Upload xlsx files in Documents
Some users who are working on latest xlsx files would like to upload these files and collaborate in Zoho Projects. The current update includes support for .xlsx file format.
2. Show Task List & Task Owner in Task Dependency View
A Task Dependency view basically is a hierarchy tree structure of parent-child tasks but missed details like which task list a task belonged to and who the task's owner was. We felt these might be useful information to show for dependent tasks view. Here's how the Task Dependency View looks like now.
3. All Task Lists View
Above all, the much awaited "All Task Lists" option got implemented in this update. Just click on the Tasks and Milestones tab and all task lists present across milestones of your project will get listed in a single place.
Click on the More Task Lists link to list down all task lists in All Task Lists view. You can also take a print out of all your task lists.
Check out the new features and send us your valuable suggestions to support@zohoprojects.com.
This post is a combination of one feature which many of you seem tough to find/do in Zoho Projects and two new features. First the tough-to-find/do feature.
Add/View Task Notes
Often
we get this support question of how one can add notes to a task.
Here's how to do it. In the Task & Milestones tab, go to the task where you want to add your notes & click on the gray Notes icon.
This will pop up a notes dialog box where you can type in your notes related to the task and save the changes.
You can in fact add multiple notes to a task. To view the task notes added, click on the yellow colored icon which indicates that one or more notes have already been added to a task.
Log Time from My Timesheet
One
popular demand from most of our users is there should be an option
to log time directly from My Timesheet itself instead of going to each Timesheet tab across various projects to log their billable / non-billable hours. So
we've made this available in the My Timesheet itself.
View Unread Chat Topics
Few
customers felt while they are offline or away, they missed important
chat transcripts and there should be an option to see missed
conversations with their project members and clients. Now you can check such missed chat transcripts and you can do this from 3 different places in Zoho Projects.
a) from the Home tab
b) From the Dashboard View
c) Of course from the Chat tab
Hope you find these features helpful. We'd
like to hear from you about these features in Zoho Projects and how
it is helping you and your team 
(posts) (comments)
