This is a quick video describing how to use Qlockwork to automatically track time at your PC by project.
The video tells you
Posted in time tracking
This is a quick video describing how you can use the free Qlockwork trial to track how much time you spend in Outlook reading and writing email each week.
Just
Posted in Office 2010, Outlook 2010, Qlockwork, Software, time management, time tracking, Videos
Obviously we do a lot of thinking about time tracking applications and what they should do – we do develop one. In the end, however, our customers seemed to know the answer to that question a lot better than us!
So what’s a time tracking application like Qlockwork actually for?
We originally developed it as a time management tool. We were very keen on time management techniques, but we didn’t like keeping task logs by hand, so we invented Qlockwork as a way to automatically generate task logs for folks so they could see where their time was going and manage it better.
As soon as we started selling it back in 2007 we found that wasn’t what our customers were using it for at all!
Most of our customers were using Qlockwork as part of their timesheet or billing process. They used their Qlockwork log to tot up how much time they spent on any particular client and bill them.
This meant we had to move Qlockwork in a different direction, but we were happy to do so. We added more features about project assignment and more integration with Outlook meetings. We also made it easier to send reports to other people (like a secretary).
We also learned a valuable lesson – once you invent something it takes on a life of its own. We now often find that our customers are more expert on Qlockwork than we are. They constantly surprise us with new ideas and ways to use the product.
Posted in time tracking
Any company that relies on technology can potentially benefit from outsourcing and, let’s face it, how many companies don’t rely on technology?
If you are going to outsource, here are some do’s and don’ts that can help you make the process a success.
1. Don’t Outsource to Save Lots of Money
Actually, outsourcing can save you money, but don’t choose your outsourcing partner based on how cheap they are. Maybe you can get a programmer for $100 a day but you’ll generally find they won’t do a great job for you.
2. Outsource to Expertise
A great way to use outsourcing is to get the most expert person possible to complete a task for you.
If you have a specialised task, do some internet searches. Look for a company that has done verifiably excellent work in that area. Have they produced a high quality product similar to the one you need?
Contact them and ask them if they would be prepared to help you. They may be expensive per hour but if they’re experts they’ll complete the job quickly and you’ll get a high quality result.
We’ve used this approach for some very successful outsourcing. For example, we recently ported Qlockwork to VB.NET using experts at add-in express and got excellent results for less than it would have cost to complete the work in-house.
3. Have a Clear Specification
Be 100% clear what you want delivered and make sure you express it clearly. Write it down in as much detail as possible.
If you are unclear what you want or you change your mind then at best you’ll spend more than you need to. At worst you won’t get anything usable.
4. Trust Your Judgment When Choosing Your Outsourced Partner
Do they answer questions promptly? Do they ask sensible questions about your specification. Do they point out things you have missed in the specification? Trust your judgment and the quality of the work you can see. That’s usually a better indication of quality than a well known brand or a large company.
5. Have a Clear Contract
Ideally if you have a clear specification and have chosen experts they will be happy to offer you a fixed price contract with a clear deliverable. You’ll then know what you are getting, when and what it’ll cost. Make sure you test it thoroughly in-house before you pay. Even the best quality software will have some issues and you will be better at spotting them than anyone else – it’s your product. The sooner you get them fixed the better.
Outsourcing is incredibly useful; saving time and money and helping you produce a better quality product. However, it still requires careful thought and planning to make it successful.
Posted in Outsourcing, Software Development
Web conferencing is the term given for sharing applications or your desktop with other people remotely over the internet.
I’ve been a heavy user of web conferencing technology for about 10 years, from Microsoft NetMeeting onwards. I’ve used it to resolve problems in 30 minutes that in the past would have required me to spend 2 days on a plane heading across the Atlantic and back, so it has certainly saved me time and money and miserable days in economy class.
I mainly use it for product demonstrations and remote problem diagnosis; for both it’s invaluable to be able to share my desktop. We’re a small business and Qlockwork is pretty inexpensive so it isn’t worth making long trips to demonstrate the product on site. Being able to do it remotely is very useful.
WebEx is probably the most popular conferencing tool, although I find it overly complex and it’s quite pricey. Unyte used to be great, easy to use and inexpensive – I used it a lot. Unfortunately, Lotus bought it and have now closed it down. Last week I tried a new system called Join.me and I was impressed by that. Good price (free) and very simple to use. It rather reminds me of Unyte before it was bought by Lotus, which makes me wonder how long it will last, but while it does I’ll certainly continue to use it.
Posted in time tracking
Something I sometimes want to do is extract all of the email addresses for a set of Outlook emails I’ve received and put them in a spreadsheet.
You can do this using Outlook’s Export function, but in Outlook 2010 that function has moved and is harder to find. So my tip of the day is how to export email addresses from emails into Excel in Outlook 2010.
Fiddly, but fine once you get used to it and far better than copy/paste-ing out email addresses by hand!
Outlook 2010 tips from Qlockwork – time tracking for Outlook
Posted in Office 2010, Outlook 2010
The idea of cloud computing is that a service you use is not physically installed and running on your own computer servers on your own premises. Instead, the service runs on someone else’s servers on someone else’s premises.
You access that service over the web from your web browser or sometimes from an application installed on your PC.
Why is it called “cloud”?
It’s called cloud because you often say that the service is running in the cloud, which is a euphemism for “I don’t have the faintest idea where it physically is and I don’t much care”. Cloud is really just a marketing term for “somewhere out there in the internet”.
What kind of application or service can run in the cloud?
Most services can run in the cloud. A good example is a hosted Exchange service. This is a cloud service where someone else runs and maintains Microsoft Exchange on their own servers and you access that Exchange server from either your web browser (Outlook Web Access) or Outlook installed on your PC. The benefits to you are fairly similar to the benefits you get from any Cloud service:
GMail is another example of a cloud-based email system, but the cloud isn’t just for email. You can use cloud based services for anything from backups to accounting systems, you can manage your warehouse with cloud based systems or even use cloud based CRMs.
Cloud services can be very useful for small businesses because there is usually no up-front cost. There’s no big server to buy and no expensive software license to cough up for before you can get started. It’s also very easy to keeping upgrading to the latest version of the service.
What’s the drawback of the cloud?
Like everything, the cloud does have some drawbacks.
None of these problems is insurmountable and the cloud is definitely a very useful resource, particularly for small businesses.
We certainly plan to add cloud functionality options to Qlockwork in 2010, but we’ll never make it compulsory. We have too many users who don’t want their Qlockwork data to leave their business.
Posted in Cloud Computing, Qlockwork, Software
I read 2 interesting blog posts this week from Ben Yoskovitz on his Instigator Blog.
One was on the danger to startups of competing with products that are already “good enough”. The other was on prioritizing new product features.
Together they make a clear statement: don’t over-egg your product. It’s a statement I tend to agree with.
Fundamentally, on paper you don’t know exactly what your customers need and neither do they. This is different from knowing what they want. Everyone knows what they want on paper.
What you want is always way bigger than what you need, which means it’ll cost more to develop and more to buy. Worst of all, it will be missing features that you need, but didn’t know you needed.
So, you have to make a judgment. What do you think is the bare minimum that users need of your product. Make your best guess and this becomes your first version, which should be “good enough”, not fantastic.
Here’s where it’s difficult for a startup. No-one wants to ship something “good enough”, you want it to be fantastic. You are wrong. Not because you want to produce a fantastic product, that’s a great goal. You are wrong in thinking that a fantastic product will ever spring fully formed from your brow – it has to evolve. Product development is Darwinian, not Greek mythology.
It gets slightly easier when the product is launched. You’ll get lots of user feedback on new features and you can prioritise the features that most people are saying they need.
Try to focus on need rather than want. If you get some really great “want” ideas from customers, think about putting them in a Pro version. That worked very well on Qlockwork. We launched a want-based “Pro” version in 2010 and it now accounts for over 75% of sales. However, we make sure everything that anyone needs goes into the base product too, that includes features like 64bit support, which we’ve just added to our beta trial version of Qlockwork 3.0.
Do we ever mess this up? Yes. The first version of Qlockwork had way too many features so it took us longer to get to market than it should have done. That meant we didn’t get real paying customer feedback early enough in the product development cycle, which cost us time, impetus and money. That’s a mistake we hopefully won’t make again.
For our latest beta we have tried to keep the release down to the bare minimum of need. There was a strong need for 64bit support from our customers and that was a major product change so we really focussed on that and kept “want” features to a minimum.
Has it worked well? Hopefully!
Posted in Software, Software Development
This year we have decided to run a “Love Your Business” offer for Valentine’s Day with 20% off the price of a Qlockwork Pro license until February 14th. To get the offer, you need to visit our special Valentines promotional page.
It may seem odd to run a Valentines offer for business software, but sometimes your business needs a little love too - a gift that makes your work life easier could be just the ticket.
Or maybe this Valentines is the time to buy a copy of Qlockwork for someone you love - your accountant perhaps?
(One of our customers gave a copy of Qlockwork to his accountant last Christmas 
, which we were very happy to hear.)
Alternatively, a $16 saving on the price of Qlockwork is enough to get someone a very nice box of chocolates!
Happy Valentines Day from the team at WorkingProgram (home of Qlockwork)
Qlockwork is available for Outlook 2002/3, 2007, Outlook 2010 and Windows 7
Posted in Qlockwork
The new Qlockwork 3.0 beta adds support for 64-bit Windows. What does that really mean?
Recently Microsoft have started to push Windows 64 bit very heavily through vendors like Dell. In fact, 64bit is now the default for most new Windows 7 laptops.
64bit is a change to the way Windows handles memory. With 64bit, applications can use more memory, which means you can run bigger, faster applications.
With older 32bit Windows, even if you installed Gigabytes and Gigabytes of memory on your computer, there was a limit to how much of that memory any one application could use. With 64bit there are still limits, but those limits are vastly higher. So, Windows 7 64bit is more capable of supporting powerful applications.
If you have a 64bit Windows 7 computer and you want to try out Qlockwork to get to know how you spend your time on your computer, then please try the tracker beta trial .
So far beta feedback is very good, we expect to launch the full 3.0 product in early March. In the meantime, any 2.0 license you buy now will work with the 3.0 version when it goes live.
Posted in 64Bit Windows, Qlockwork
