WorkLife () TechLife Blog

Introducing our newest Blogpost section… #TipOfTheMonth

On this brand new section, we will share with all our WorkStraight users a quick but, very useful tip for you to maximize your WorkStraight account! Today we will talk about R E P O R T I N G.

The WorkStraight Engineering team has worked on developing different types of reports, giving you the ability to measure User Activity, User Work Orders, User Productivity, User Log in, and the star of this blog post... *drumroll*
All Work Order Report Status!

You might be asking “Why this report is so important?” Well, the reason why we think that this report is so useful is, that here you will see ALL your work orders on a single document! This will make very visual to review the work orders that are open, closed, unapproved, unassigned and declined.

You just need to go to Reports > All Work Orders Report, set the date range > Update Report > PRINT SUMMARY.

Based on customers' feedback this is very useful with teams that have weekly or monthly meetings where they review their work orders. Since they have the ability to measure progress and check what work orders they have worked on, and the ones that are pending!

We invite you to try it. Hopefully, it is as useful for you, as it is for us!

We would love to hear your thoughts! If you have any suggestion, or if would like to have a demo where we show you how to use this very useful tip, please comment on our Facebook post -and make sure to like our page ;) -, or make sure to give us a call to (510) 990-1030!

Setting up your WorkStraight Account

Have you opened a new WorkStraight account, and you are a little bit confused on what to do next or how to set up your account? Well, then this blog post is for you! We have put together 5 tips for setting up your account in a very easy way!

Update your password

First, security! After you have received the confirmation email from our support team, and successfully logging in for the first time, we recommend you to change your password. Our securely random generated password can be confusing, so for convenience, we recommend you to change it to one that could be a little bit easier to remember. You simply need to go to Settings>Security Settings> Edit your password .

Edit your Personal Information

Now that we have our new password, we can move on to your personal information. This step is very important since here you will find the access levels for our account, different notifications, and timezone. We want to emphasize the TIMEZONE.

Timezone is very important! All information with timestamps is displayed in your local time. So, if your time zone isn't correct, it could cause confinement. Your time zone is displayed at the bottom of each page. When you log in for the first time, your default time zone is Eastern Standard Time (EST). In order to change it, you can Go to Settings->Edit My Info

Customize WorkStraight

You are all set with your password and information, so now the fun is about to start!

C U S T O M I Z A T I O N

With WorkStraight you have the ability to customize your Work Orders infrastructure or use a la carte, customize individual work order fields, customize the term "work orders", customize the description of those your service, and more!

You will have the ability to choose the input type for a specific field, if it’s required, and if you want to display it or not! Those options will depend on the different types of fields that we have color-coded for easy recognization.

1) Grey Fields

Boxes with gray color are fields that must be displayed. The field name and help text can be customized.

2) Orange Fields

Boxes with orange color can be fully customized except for the "input type."

3) Red Fields

Boxes with red color are custom fields available to you and can be FULLY customized.

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of how to customize your work orders!

Set Up Your Notifications

This step is very important, here you will choose if you want to get email notifications, in-app notifications or both. Most of our customers tend to like receiving emails since they can have a “copy” of every single communication they get. But, that decision is up to you!

What kind of notifications will you receive? For example, every time a new user has been added, once a work order has been closed, every time a message has been submitted, etc. You have the freedom of choosing what kind of notifications you will receive when you are Editing your Personal Information (see tip #2).

Check out the Help Center

Last, but not least! Don’t forget to review our Help Center. You will find it on the left side of your screen on the WorkStraight Menu (where you have access to your Work Orders, Company Directory, Calendar, Customers, Settings and Reports).

Right underneath Settings, you can find the Help Center. This is a very easy way to learn how to use WorkStraight and it will take you by the hand on your first steps using a WorkStraight Account! You will find help with your Work Orders, Invoices, Calendar, and more! Everything that you need to know to become a WorkStraight Expert!

Now you are ready to start adding customers, users and sending work orders! If you have any question, please do not hesitate on always reaching to the Support Team at (510)990-1030 or shoot us an email to support@workstraight.com. We are ready to help!

Highly Customized: Now Featuring Up to 20 Custom Fields

Custom fields give WorkStraight power users the ability to more closely fit each work order to their particular industry, business type, or work flow. Users can specify the name of the field, help text for filling it out, the type of input (text, paragraph, dropdown), and the choices (for a dropdown).

Small business users (our most basic offering) have access to five custom forms. Until now, Professional and Corporate users had access to up to 10 custom fields.

But our power users have been asking for more. We're proud to announce that we are now offering up to 20 custom fields for Professional, Corporate, and Corporate Plus users

If you are a Small Business level account and would like to upgrade, simply go to: Settings > Account Management . From here, check the box to "Change Plan".

WorkStraight And QuickBooks Integration Made Even Better

With the latest WorkStraight update, you will now be able to easily sync customers and invoices between QuickBooks and WorkStraight with one click. To do so you will first need to enable QuickBooks Integration.

Simply go to: Settings > Customize > WorkStraight > QuickBooks Integration tab. Here, check the box to allow QuickBooks integration.

After being enabled, a "Sync With QuickBooks" button will be displayed when viewing your lists of customers or invoices.

Simply click on the button and authorize the data sync and that's it!

3 Lessons Enterprise B2B Businesses Can Learn from Operations and Maintenance Customers

Businesses deeply entrenched in integrated technologies to facilitate their customer data and lead generation and management oftentimes experience whole new sets of challenges sustaining and growing their business. At MindShare Design, we've noticed a couple key challenges: customization, meeting the customer's expectations, and the move towards experiential.

Customization– Personalization is king and all data supports that the more personalized an engagement is with a customer, the more likely that customer is to convert and have a larger order. In fact, 68% of marketers believe personalization based on behavioral data has a high impact on ROI (Econsultancy). Companies like Amazon pioneered this trend and now everyone else is playing catch up. There is even a whole sub-set of MarTech companies that do nothing but provide the technology to increase the level of personalization in corporate communications.

Unfortunately, the knife cuts both ways: not only does increasing the level of personalization increase the sophistication of customer interactions, but it adds a high level customization to the company's own marketing infrastructure. This can make the marketing department less agile in responding to new trends and adds an extra layer of QA and complexity in launching new marketing campaigns.

Meeting the customer's expectations– as with customization, this trend cuts companies both ways. Not only have customer expectations of brands heightened in terms of customization and responsiveness to customer contact, but brands also turn around and expect the same from their vendors (suppliers).

Move towards experiential– one of the hottest topics in marketing continues to be "experience," specifically carefully controlling the factors that influence the customer's emotions towards a brand. This plays out everywhere from "UX" in web design to interactive marketing pieces to being strongly correlated to the company itself, like Disney or Amazon. As an email company, we feel the pressure from customers to push the bounds of creativity and interaction, with new types of emails and creating emails with interactive elements like scratch-off or embedding videos in emails.

While servicing enterprise customers present these challenges, taking a step back and looking at the broader picture will help.

In contrast to our enterprise marketing customers, through open and direct communications we've had with operations and maintenance customers, we've noticed a different set of trends emerge:

• 1: Outside of the tech bubble, people just want their work to be easier
  
  The people who try WorkStraight are not looking for fancy tech tools with bells and whistles. They want something straightforward, easy to use and most importantly, something that the rest of their team will catch onto quickly. We recently spoke to a warehouse manager who oversaw a staff of 100 employees. He had just fired 16 for failing a random drug test, and needed a tool to help warehouse workers communicate with the maintenance crew, particularly since the warehouse was so short staffed at the time.
  
  Moreover, people outside the tech bubble are intimidated by tech. There's a sense that they know they need it and that it's supposed to make their lives easier, but almost daily our customer support team receives emails from small business owners, managers and administrators overwhelmed or unsure how to figure out how to use productivity tools in their workplace.
  
  
• 2: There is still a lot of reliance on post its, spreadsheets and digging into e-mails - and this pain point is more universal than most people realize.
  
  We were shocked when we first started talking to prospects and current customers of how much their day to day operations and maintenance was still dependent upon post-its, emails and even spreadsheets, despite the size and scale of some of their operations. We realized that for so many, this vital component of running a business had been left out of the digital transformation because of overly (or unnecessarily) complex tools. However, the more we spoke with VPs of Operations and Facility Managers, we recognized that the need was the same across different industries and company sizes – managers wanted more insight into what their reportees were doing and productivity reports that they could give their managers to justify their budgets and team sizes.
  
  
• 3: Keeping the dialogue open with your customers, regardless of industry is vital.
  
  When WorkStraight first launched, it was a suite of web-based products – an online point of sale terminal, a calendar, a notes/messaging app, and a work order management app. Customers started telling us directly that they found the work order management part of the app the most useful, so the decision was made to make it the foundational part of the product and build it out to be a full CMMS solution. But, if you look at WorkStraight today, the other 3 apps are still included in the platform, arranged around the work order management tool. Customer feedback is still central to product operations, and 99% of the projects currently on the product roadmap came from suggestions customers made. The other 1% of projects come from our own internal usage of the product. We don't just sell the product to others – MindShare Design runs on it.

5 Ways Maintenance Software Can Boost Productivity For Any Small Business

Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS) are not just for maintenance crews or enterprise organizations. They can facilitate work in other areas of productivity for small businesses and solopreneurs as well. Here are five capabilities that demonstrate how:

• • Manage maintenance on your physical assets. Without setting up a system of reminders, it can be too easy to get wrapped up in taking care of customers and neglect the maintenance and upkeep of your company's assets. One can use the CMMS to help keep track of maintenance on a business's physical assets, whether it is remembering to get your delivery van's oil changed and engine serviced or performing critical backups to your computers and servers.
  
  
• • Keep track of your tasks. If you are a solopreneur or small business owner running many different facets of your company, a CMMS can keep a running to-do list of all the different projects and tasks spread across the company, and your business moving forward by prioritizing them, delegating them out and following what is done - and what is left to do. One example of this in practice is demonstrated by one company that implemented a CMMS system to replace a series of tasks that included: running project lists teams created using excel shared docs, individual running to-do lists on scraps of paper or post-its and numerous emails and running email threads, reminding and re-reminding individuals to complete tasks. Moreover, they were able to look back over accomplished projects and see everything that your organization accomplished. Should a question ever arise over when you last upgraded your server's operating system or made a bouquet of flowers for Mr. Jones, you can look back in the CMMS system and see when those tasks were last completed.
  
  
• • Keep tabs on what your team is doing. One of the most common pieces of feedback we receive at WorkStraight is that our system enabled small business owners to see which employees were performing the most work, and how long those tasks took them to complete. As a result, the small business owner was able to delegate tasks to other less-utilized employees, optimizing their resource utilization. Moreover, by tracking the time needed to complete projects, it gave them a window into seeing who are their most efficient employees, and what tasks are most time intensive. A CMMS system also allows small business owners to see what projects employees are working on or customers they are servicing that week, or even that day. Perhaps Joe has 15 large projects assigned to him that he's trying to move forward at the same time and needs help prioritizing them, while Kelly only has 2 small customers that she's servicing. Use the CMMS platform to spread projects around so the workload is more evenly distributed.
  
  
• • Keep important shared documents in a central location. Use the CMMS platform to store important information that needs to be shared amongst your team and kept in a central repository. For instance, make notes for the rest of the team at your florist shop that Mr. Jones only wants large red roses and that his wife is allergic to Baby's Breath or leave step-by-step instructions for where to check the wiring for problems at Mr. Lee's house.
  
  
• • Clean your inbox. How many e-mails in your inbox are from members within your own organization about projects, tasks or communication about how to best service customers? Utilizing a CMMS system allows for more seamless organization of vital communications and information from both internal and external parties.
  
  

These are a few of the many ways small businesses can benefit from implementing CMMS systems. Are you a small business owner who uses a CMMS system? I'd love to hear from you about how it's used in your organization Tweet to me @meredithcrawfo.

4 Things Your Digital Productivity Tool Needs To Address For Your Business Before You Implement

How does a business determine which digital productivity tools are right for their organizational needs? There are four factors that come in play and here's what businesses need to consider and the bottom lines of each factor when making that decision:

Users – It may seem trivial, but "Who is this tool for?" is one of the most important questions to consider before selecting a digital productivity tool. Is this tool primarily for the supervisors to help them manage their reportees? To aid the workers in carrying out their duties? For the customers? For the accounting/finance department? Are there other stakeholders will be involved with the tool, either directly or indirectly?

Furthermore, are the primary users of the tool the same as the tool's primary benefactors? Here, the distinction is made between intent and user. For example, a supervisor may want to implement a digital productivity tool to streamline the approval process, but it might be their reportees–the workers–who primarily log-in and use the tool.

Bottom line: The productivity tool in question should offer the features attractive to the primary benefactor but offer an ease of use attractive to the tool's primary users.

Process – When used appropriately, digital productivity tools improve an organization's process(es). Beyond asking "What current process (or task) are we trying to improve?" and "How should it be improved? Should it be simplified? Automated? Digitalized? Delegated?" consider other processes and tasks that support the key process identified here. It can be helpful to draw out the full process here, including the supporting processes and tasks. Now with a view of the full picture, ask what processes or tasks can be automated? Re-envisioned? Simplified? An organization functions much like a jigsaw puzzle, and when one piece is changed, it paves the way for the pieces surrounding the transformed piece to also change.

For example, a department trying to streamline the workflow of who is doing what, when to better utilize their resources, with the right tool can also digitize–even automate–other supporting processes, such as obtaining supervisor approval and billing the customer.

Bottom line: The productivity tool should offer the functionality to facilitate the holistic process improvements desired by the organization.

Cost – Above and beyond the question "Does this tool fit within the budget?" consider the cost implications for scaling this tool across your growing organization. Is it priced per seat, so as your organization grows, there will be an additional cost for each new hire or do user seats come bundled together in different price tiers? How does the price per seat in the bundled option compare to the pay-per-seat option? Paying per seat could drive the cost of the tool up outside of the budgeted amount quickly as your organization grows, but if you only have a limited number of users, this could be cheaper than paying for a large bundle of seats, only to have many of them go unused. On the flip side, if you have a large organization with many users, purchasing a bundle of seats could save your organization a tidy sum of money.

Additionally, would this new tool consolidate or replace any of the current tools in use? Does it integrate with your current productivity tools, or would you need to acquire additional tools to achieve your goals? For instance, if streamlining the handoff between operations and billing is a goal, and a productivity tool enables the operations team to invoice customers directly–eliminating the need to go through accounting – but the tool only integrates with QuickBooks, but the organization currently uses Quicken, the cost of moving to QuickBooks or creating a custom integration with Quicken must be considered in the cost of the new productivity tool.

Bottom line: The pricing for the tool should fit within the organization's growth model and financial constraints.

Added Value – The final point of consideration is "What added value should the digital productivity tool provide?" Beyond making your workforce more productive by streamlining processes, a digital productivity tool should provide additional value in the form of meaningful insights into the organization. What analytics would your organization find most useful? Is it additional analytics into processes or workforce? Customer support requests? What data is your organization currently missing that would further optimize processed? What insights are needed to make better decisions?

Bottom line: Select a productivity tool that can provide meaningful insights to further improve its processes.

There are many good digital productivity tools on the market today. Consider these four factors in your evaluation process to determine the best match for your organization's needs.

You Can Lead a Horse to Digital Transform but You Can't Make Them Digitally Transform

Digital transformation: more and more businesses are throwing this term around and an increasing amount are talking about its pitfalls. Notable contributors to the Harvard Business Review like Stefan H. Thomke and Markus Hammer have even gone so far as falling just short of discussing the fundamental problem of why high-tech tools alone cannot transform a business. What it comes down to is simple: a business must be ready to change if they are going to adapt a new tool.

According to a post from Hammer and his research team, the effectiveness of a tool to transform operations stems from “how people use [the tool], particularly if they can use it to amplify longstanding skills and expertise,” meaning the best tools help people in an organization do more of what they do best. Additionally, Thomke points out that to make progress in transforming operations, the tool “must be integrated into systems and routines that are already in place.” Thus, if using a tool falls too far outside of current processes, its adaptation will be an arduous process with an increased chance of failure. Charles Duhigg explains in his book, Power of Habit, it is easier to change an existing habit if there is something familiar on the beginning and the end than it is to create a new one.

Transforming a company digitally requires more than selecting a tool that is congruent to the company's current processes. As Thomke explained, “companies can't unlock the full potential of new tools unless they find new ways to operate.” Although the new digital tool cannot fall too far outside of the company's current processes for it to be adapted, changing how a company operates may be required to use a tool to its fullest. Adapting Salesforce is one example of this. Although the platform captures many of the key tasks salespeople are accustomed to (working off leads lists, updating spreadsheets with actions/dates/next steps), teams often find that they need to communicate with each other differently and streamline their current digital communication vendors (ticketing system, email provider, web chat tool) in order to take full advantage of the power the platform offers.

Hammer's team takes this point a step further, conceding that successful transformation “requires a massive effort involving many changes at once, mostly centering on […] role-modeling of new behavior, the transparency of communication, the fostering of new capabilities.” When we first moved onto a work management system, many employees struggled to log projects and keep the system updated. Adapting the tool took several key people in the organization diligently updating the system and reminding others to do so as well. This fostered communication about how the tool would be used, and led to changes in workflows and processes.

Duhigg lays out a 3-step habit loop of cue-routine-reward, as he demonstrates that the most effective habit transformations occur when the cue and reward phases remain the same, but only the routine phase is changed. Within the context of operational transformation, the “routine” phase can be thought of as “operational processes.” Changing a habit routine, he adds, is only possible when an individual believes change is possible– which often requires the help of a group. An extreme example of this in practice is the brand transformation Domino's underwent in 2010. In this transformation, they not only overhauled their pizza, but also improved their operations, cleaned up their franchisees, and improved their service. As this relates to our organizational example, operational transformation will be most successful when the operations team has the support of the broader organization.

Want to get your organization on the same page? Click here to start a free 30 day trial.

WorkStraight introduces recurring work order tasks

Now you can set recurring work order tasks with due dates when creating work orders. This new feature will allow you to schedule preventative maintenance, ongoing recurring tasks, or any scheduled repeating work related to your work order.

Another new feature is the ability to add work order due dates to any user calendar when creating a work order. In addition, you now have the option to set what time the work is to be completed by on the due date.



Keep in mind that your "customers" logged in via Outside Access are not exposed to these options when they submit work orders. These new features give you more control over your own workflow and adds a new layer of work visibility for your users. Want to give WorkStraight a try? Click here to start a free 30 day trial.

Your "customers" with login access will now receive new notifications

Your "customers" that have been granted login access (or clients, contractors, sales leads - you control what they are called in the software), will now receive notifications when work orders are approved. They must be the customer on the work order to receive this notification. This is in addition to receiving notifications when the work order is created, when new messages are added, and when the work order is closed.

To allow those you service to login and track their work orders, Outside Access must be enabled for your WorkStraight company account by an administrator. Simply login, click on "Settings", then click on "Outside Access".



This new enhancement will automatically increase workflow visibility for those you serve. Don't have a WorkStraight account yet? Click here to start a free 30 day trial.

Add your workers to WorkStraight, even if they don't use a computer

Sometimes you have workers that don't use a computer in their day-to-day functions. These workers could be janitorial staff, roofers, laborers, etc. Now you can add these users to your WorkStraight account. When adding a new user, you control whether to give the user login access. Once these users are added to the platform, they are instantly activated and you can assign work and tasks to these users as normal. You will be able to run, download, and print reports that include users with and without login access.



This new feature will allow you to increase visibility of the work in your organization. Gain greater workflow insights. Don't have a WorkStraight account? Start your free 30 day trial.

New features to help you get work done

Now you can create custom dropdown fields to display when creating work orders! Give users and those you service custom options to choose from when submitting work orders. Users with Administrator permissions can login and go to Settings->Customize WorkStraight to create custom dropdown fields.



Need to print a summary report of every work order, for any timeframe? Now you can! Just go to Reports->All Work Orders Report, select date range, then click on the "Print Summary" button.

Did you know that your WorkStraight account can be used to manage work across multiple facilities, multiple regions, and multiple countries across the globe? WorkStraight was built to be powerful enough for large organizations and scalable enough for small teams and individuals to grow with.

Always helping you get work done! Need a WorkStraight account? Click here to start your free trial.

Introducing fine-tuned control

Now control specific user access and auto-notifications! Now you can customize what each user has access to (dashboard, work orders, reports, customers, company settings, etc), and what auto-notifications they receive in WorkStraight. Simply disable or enable as you see fit! There are also new auto-notifications available for invoices, customers, assets, and more.

There are no more pre-defined access levels such as Administrator, Manager, Associate, or Guest. Now, you simply select what the user can do or can't do.



Now you can give specific WorkStraight access to other users in your organization. Set specific access for everything - even work orders (example: access to the user's work orders OR all work orders OR no work orders access), and set auto-notification level decoupled from specific access (example: auto-notify when ANY work order is closed, created, or updated). Maybe you have an outside contractor and you want them to use WorkStraight to manage a service request? Now you can! Maybe you want someone in your accounting department to receive all WorkStraight billing reminders, but not give access to other parts of WorkStraight? You can do that as well. The same goes for other sections of the WorkStraight software: Customers, Calendar, Invoices, Assets, Reports, Company Settings, Billing, and Company Directory. Use WorkStraight as you see fit!

Your customers with login access (Tracker permission level) are not affected by these new features. Your "Outside Access" workflow will continue to function as normal.

You or another administrator should go to Settings->Manage Users, select user, then click the Edit User button for each user to customize access and auto-notifications. You will update the "Access and Auto-Notify" fields for each of your users. To customize for yourself, just go to Settings->My Info.

Our goal is to help you get work done! Need a WorkStraight account? Click here to start your free trial.

Introducing Asset Management

Introducing WorkStraight Asset Management! To enable "Assets", go to Settings->Customize WorkStraight->Assets Settings. Now just click on Assets on the left navigation menu to add your assets. You can also upload a csv file of your assets.



Now you can manage and track assets used on work orders. These assets on work orders can be managed by simply clicking on "Manage Assets". WorkStraight will keep track of your inventory level and non-physical assets can be marked as intangible.



Also, new reports for assets, invoices, and customers are in development and will be released in the coming weeks. We at WorkStraight are constantly working to add new features to help you get work done. Need a WorkStraight account? Click here to start your free trial.

New improvements to your reports

We have made new improvements to WorkStraight reporting! A new report is available in your account, the User Login report. This report will display your users most recent login and login times. This will allow those with administrator and manager permissions to quickly view the last time users logged in and out of the WorkStraight software.

In addition to the new report, now every relevant report can be filtered by start date and end date. We have done away with graphical data reports in favor of tabular data reports. This helps to make your work data clearer, concise, and more actionable.

Finally, the User Productivity report is now downloadable. This report displays how many work orders have been assigned and closed per user. The report also includes how many hours reports on those work orders and the average days to close the work orders.

Reports are only available to users on paid plans and free trials. Need to sign-up for a WorkStraight account? Click here to start your free trial.

Now you can import customers and invoices from QuickBooks Online

We are excited to announce QuickBooks integration with WorkStraight! Now users can securely import their existing QuickBooks customers and invoices directly into WorkStraight with one click. Users must have an active account with QuickBook Online to use this new feature.

This allows customers to better integrate their pre-existing data with WorkStraight to give even more visibility and control to work order management.

This feature is only available to users on paid plans and free trials. Need to sign-up for a WorkStraight account? Click here to start your free trial.

Coming soon: QuickBooks integration

We want to notify our customers that we are currently in the process of preparing to release QuickBooks Online integration with WorkStraight. This will allow users to import customers and invoices from QuickBooks.

This user requested functionality will allow customers to better integrate their workflow with WorkStraight to give even more visibility and control to their work and service management.

This feature will only be available to users on free trials or paid plans within WorkStraight. Need to sign-up? Click here to start your free trial.

Remote Integration will now be called "Outside Access"

We have changed the name of our Remote Integration solution to Outside Access. This small change makes it more plain to non-technical users.

Outside Access is our secure hosted solution (included with paid plans) that makes it easy for those you service to submit work orders to you. Individuals that submit work orders via Outside Access become customers on the work orders they submit.

Individuals will automatically receive an account with tracker level permissions that will grant login privileges and access to their work orders. Also, your existing users can submit work orders via Outside Access as well.

Those with tracker level permissions cannot view the dashboard upon login, but are landed on the work orders screen. These individuals can only view work orders where they are the customer and cannot view other tools.

Use Outside Access to create a convenient workflow for those you service and for your team.

To enable, login and click on "Settings", then click on "Outside Access". Need to sign-up? Click here to start your free trial.

New reports available

We have added a new downloadable report to the Reports section of WorkStraight. The new report is called the "All Work Orders" report. This will allow you to download a report of all your company's work orders and tasks in .csv format to open in MS Excel, Google Docs, OpenOffice Calc, LibreOffice Calc, or another spreadsheet program.

In addition to this report, we have also added a "User Productivity Report" that shows user productivity within a specified timeframe...

We are always focused on bringing more features to WorkStraight to help you in your day to day work.

Now you can download work orders and reports in .csv format for MS Excel, OpenOffice, LibreOffice, etc

Users can now download individual work orders and individual reports as csv files (comma separated values). This useful new feature allows the user to open their csv file in spreadsheet programs such as MS Excel, LibreOffice Calc, OpenOffice Calc, etc.

The new download capabilities are available for users on any of our paid plans. Free users and soon-to-be users can try out all the features of WorkStraight with a new shiny free 30 day trial (no card required). Free users, just login and go to Settings->Account Management->Change Plan. Grazers and soon-to-be-users can just go here to get your free trial.

We are constantly adding new features and functionality to WorkStraight. Our goal remains the same: to help you get work done!

New features on the way

We got some new features coming your way this week:

- Users will be able to download work order data as .csv files. This will allow you to open your work orders in MS Excel.

- Users on paid plans will be able to upload files up to 10MB.

These new features will add more flexibility and help you get MORE work done.

New features for administrators

Here at WorkStraight we are always exploring new ways to make your life easier. In that regard, we are happy to announce some new features for users with administrator level permissions:

- Now users with administrator or manager permissions can resend a user's Login ID and Password with one button click. Option will display when managing users.

- Users with administrator or manager permissions can resend a user's verification email if it gets misplaced or deleted. Option will display if the user needs to verify their email address.

- Deleted users can now be reactivated or permanently deleted. Deleting a user permanently will also free up the user's email address for re-use.

Just login and go to Settings->Manage Users to access all the above features.

- If you are on the free plan (1 user plan), you can now upgrade to a new monthly plan and automatically receive a free 30 day trial of your new plan.

Just login and go to Settings->Account Management->Change Plan.

These new features will help centralize and simplify supporting the WorkStraight users in your company.

Keeping your team on point

We all drift away from our tasks sometimes. You know how it goes: start off the first day excited about getting your project done. By day three you are still productive but less enthused. By day seven, your mind is wondering about the next project. Well keep this in mind: every member of a team is responsible for the others, that's why it's called a team.

Here at WorkStraight.com we discovered that communication and task updates are the keys to keeping everyone active and involved on projects. For instance, we use WorkStraight when working on projects (yes, we use our own tools), and everytime an update is made to a project/task/work order/ a notification with a custom task message is sent to whoever is assigned to the project. The notification appears on screen while in WorkStraight and/or is sent instantly via email. This keeps everyone in the loop on every step of progress and in the case of email notifications - it automatically creates a repository of project information organized by date and time in additon to this information inside of your WorkStraight account.

When team members consistently know what everyone else is doing and why, it motivates all team members to take ownership of their own tasks. Who wants to be the one team member slacking and losing focus on his/her work? If everyone else is keeping project and task updates flowing, no team member wants to stand out like a sore thumb by not having task updates of their own to send.

Automated workflow communication should always be a part of your project flow. By using WorkStraight, productivity AND accountability can be enhanced for your team.

Don't be the GoBots, be the Transformers

Did you know that GoBot action figures (made by Tonka) hit U.S. shelves 5 months before Transformer action figures (made by Hasbro) in 1984? Initially GoBots sold well, but soon they were overtaken in sales and popularity by the Transformers. Why did that occur? Well, I can give a very complex answer about the economics involved in the peace of mind received from a child happily playing in his/her room quietly...but that's another story.

Truth is, the Transformer line of toys continued to evolve design-wise and biographically (there were some cool back stories). Compared to Transformers, GoBots seems archaic and dull. Most importantly, GoBots were a stagnant line. You didn't see the type of new design introductions like you seen with the Transformers (think DinoBots). GoBots simply became known for looking crappy in comparison, here is a good example.

So the point that I am trying to make is this; if your business is first to innovate or first to market - your business has an even weightier requirment to stay one step ahead of the competition. Your competitors can simply mimic your innovation and try to improve on it. Eventually they may overtake you. However, if you continue to push the envelope, keep improving, and pursue a culture of innovation - you too can be around long enough to make bloggers wax poetic decades after your launch!

New version of WorkStraight is available

New look and feel, plus many new features that are based on feedback from our users. Click here to view list of features

Happy December: More screenshots of the new WorkStraight

Just want to share some more screenshots of the new WorkStraight work management software...