info@hand Roadmap
 

Recent and Future Releases:

info@hand Release 6.1: Jul '09 [Shipping Now!]

  • Significantly Faster - Up to Twice as Fast on Many Screens. Optimized for Both High Latency and Low Bandwidth Situations. Also supports Zend Server and APC.

  • Improved Compatibility With Web Standards and Browsers (Safari 4, Firefox 3, IE 8)

  • Improved Integration With External Email Clients (e.g. Outlook, Google Email)

  • Integration with Google Contacts: 1-Way info@hand => Google

  • Integration with Google Maps

  • Integration with Google Docs: 2-way

  • Vacation Planner & Sick Days Record Integrated with Calendar and Employee HR Records. Tracks Employee Vacation and Sick Day Totals and Entitlement Automatically

  • Last Activity Date tracking for Leads, Contacts and Accounts automatically records date of last Note, Meeting, Email, Task or Call. New reports make it easy to see where you need to follow up.

  • Auto BCC Email Feature

  • Enhanced Bug Tracker: Supports Multiple Software Products, Each With Their Own Dropdown List of Versions

  • New Stocks Dashlet

info@hand Release 6.5: Feb '10

  • A completely new Dashboards module lets the user define any number of dashboard pages throughout their menu system. Each module Group (Today's Activities, Sales & Marketing, Order Management, etc..) can optionally have Dashboard pages as part of it, at the start or end of the group. A Dashboard page can display any combination of dashlets and/or charts, rather like a combined dashboard/today page in earlier versions. Dashboard pages may be one to four columns wide, with user-adjustable column width.

  • The new Delight theme offers a more 'modal' user experience (order management mode, customer service mode, ...) and key controls fixed at bottom of browser window so they are available even when scrolling.

  • A new Google/OpenSocial Gadgets dashlet allows most of the 170,000+ Google gadgets to be included on an info@hand dashboard as a dashlet. FaceBook, GMail, Google Talk, Twitter, Calculator, Horoscopes ... there's a gadget for that.

  • A new World Weather dashlet shows weather info from The Weather Channel for up to 10 cities. Local time may optionally be shown for each city as well.

  • New dashlets have been added for News Feeds and My Active Projects.

  • Support has been added for the Chrome browser from Google.

  • New Day Grid & Week Grid views have been added to the Calendar, which show calendar info for multiple users and meeting resources in an easy-to-read grid layout, making it simple to check for a good meeting time.

  • An enhanced editor has been added for editing HTML Emails and Templates, with better support for advanced formatting of text, better image management and spell checking.

  • An enhanced Help System has been added, with better layout of the information, better search capabilities, and better screen images.

  • System Search capabilities have been enhanced, including the search of additional modules, a switch to control matching only at the beginning of fields or anywhere in fields, plus a search control within most module dashlets.

  • A new Total Account History button on the History sub-panel of the Account detail view lets the user see all Account and related history merged into a single view.

  • A new check box has been added to each user’s Access Control screen, called Can See Product Costs. It controls if users can see product costs in the Quotes, Sales Orders and Invoices modules.

  • An Extended Price column has been added to the Quotes, Sales Orders and Invoices screens.

  • Two new check boxes have been added to the Company Information screen - Approve Booked Hours on Cases, and Approve Booked Hours on Projects. If they are not checked, users may book hours worked to a Case or Project Task and not have to get them approved before creating an Invoice.

  • The ability to assign one or more Categories to Contacts or Leads via Mass Update has been added.

  • System notification emails (such as “You have been assigned a new Lead”) may now be viewed and edited by the Administrator.

info@hand Self-Service Portal & eStore 3.7: Feb '10

  • Newsletter Registration Menu Option.

  • Update VirtueMart base to revision 1.1.2.

  • Enhancements to eStore Sync.

info@hand Finance for QuickBooks 2.0: Mar '10

  • Synchronisation of PO's, Bills, Outgoing Payments and Accounts Payable Balances to QuickBooks.

  • Synchronisation of info@hand Booking Categories to QuickBooks Service Items.

  • Enhanced Implementation Guide.

Zarafa Integration: Mar '10

  • info@hand Connector for z-merge framework.

  • Google Connector for z-merge framework.

  • SyncML Connector for z-merge framework.

info@hand Self-Service Portal & eStore 4.0: Jun '10

  • More attractive screen layout, menu system and screen layouts.

  • Downloads menu option, for downloading documents and software based on individual customer entitlement.

  • Ability for Clients to Pay Invoices Within the Self-Service Portal.

  • Support for CRM selected standard fields, and custom fields, to be displayed/edited in the Portal.

info@hand Release 7.0: Sep-Oct '10

  • Add screen form editor.

  • Metadata-driven Form Generation:

    • Support for per-field help text
    • Greater theme integration, to allow customization of the form display style
    • Support PDF generation of detail/edit views without parsing generated HTML
    • Update studio to graphically edit metadata-defined forms
    • Update existing modules, removing HTML templates

    • Update listviews, popups, subpanels and reports to use the same field rendering framework

  • Update Listviews:

    • Move Saved Search and Layout options into a popup, like dashlet configuration
    • Quickly select of number of displayed rows
    • Improve UI aspects of Team management (i.e. remove the second mass-update panel)

    • Merge reporting and listview generation, allowing the user to design complex custom filters for listviews.

  • Click-through for sub-panels

    • Implement a more advanced view for sub-panels, as a List View of related objects

    • Allows more rows to be displayed, as well as additional filter controls

  • Expenses module: File general business or Sales expenses, or link them to customer Cases or Projects. Includes optional approval cycle for expenses. Also invoice for them if on Cases/Projects. Tabular input page.

  • Timesheets module enhancements: Book time to general office activities and Sales, or link them to customer Cases or Projects. Provide an additional UI for time entry that more closely resembles a conventional timesheet.

  • Campaigns enhancement - reduce identification of campaign emails as SPAM.

  • Add Dynamic Target List definition: i.e.all Contacts where one or more conditions are true, plus all Leads where different conditions are true, etc... - so that as long as Contact/Lead/Target data is maintained accurately, you always know membership in the list is up to date.

  • Enhance Static target list management so that it is quick and easy to look to see if someone is on a specific list and remove them from it.

  • Stock Control Enhancements - If someone places an order and it doesn't ship right away, show that inventory as Committed. The Quantity Available field is reduced by that amount. Add Quantity on Order, Re-Order Quantity, Re-Order Level as fields for each product in the catalog. Add a re-order report, plus a dynamic screen for end of day ordering.

Past Releases:

info@hand Release 2.0: Jan '05 [Initial Release]

  • CRM - Accounts, Contacts, Leads, Opportunities Modules;

  • HR Module;

  • Calendar Module;

  • Dashboard Module - graphical view of business performance;

  • Documents Module;

  • Projects Module;

  • Administration Module; and

  • Company Directory Module.

info@hand Release 2.5: Mar '05

  • Service Contract module: Manages support contracts, sub-contracts, and products covered by them; also manages the renewal of support contracts;

  • Products module: Creates a product catalog organized by product types and categories; also tracks products covered by service contracts, business assets, sales inventory;

  • Emails module;

  • RSS News Feeds module;

  • My Portal module: Links to external web pages and applications via shortcuts or custom tabs;

  • Customizable fields - add, modify or remove fields, and their layout, in any module;

  • Module management - Admin can enable or disable each module from appearing in UI;

  • New charting engine based on Flash technology; and

  • Maintenance release for info@hand 2.0.

info@hand Release 3.0: Sep '05

  • Two-way email support - both Inbox and Outbox, plus user-defined email folders. Reads incoming email from one or more POP3 accounts defined for each user; 

  • Quotes Module: Prepare customer quotes from product catalog data;

  • PMI/Teams - user role management, with assignable read/write authorizations for each module and sub-panel, plus restrictions on data import/export capabilities;

  • Book resources for meetings - meeting rooms, projectors, TVs, etc...; and

  • Projects bar chart - showing forecast income for all projects by month for period chosen; 

  • Rolling 12 month horizontal stacked bar chart of Sales Won, Weighted Forecast (by probability), and Gross Forecast;

  • Reports: Initial key reports - User Activity, Quarterly Forecast, Customer Accounts, Partner Accounts, Detailed Forecast, Contact List, Account List; and

  • Merge with Sugar Open Source 3.0 (Marketing Campaign Management, Prospects).

info@hand Release 3.5: Dec '05

  • Custom Reports Module: For users to design and save their own reports;

  • TimeSheet Module: Allows users to record their time vs: jobs within projects tasks, and rolls up actual project costs.

  • Resource Utilization Management: For those managing a bench of resources providing professional services;

  • Full HTML Email Send/Receive for Each User; 

  • Import Product Catalog and Service Asset Register; and

  • Merge with SugarCRM Open Source 3.5.1g (HTML Email templates, Module Loader, module detail view display and navigation enhancements).

Outlook Plug-In 1.0: Mar '06

  • info@hand Outlook 2000/2003 Plug-in (powered by JRabbit) - Syncs your Outlook Contacts, Calls & Meetings with info@hand, sends Outlook emails into info@hand and links them to Contacts & Accounts (see details);

  • Free license for all info@hand users;

info@hand Release 3.6: Apr '06

  • Invoices Module - Convert quotes into Invoices, and see Invoices linked on Account Detail View. Also see account balances on Account List View;

  • Payments Processing - Allocate payments to invoices, print receipts & statements;

  • Lots of reporting enhancements, including automated emailing of scheduled report PDFs, improved support for custom fields, and Chart generation from Reports;

  • Many new Dashboard Charts have been added, and now there are multiple dashboards for Sales Service, Projects, Financials, plus your Personal Dashboard. Choose the charts you want to see and their display order, plus add charts from your reports;

  • Enhanced Role Management system is now based on an enhanced implementation of Access Control Lists, which adds hierarchical data access permissions, and data sharing within groups;

  • Product Assemblies are now supported throughout the Product Catalog, Quotes, Invoices, and Supported Products; 

  • Users may now duplicate projects complete with the project task list, to provide a project templating facility;

  • Enhanced product catalog for automatic calculation of annual support costs;

  • Automatic email reminders for overdue project tasks, and expired service contracts;

info@hand Release 4.2: Jun '06

  • New Forecasts module offers formal Sales Forecasting and Charting with Roll-up by Reporting Line, Quotas, % of Quota;

  • Enhanced Projects & Timesheets - supports multiple users booking time to common tasks;

  • Enhanced Quotes & Invoices modules - now offer support for multiple lines of taxes (including compound taxes such as Quebec PST), multiple discount levels, and price tuning by markup, margin or percent off list. Also displays and tracks GP and GP%;

  • Accounts now include standard Terms, Discount level & Shipping Provider, which set defaults when creating Quotes & Invoices;

  • Enhanced Campaign Management - improved target selection and results tracking;

  • Email Module adds IMAP Support, and Group Inbox capability;

  • Email-based workflow capabilities;

  • New Long Reach theme with 5-colour palette selector; and

  • Merge with SugarCRM Open Source 4.2. 

info@hand Mobile 1.0: Jul '06

info@hand Customer Portal 1.0: Sep '06

  • The info@hand Customer Portal offers integration with the Joomla Content Management System, for creating customer self-service portals;

  • Supports customer request for login credentials, & customer updating of their own name and address details;

  • Supports creation of customer information area, and file download area;

  • Supports customer creation, update, and status check of support Cases, and Software Bugs;

  • Supports customer participation in external Project website (extranet);

  • Supports FAQs;

  • Supports Customer Forum;

  • Included free with info@hand 4.2.2 and later.

info@hand Release 5.0: Jan '07

  • New Purchase Orders Module: Create PO's for suppliers, and apply outgoing payments to update Accounts Payable;

  • Timesheet Enhancements: Easy tracking and invoicing of time spent on Cases and Projects;
  • Email Enhancements: Spell-checker, full-text email search, more email retrieval options, automated email archiving, auto-responders, auto-completion of email addresses;
  • Support for Recurring Invoices: For businesses that send out regular monthly bills;
  • Calendar Enhancements: Consolidated Monthly Company Calendar screen with selectable modes for Appointments & Tasks, Project Resources, and Meeting Resources; Support for recurring meetings; Print PDF of My Day calendar - both appointments and tasks;
  • Enhanced Supported Product Workflow: Create Supported Products from Quote or Invoice, relate to new or existing Support Contract and/or Project; Also create supported products from Project, and invoice time, expenses and/or products from Project;
  • Bulk reassignment of Leads and Accounts to other users, including selectable types of all related data;
  • Ability to require approval for Quotes above configurable amount;
  • Personalized Today Tab: Your key data at a glance;

  • All Modules: Save personalized list views with filters;

  • Integrated forums: With discussion threads linked to common objects like Contacts, Accounts, Projects, Cases, etc..;

  • All-new Studio: For end user customization of the system, including adding/moving/removing/renaming fields, changing drop-down option lists, etc.. - with a new undo feature;

  • Enhanced Internationalization: With full UTF-8 support from data entry through to PDF;

  • Merge with SugarCRM Open Source 4.5. 

info@hand Release 5.1: May '07

  • Workflow automation support, to create your own custom-designed automated business workfows;

  • Addition of credit card transaction processing within the payments module;

  • New Marketing Events module with scheduled client email reminders, and user self-registration via the Customer Portal;

  • Email button in Leads and Contacts Mass Update Panel, to send email to all selected Leads or Contacts;

  • Multi-select Category field added to Leads and Contacts, to facilitate classifying Contacts and Leads for marketing and sales purposes;

  • Selection of business model - Business to Business (standard), or Business to Consumer (new option) - to optimize system operation for businesses that sell to individuals, not businesses;

  • Enhanced Internationalization Support: Address format selection on PDFs, to support a variety of international address formats; Also calendar mode selection for first day of the week - Sunday/Monday.

info@hand Finance 1.0 (QuickBooks Link): June '07

  • info@hand Finance is an optional module which continually synchronizes Account, Product Catalog, Invoice & Payment data with QuickBooks (via the QuickBooks Web Connector - QBWC), at intervals defined by the QBWC;

  • Compatible with info@hand 5.1 and later versions;

  • Compatible with both QuickBooks Pro and Enterprise; will not initially support QuickBooks Online Edition;

  • Licensed separately for On Demand or On Premise applications - see pricing here.

info@hand Mobile 1.1: June '07

  • With enhanced data sorting and filtering capabilities.

info@hand Release 5.2: October '07

  • Mail merge capability - using an RTF template file;

  • Automatic phone number formatting, to ensure smooth IP telephony operation;

  • Support for info@hand PBX 1.0, Customer Portal 2.0, and eStore 1.0;

  • Line item level discounts, and absolute discount amounts (as well as existing percentage discounts);

  • Assemblies can include discount lines;

  • Enhanced Group Inbox capability, with support for directing incoming email to standard and custom folders (such as Customer Support) within Group Inbox, plus auto-create of Cases via email;

  • New 'Test Mode' for data imports - instead of importing data, returns import CSV file with annotations on duplicates or other data quality issues;

  • Quote approvals option if gross profit percentage is lower than threshold value;

  • Create or add to campaign target lists using reports on Contacts and Leads.

info@hand Customer Portal 2.0: October '07

  • Customer self-registration for Marketing Events;

  • Customers can examine their Invoice and Payment history, and compare account balance with their own records;

  • Incorporates info@hand eStore 1.0.

info@hand eStore 1.0: October '07

  • Links info@hand product catalogue items into online e-commerce offering built using VirtueMart, within the info@hand Customer Portal framework;

  • Accepts customer orders and payments, and enters resulting invoices and payments into info@hand.

info@hand PBX 1.0: October '07

  • Integrates info@hand with the Trixbox Pro telephony application platform, based on Asterisk Open Source PBX software. Also supports Asterisk, Skype, and X-Lite.

  • Firefox plugin supporting click to dial and customer recognition popup for incoming calls. Internet Explorer plugin to follow.

info@hand Release 5.3: April '08

  • Knowledge Base module - single-click article creation from Cases, or use conventional detail and edit views; articles may be tagged for searching; binary files and info@hand Documents may be linked to articles; checkboxes control if articles may be seen by clients in the Customer Portal.

  • Forums module, with ability to subscribe to threads for notification of updates, user photos shown with each post, threads may be linked to most major items of information in the system. Forums dashlet provided as well.

  • Quote & Invoice enhancements - support for item group types - existing Product type, plus new Support and Services types.

  • New layout option for Quotes, Invoices and other financial PDFs the system can produce, supporting USA #10 window envelopes.

  • New Bills module and conversion of PO's to Bills.

  • Integration with the dimdim web meeting system.

  • Advanced PDF printing features for all list and detail view screens.

  • Mass export of Contact vCards, for Mac Address Book support.

  • Calendar day/week/month dashlet.

  • Campaign enhancements for Newsletters and Web-to-Lead Form generation, plus a new Quick Campaign feature for Leads and Contacts.

  • Service Case enhancements allow Service Parts to be linked to a Case, and subsequently to be automatically Invoiced.

  • Accounts module Mass Update panel enhancements enable an Email Template to be used to send an email with attached PDFs containing Statements and optionally all open Invoices, to multiple selected Accounts.

  • Shipping module, manages full or partial shipment of sales orders or invoices, links quantity shipped to each line of Invoices, generates Packing Slips, integrates with FedEx and UPS shipping and tracking systems, tracks product serial numbers, and decreases stock levels.

  • Receiving module, links quantity received to each line of Purchase Orders, links to Sales Order, and increases stock levels. Shipping and Receiving modules together add full inventory management to info@hand.

info@hand Customer Portal & eStore 2.5: March '08

  • Knowledge Base module - customer access to selected Knowledge base articles.

  • Menu options visible to unregistered visitors, Basic users and Full users may be selected within the CRBM admin screen.

  • eStore catalog sync now sync's large and small product images, plus short and long product descriptions.

  • eStore reflects CRBM data for quantity in stock.

  • eStore catalog sync now sync's Assemblies as well as Products.

info@hand Self-Service Portal & eStore 3.0: July '08

  • Move to a base of Joomla! 1.5x, VirtueMart 1.1.

  • Replace Simple Machines Forums with Fireboard.

info@hand Release 6.0: January '09

  • A completely new calendar module with more dynamic AJAX-based displays and operation. Click and drag to create a new meeting and set its duration. View all calendar-related information super-imposed on a single display, with optional filtering of Meeting, Call, Task, Project Task, and Event information. Also includes support for loading holiday packs - users can choose to see the public holidays for the region where they are located.

  • A new system for managing data access control within info@hand - Teams and Roles combine to manage User access to info@hand data with more flexibility and precision than ever before.

  • Mass invoicing for all Accounts of Cases and Projects with outstanding billable hours.

  • Support for Partner mode access within the Self-Service Portal - allowing sales channel partners to register new Leads, and check all Lead, Account, Opportunity and Invoice data associated with them in your info@hand system.

  • Added support for Safari browser.

  • Project Gantt Chart.

  • iCal synchronization.

  • Google Calendar synchronization: 2-way.

  • eStore Integration Enhancements - Product Catalog items support HTML product descriptions, two-level categories, product attributes.

  • Support for pre-paid blocks of support time on service sub-contracts, and tracking hours remaining.

  • Report on Sales Taxes collected by Invoice range.

  • Report on Gross Profit generated by Invoice range and by sales person.

  • Report on Projects' Profitability.

  • User may add multiple items to a quote/invoice at one time, via selected checkboxes on popup form.

  • Print multiple selected Invoices in a single operation.

  • Drop-shipment support for Purchase Orders.

  • New dashlets for Quotes, Sales Orders and Invoices.

  • Push-button copy of address information from an Account to selected Contacts at that Account.

  • Added client Phone/eMail information to Invoices and Packing slips to speed interactions with shipping suppliers.

info@hand Self-Service Portal & eStore 3.5: January '09

  • Add Partner Portal Capabilities - Partners can add new Leads, and review data on their Leads, Opportunities, Accounts and Invoices.

  • eStore Integration Enhancements - Sync Product Catalog items with HTML product descriptions, multi-level categories, product attributes.

info@hand Self-Service Portal & eStore 3.6: February '09

  • Changes from the older SOAP API to the new json API for enhanced performance.