Posts Tagged ‘Release’
November 14, 2008
We are in the heat of preparing a new release, which will be let out into the wild next week. The ups and downs of building a release are quite dramatic. I’ll focus on testing for this conversation. It is a funny set of emotions. In the beginning, you feel like kid opening presents for your birthday. After talking about new features for weeks, designing them, arguing about how the work, etc, you get your first glimpse of the actual new application and features. This part is really fun.
The next phase is when you get into testing. In the beginning, you find bugs but you get in a groove. The bugs are usually in the new stuff, so they are relatively easy to find. This part is good because you feel like you are really working.
The phase after this one is the toughest (the one we are in right now). The application is really shaping up, and it is much tougher to find bugs. On one hand, this is obviously a really good thing. For the tester, it is really boring and tedious. You search for things that are wrong and try to think of as many edge cases as you can. Every now and then, you get rewarded. As the days go by, it becomes harder to break things (again, a good thing).
Finally, you finish the testing phase and get ready to release the software. The excitement builds. We put up system notices letting our customers know. Then we go to sleep knowing there is a shiny new present that will be waiting the next day. In the middle of the night, the boys in Sweden do their magic and presto. This is the REALLY fun and exciting part. Hope this helps explain one small part of the software development process.
Tags:GroupSwim, Release, Software, testing, development, Test, QA, Quality, Quality-Assurance
Posted in CMC, GroupSwim, Methodology, Random, Technology | Leave a Comment »
November 7, 2008
As usual, we are hard at work preparing a new release. This one will come out the week of November 17th. This release is all about making site managers happier, and adding some fit and finish to other areas. The one after this will have something really new. Here is the list of features in the next release:
- Direct Add – this will enable site owners and managers to directly add users to the site versus sending them an email invitation. When the user is added, they will be in an unconfirmed state but can still get daily digests and other communication feeds. The manager will be able to influence all the profile settings
- Bulk Upload – you can also add users by uploading a CSV file with names and emails. This makes getting your site ramped up a snap
- User Profile Refresh – managers will be able to modify users profiles. This helps when they are added to the site or if they are not in the appropriate groups
- Mass Group Changes – managers can add or remove multiple people from multiple groups in one step. This is also important for LDAP/AD integration if you have it
- Content Linking – we are adding a feature where you can link to other content in the site from a single link box in the post form. For example, if you are in a wiki, you can add a link to a relevant discussion or file right from the post form using most recently used or even searching for it
- Watchlist Improvements – you can now watch files and wikis. Use a RSS feed or email alerts to stay on top of the content that is most important to you
- Wiki Feeds – we are adding “clumping” so when a single person makes multiple changes to a wiki page, they will be consolidated into one line item. We are also adding the change comment to the feed so you can see exactly what was done to the wiki page
- Videos – we are adding videos to help train users on wikis, files, discussions and watchlists. If the area is empty, a video will be waiting there for them to watch
- Tag navigation – we are adding a “All” tab to the tag navigation. When you click on a tag in the tag cloud or anywhere in GroupSwim, you’ll see a mixed sort of relevant wiki pages, discussions, emails and files
- Captcha – we are adding captcha on the invite page to eliminate any spam invites managers may be getting
- Reporting – we have started to add more reporting to the site. You can now click on someone’s profile and see their last contribution. Much more to come on this one
- API Support – way more to come on this one
As you can see, this is a heavy release. We are very excited to see it come out. Let us know what you think.
Tags:GroupSwim, Release, Preview
Posted in CMC, GroupSwim, Release | Leave a Comment »
September 17, 2008
We are very excited to announce a major new release of GroupSwim. This is another key piece in our strategy of creating comprehensive collaboration software for our business customers. The highlight of the release is an integrated wiki application. After using many other industry leading wikis in my career and researching for our design, I can tell you this is one of the best wikis you will ever use, hands down. Here are some of the wiki and release highlights:
- Integrated wiki
- WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor that is remarkably easy to use
- Robust access control permissions to configure who can edit specific wiki pages
- Insert capabilities including drag-and-drop tables, files and images, and widgets inside the wiki pages
- Wiki pages can be linked with your discussions and files across all groups
- Powerful version compare and recovery capabilities
- Redesigned home page for feed style information across all groups
- Hidden groups that are invisible unless user is member of group
- New email notification permissions let you tune who can send email notifications
- Improved auto-tagging capability
- Insert files and images directly into discussions and wiki pages
- Performance enhancements
- New system APIs to enhance integration
This event is a huge step for us. We have plently more to build, but the customer and press feedback on the previews we’ve given are nothing short of spectacular. Please let us know if you have any questions or comments. And, feel free to check the software out in our demo sites or create your own. Go GroupSwim!
Tags:collaboration, GroupSwim, Release, wiki, Wikis
Posted in CMC, GroupSwim, Release | 1 Comment »
September 11, 2008
As you probably know, we are gearing up for a major release of GroupSwim next week. I thought you might be interested in the things we do to prepare for this event.
- Testing, Testing, Testing – Did I mention we test? In all seriousness, it is the most important component of the process. Quality and customer success are critical, so we try to avoid any and all bugs. We also learn about the software by everyone pitching in on the testing process. We often tweak designs and the user interface based on what we learn. As good as our initial designs are, nothing trumps rolling up the sleeves and playing with the software. As someone who sells and demos GroupSwim every day, I find there is no better way to learn it. The engineering team takes the bugs we find and turns-around fixes overnight. We are a well-oiled machine, but it takes time and effort.
- Technical Tasks – Rolling out a major release involves important technical tasks. Once we take the system off-line to do the migration, we perform back-ups, checks, software migrations, queue-up requests, redirect URLs, and a host of other activities. Since GroupSwim is a SaaS application, it requires a different set of tasks (and mindset) than traditional software. We aren’t migrating one customer; we are migrating 1,000s. The engineering team does an amazing job in a very short time frame. We do mock go-lives and test with copies of production data to make sure we are as rigorous as possible.
- Training and Help – When we roll-out software of this magnitude, we update everything. The list of stuff we change includes but is not limited to:
- The website. This particular release will touch almost every page
- Marketing collateral
- Online help. This is a big task when we add so many features
- Seed content for new sites. These are the discussions, documents and wikis we put in every new site a customer creates to give them a running start
- Videos
- Update the Pool. This is our own customer community, so we put announcements, tips and tricks and other content on it
- Demo sites
- Marketing Activities – When we create software of this magnitude, we want to tell the world. Marketing takes a significant amount of effort. For starters, we do the following:
- Write and distribute press releases
- Email past and present users
- Reach out to bloggers and analysts
- Email campaigns to leads and contacts
Every time we release software, we learn something new. I’m giddy about this next one and look forward to a new stage in our company’s evolution.
Tags:GroupSwim, Release, Marketing, Software, testing, User-Interface, Training, Collateral, Website, Help
Posted in GroupSwim, Technology | Leave a Comment »
August 6, 2008
We are significantly upgrading GroupSwim in mid-September. The cornerstone of the release is an integrated wiki to round out our suite of collaboration features. The wiki includes the following:
- Updated WYSIWYG editor (replacing the current version used for discussions). The new editor includes more control over formatting including drag-and-drop table creation, multiple fonts and styles, integrated linking to connect with other site content, etc.
- Full page editing
- Dynamic table of contents
- Auto-tagging for wiki content
- Integrated search with other content types in GroupSwim
- Image insertion from computer or web
- Full versioning and history support
- Robust permissions to control who can author and edit wiki pages
- And much more
Right out of the gate, this will be one of the best, easiest-to-use wikis you’ve ever seen. We have much planned for future releases.
Tags:GroupSwim, Release, wiki, Preview
Posted in GroupSwim, Release | 2 Comments »
March 12, 2008
We are positively giddy about our next generation of GroupSwim that’s coming out in April. This release includes two game-changing technologies:
1) Files
GroupSwim will consume files of all types as new content. Our platform now integrates discussion and file-based knowledge seamlessly. Here are some sample screen shots:
A couple points of note:
- All files (PDF, word, powerpoint, excel, etc.) are automatically indexed and auto-tagged by GroupSwim making them discoverable and searchable.
- GroupSwim automatically identifies related files and discussions based on the content in the file. This helps when the user isn’t sure what they are looking for, which happens frequently.
- Version control is built-in and extremely easy to use.
- GroupSwim automatically determines the primary contributors to the file.
- File preview is built-in so the user doesn’t need to download the file unless they want it.
We are extremely excited about files as we turn the corner and become the collaboration platform we’ve been planning for months.
2) Semantic Search
The other big feature is Semantic Search. While we think our search is good today, come April, it is awesome. Semantic search does the following:
- Helps you widen or narrow your search by suggesting related terms, based on the semantic relationships with your search terms.
- Returns results for all variants of the search term, not just the one entered (e.g. bicycling, bicycle, bicycles); this is called stemming.
- Checks search terms for spelling errors and suggests corrections.
Naturally, everything is integrated into our group permissioning, email and RSS notifications, tagging, etc.
Wikis are next and will be out sometime this summer. We’ll keep you posted on our progress and welcome your comments and feedback.
Tags:Functionality, GroupSwim, Release
Posted in GroupSwim, Release, Technology | Leave a Comment »
