Review: Quick Access, Auto Join and Shadow Viewer Modules

Good guys from USWebStyle company have been really busy in a last couple of months and have created six new modules for activeCollab. They will be all presented here, on our blog, as support for their efforts and contribution to our community.

Today we're presenting first three modules developed by USWebStyle:

1. Quick Access

The small icon that appears on top of the logo in the header of your activeCollab is link to Quick Access tool. Placed here, it’s always available from any page of your system. By clicking on it, a form that will list all your Projects on the right side and available project objects on the other appears. Choose a proper project and object type, you’ll get to that page in no time.

Basically Quick Access is much like Quick Add tool that is a part of activeCollab and you can use it as a shortcut to your favorite project tab and start working. Big helper if your connections is slow.

Price: $9.99

2. Auto Join

If you wish to point your client directly to the project you’re working for them, without them seeing the Dashboard, this module will enable you to do so. It will lead people straight to the desired project right after they log in to activeCollab.

Set it up on users profile page, in the options many, and determine the exact project where user will land. You can even set the period for how long that person will be redirected here. Also, you can set it up to be a permanent destination for that user, if you wish.

Price: $25.00

3. Shadow Viewer

This module will empower you to log in as any other user and see if you have set the Role and Permissions for that user in the right manner. You can check what User will be able to see and make sure you haven’t give them access to anything that shouldn’t be visible.

You’ll find Shadow Viewer option on the User’s page under the Company profile and by clicking on this button, you’ll be in a different environment.

Price: $45.00

All of these Modules are designed to follow activeCollab graphical identity completely. Quite handy and easy to use, each of the mentioned tools will make your work in activeCollab even more pleasant and enjoyable.

Posted on: 2010-07-16 4:00

Comments

2010-07-18 3:56

These are all solutions to concerns mentioned on the ac forum. One way to see this is that this developers found the needs in the forums, solved them and now they are ready to make money (cool). The other one seems as if ac will not listen to its own community and will expect users to pay others for what many of us think would have been “free upgrades”.
I understand upgrades and improvements are not the same. I get it. It’s just that I thought ac would really improve itself from the forum requests and be offered as an included upgrade instead of just offering us to pay a lot more for 3rd party plugins from vendors we don’t know.

2010-07-18 4:02

In regards of my last comment I have these inquiries: is this how it is going to be? Ac won’t significantly improve and will just offer bug fixes and some minor features on upgrades? The only way users will see an ac upgrade as significant will be through a paid 3rd party plugin?

Ilija Studen

2010-07-20 1:08

Hello,

Simple answer to your questions is – activeCollab is going to have new releases with significant improvements and will not reply solely on 3rd party modules for future development. You can see here that system has been developing constantly for the past three years.

While some releases are incremental (a couple of months of work and than release), some are a bit bigger and require way more work (a year or so). Because of that, there’s no promised frequency for new releases that have bigger feature improvements. Some will be out in months, some (as activeCollab 3) will take longer to hit the stable version.

2010-07-20 3:14

Thanks for the answer Ilija. You understand basing a business on a tool requires some level of confidence and we prefer not to scatter our trust on many developers since we won’t know if all of them will always be coordinated to deliver the best overall experience. We rather get it from one source (the main source) and it is difficult to see improvements that, while they look great, they are not necessarily a smart choice to make (business wise).
We are expecting big improvements from AC.

Ben

2010-07-21 7:19

With the release of “Auto Join”, does that mean you no longer intend to release the new setting that Goran announced – Send clients directly to project dashboard on login

Ilija Studen

2010-07-21 9:10

Hello Ben,

Goran did not promise any release date for that particular feature. It will be included when ready and well tested, but we can’t promise any release date at the moment.

Regarding the module question, we don’t have any problem with including a feature even when third party module that does that exists if we see the fit.

Ben

2010-07-21 9:13

Thanks for letting me know. I’m glad to hear that this feature is still on the roadmap!