Every once and a while, we get to do something small and wonderful that really has an impact for some of our customers.  Today was one of those days.  I’m proud to introduce Simple In/Out’s support for Panic’s Status Board.

Status Board is a wonderful product from the folks at Panic.  It’s an iPad app meant to display vital business information on your iPad, TV, you name it.  The app is seductively simple yet powerful, exactly what we at Simply Made Apps like to strive for. In fact, Panic has been an inspiration to me personally for some time.  Not a day goes by when I’m not using their wonderful Transmit app for the Mac for all my SFTP needs.  

To use Simple In/Out on your Status Board, we’ve created a new link right inline with our other Public Links.  If you’re on your iPad and have Status Board installed, you can simply tap this link (located under Settings -> Company Settings), and it will instantly launch Status Board and add it automatically.

Between Full Screen Mode, our new Windows 8 app and now Status Board integration, we have a lot of great options for seeing your Simple In/Out data on a display near you.  We have one more surprise up our sleeves very soon that will add even more to our Simple In/Out family.

We have had several requests over the last few months to restrict some of the information available to users, namely the 7-day history. While there isn’t a ton of private information within Simple In/Out, we can understand why some users would want this information private. So we are happy to announce today that we have added a setting to restrict the visibility of the 7-day history. Of course this can only be changed by admin users, but the history can be changed to be visible to Everyone, Admins only, or no one. By default, the history setting is set to Everyone, but you are free to set it to a level appropriate for your users. You can find the new change today under Settings—>Company Settings—>History Visible To. 

Thanks to everyone that requested this new feature. While it might not be needed for everyone, it is always nice to have the option if the need arises. We love hearing from our valued customers and users. You are what makes Simple In/Out great. So keep the suggestions coming.

Today, we’re excited to announce that Simple In/Out has arrived for Windows 8!

We’ve received lots of requests for this over the last year or so.  Some folks wanted a widget to avoid having to load the website.  Some were interested in making life easier for admin users and receptionists.  Some still were just looking for more cool stuff from us.  We think this release is a great opening salvo.

We’ve been working directly with Microsoft to get this into the Windows Store for the past few months (many don’t know that Microsoft has a large campus right here in Fargo).  They’ve been great.  A special mention to Sheila Wamre and Jed Bontjes for helping me with the final push.

For our 1.0 release, we kept things simple.  We support viewing the board, updating your status via manual and one click Quick Picks, and viewing other users.  Admins can update the statuses of their other users.  We support landscape, portrait and the convenient Snap View for those that would like the board open all day.  

Go check it out on the Windows Store.

How Did You Come Up With Your Business Name?

We are very happy to announce a brand new update for our iOS users today. With this update, users can now upgrade their subscription plan directly from the app. This should be a great new way for users to try out our service with more users. We put a lot of time and energy (and loads of testing) into this build to make sure that this new feature not only works great for new users, but also doesn’t interfere with existing users that may have subscribed from our website.

If you have already subscribed via the website, nothing has changed for you. Since we can’t update the website subscriptions from the app, you will be directed back to the website to make any changes to your account. New users may decide whether to upgrade from the website or via Apple In-App Purchase. There are benefits to both. We have itemized receipts online and the ability to see your billing history going back as long as you are a customer. Purchasing In-App is very quick and easy and doesn’t require you to enter a payment method.

Hopefully having multiple options of payment will benefit our users and give new users a way to try out our larger plans without having to visit the website and mess with credit cards and entry forms.

This update also has some new bug fixes that started to pile up behind this large release. We absolutely love working on Simple In/Out and hope this update is just what our users were looking for.

Here at Simply Made Apps, the new features are coming fast and furious.  We have some really wonderful things in the hopper.  Tonight, hot on the heels of our new Daily Timeline report comes another big feature request from our users:  Public Links.

Many of our customers have a need to show the Simple In/Out board to folks who aren’t logged in.  Maybe this is for display purposes outside their control.  For some, they want to integrate the board right into their company intranet, wiki or SharePoint.  Other customers want to provide their in/out statuses to people who will never be members and require logins.

To solve this, we’ve created a new way to generate Public Links.  These links can be shared with anyone or embedded anywhere without the need to log in and authenticate with our system.  They provide the same look at the board that you receive inside Simple In/Out, complete with groups, filtering, sorting and auto-refreshing all supported.

To create your own Public Links, simply have an admin user navigate to Settings -> Company Settings on simpleinout.com.  On this page is a brand new section called Public Links that will look like this:

By clicking Generate Links, you’ll be presented with two new links you can distribute as you see fit.  They will look like this:

The first link will show you the standard board.  The second link will immediately place you in our new Full Screen Mode.  You can still switch between the two views anytime, but this beginning place makes integration even easier.

Once these links are generated, they will work for anyone and anywhere you share them.  For an extra bit of security, you can click the button to “Refresh Links” if you wish.  By doing this, you’re old links will stop working and you’ll be presented with new links.  This will allow you to kill your Public Links if they have fallen into the wrong hands.

We believe Public Links really strikes a good balance between ease of use and security.  This is the first of hopefully several enhancements to make integrating Simple In/Out even easier.  We can’t wait to show you what we have in store next.

After a long period of starting and stopping, I’m pleased to be able to introduce the Daily Timeline report for Simple In/Out.  This feature has been in the back of our minds for over a year now, but just today we’ve finally released this to the public.  

The Daily Timeline answers a frequent request we’ve received, which was to see a more granular view of your users’ in/out activity.  Our other report (which we’ve now renamed as Time Card) offers an easy way to see how many hours a user was IN.  Many of our users wanted to know more.  When were their users coming to the office?  When was their lunch break?  When did they knock off for the day?  The Daily Timeline is our first attempt to help answer those questions.

Under the same Reports link as our other report, the Daily Timeline features a similar interface.  Simply pick a date to run, a group (if you have groups) and click Run Report.  You’ll be presented with a line chart for every user that shows their in/out status changes.  Here’s a taste:

When the line is up and blue is shown, the user is IN.  When the line is low, the user is OUT.  We also placed little dots signifying every status update.  Those dots can be hovered over to see the exact time and message the user left when changing statuses.

Like our other report, the Daily Timeline has an export to CSV option that will print out all the users’ raw in/out data for the given date.  This has also been a big feature request from users who would love to parse the data themselves.  

If that isn’t enough, there is one more thing.  Starting today, all users now have access to reports for the first time.  Previously, non-admin users could never see the reports.  Starting today, non-admins can see reports but only for themselves.  This answers another big feature request, which was allowing users to monitor their own in/out history easier than the 7 day history that we already offer.

I hope everyone feels the Daily Timeline was worth the wait.  I’m personally excited to have this one out the door and can’t wait to dig into the next new feature.  As always, please email us your feedback by using contact [at] simpleinout [dot] com.

Startup Weekend Fargo

Last night, Simple In/Out received a big improvement to it’s Full Screen Mode.  The Full Screen Mode, available for some time already, is a great way to view just the board and avoid the logged-in user’s data.  While it was good, it’s an order of magnitude better now.

We focused on adding a few awesome new features:

• The colors are now inverted, which looks great from a distance and saves on energy.
• The fonts are now much bigger, and get bigger when you have more HD space to work with.
• We optimized the layout to fit 3 users wide on the popular HD sizes, so you can fit a lot more users on the screen.

Also included in this update is the change of the “out” dot on the website to a rounded square instead of a circle.  This is a subtle change for our colorblind users, who can now more easily distinguish in from out.

To accomplish these updates, much of Simple In/Out is now Retina-screen aware, so it looks stunning on recent iPads and MacBooks.  It’s also faster, as we’ve removed a lot of redundant images.

One final bonus, the new Full Screen Mode looks wonderful on the iPad.  We’ve received requests for better support for users who wanted to place an iPad on a desk to show the board.  Now with our new Full Screen Mode, an iPad for display looks awesome (and updates automatically every 5 minutes).  Here’s a quick, albeit blurry look, from my iPad last night.

M.O. Interview with Bill Burgess