We’ve always been proponents of placing your in/out board everywhere. This is why we offer apps for phones, tablets, desktop computers, and even televisions. Your Simple In/Out board is only useful if it comes with you.

We’ve supported seeing your Simple In/Out status updates within Teams for years. This is a great way to see updates without having to pull up Simple In/Out on your computer or phone. We’ve had requests to add more features to our Teams integration, but it hadn’t been a burning priority. With the COVID-19 pandemic gripping the world, priorities in the workplace have shifted and with that shift comes more features for Microsoft Teams.

Today, we’re announcing version 2.0 of our Microsoft Teams add-on which now supports viewing your Simple In/Out board right inside of Microsoft Teams. With a few clicks, you can have a Simple In/Out tab with access to your list of users and their current statuses. This board updates automatically (just like our web board), so you’re never more than a click away. You can search, sort, and view groups right from inside Teams.

You can install our Microsoft Teams Add-on Today.

If demand continues, we’ll consider more features for Microsoft Teams. If you’re a Microsoft Teams user, shoot us an email and let us know what would be valuable for you.

TLDR: It’s Bright!

This week we announced French support for Simple In/Out. In doing so, we added French to every app with the notable exception of Simple In/Out Desktop. While some may infer that we are abandoning desktop apps, the exact opposite is true. We’re doubling-down on desktop.

Rewind to 2013, a time when Simple In/Out is just 2 years old. Microsoft has just shipped Windows 8 with its polarizing user interface. We were called to a meeting at Microsoft’s offices to discuss building a desktop version of our Simple In/Out client. The timing for us wasn’t great, but we could see the potential. We set out to ship a first-class Windows 8 app with the help of Microsoft and a third-party design firm.

When we launched Simple In/Out for Windows, it was everything Microsoft wanted a Windows app to be. We built atop their latest APIs, their carousel interface, their look and feel, and their ideas for how to manage windows/preferences/etc.

The trouble began the moment Microsoft starting walking away from their Windows 8 decisions. Suddenly, the platform we built upon was deprecated, support waned, and things started breaking with no fixes in sight. The most famous example is a simple field picker that we had to build ourselves, from scratch, to avoid crashes on Windows Mobile. It was clear we were living on borrowed time and that a full rewrite was unavoidable.

While the legacy of Windows 8 was bearing down on us, we launched Simple In/Out Desktop for Mac. As Mac users ourselves, we were excited to ship an app that lived in our docks. While we had the best intentions, we started to fall behind the state of the art. We had too much code servicing workarounds within our desktop apps.

Throughout this time, the rise of App Stores on desktop computers added new wrinkles. In workplaces using device management, authenticating store accounts individually per computer for App Stores is a real pain. Worse yet, Apple’s draconian policies prevent free trials unless we both fork over 30% of our revenue and use their third-rate subscription management system.

With the need to rewrite the Windows app, dramatically update the Mac app, and leave the desktop App Stores, our direction was clear. We needed to start over. We set to work last year on a new desktop app.

Our aim is a modern desktop app for both Windows and Mac, built on a platform we can efficiently maintain in the future. We’ll support the latest OS features like Dark Mode. The new Simple In/Out Desktop will feature the best in/out board we’ve built to date, with an interface that’s more consistent and powerful. And, of course, we’ll support French immediately.

We will ship a Public Beta of Simple In/Out Desktop, for both Windows and Mac, via a free download from our website. We’ll gather feedback and suggestions as we add more features throughout the beta process. Our existing desktop apps will remain available until the new Simple In/Out Desktop reaches 1.0.

If you wish to give the new Simple In/Out Desktop a try, watch our Public Beta page. You can also subscribe to our mailing list. We can’t wait to share with everyone what we’ve been working on these past few months.

Bonjour!

We’re thrilled to announce Simple In/Out supports localization in French. You can use simpleinout.com as well as our apps for phones, FrontDesk, TimeClock, and Simple In/Out TV.

Our desktop apps for Windows and Mac do not support French as of now. We have something new in mind for those apps.

French was the most popular language request we’ve ever had in our history. This is almost certainly a direct result of our popularity in Canada and Europe.

Au revoir.

We’ve long believed your in/out board is only useful if it’s everywhere with you throughout the day. It’s for this reason that Simple In/Out offers apps for phones, tablets, desktop computers, and televisions. We also have our website, which is viewable from any modern web browser anywhere with internet access.

Beyond our apps, you can take your Simple In/Out board to the next level by integrating further with other tools you use every day. To that end, we have offered an API (for the adventurous types with programming skills) and web hooks.

Today, Simple In/Out’s web hooks receive a major upgrade to make them more powerful and easier to manage than ever before.

When we set out to improve web hooks, we started by allowing web hooks for individual groups as well as whole organizations. For those using web hooks for integrations into chat services like Slack or Microsoft Teams, this is a big deal. You can now send Simple In/Out activity for a single group of users (say Marketing) to their Marketing Slack channel without polluting conversations with the activity of other users outside the group.

The second thing we wanted to realize was filtering a web hook’s events. By default, web hooks report on status updates and scheduled statuses, as well as when status updates change the past. While this is helpful in many instances, the above Slack/Teams example is not one of them. You may only wish to see current status updates and not be bothered that a manager corrected Gary’s status updates from last week. Web hooks can now be customized to only output event types that you choose.

The third item we improved was activation. If you need to temporarily disable a web hook, previously you needed to delete it outright. Web hooks often send to some pretty crazy-looking URLs, so adding them again is painful. Now, administrators can deactivate a web hook from delivering while still keeping it for the future.

Finally, we set out to make it easier to see what’s happening when a web hook isn’t performing as you’d expect. If we encounter an error when attempting to deliver your web hook, we output that information to help debug what’s happening. If we see too many errors in a row, we’ll deactivate the web hook automatically and email the administrators about it. This is critical to aid administrators in fixing services that may be broken on their end.

This is by far the largest upgrade to web hooks ever, and we hope that this work will lead to many more integrations in the future.

2019 was a milestone year for Simply Made Apps. 2020 will be the tenth year we’ve been building Simple In/Out. We’re thrilled to have a product that’s loved by thousands of organizations around the globe.

2019 was a year of fundamental changes. We examined our core offerings and asked ourselves a simple question: how can we improve what put Simple In/Out on the map in 2011? With those answers and customer requests guiding our roadmap, we went to work. The results were solid software and new features for our users everywhere.

Here are just a few of the big things we delivered in 2019.

New Geofence, Beacon, and Network features

We went back to the drawing board and completely rewrote our most popular feature: automatic updates from phones. Not only did we make automatic updates more reliable, but we added much-requested new features like easier management, more control over comments, and enhanced intelligence about when updates should be performed.

Simple In/Out Public Beta Program

Ok, this one is feature-related. We launched our Public Betas for Android and iOS users that wished to help test and shape new features. The results were amazing. We’ll be doing more Public Betas this year. Stay tuned!

Everybody Out became Status Resets

We had a feature called Everybody Out and it did exactly what it sounds like: checked all your users out. We replaced this with Status Resets which can reset select users, set statuses to in or out, and offer much more flexibility.

Automatic vs Manual Status Updates

We now display whether a status update was made automatically (think Geofence) or manually. This information is visible in several reports, allowing administrators to have a more informed view of how the in/out is updated throughout the day.

Contact Export Report

We created a new report to export user information, expanding the ways companies can integrate Simple In/Out.

It is also worth noting a few non-feature things that happened in 2019.

Scheduled Webinars

Before last year, we conducted webinars every Wednesday morning to demonstrate new features and answer questions. Wednesdays didn’t work for everyone, so we now conduct webinars by appointment.

We Hired Another Web Developer

While we like our small team (and plan to keep it that way), we were thrilled to add another web developer. We quickly put Kenny to work shipping new features.

Simple In/Out and our amazing company wouldn’t be possible without our incredible customers. You’re all the best around, and we can’t wait to wow you with the new projects we have coming in 2020.

Simple In/Out is a hub for storing your users and their current statuses. Simple In/Out also works well as a portable company directory. Whether you click on a user on your computer or tap on a user via your tablet or phone, we provide contact information like email addresses and phone numbers along with one-click options to start a new email or dial your phone.

Occasionally analog methods are still necessary. Perhaps you need a phone sheet to hand to someone making calls. Maybe an email list is needed for someone that doesn’t have access to your Simple In/Out board. If you’re really generous, you may be putting together a Christmas list and would like all your co-workers in a spreadsheet.

For times like these, you can always print the Simple In/Out board. Today, we’re taking it a step further with our new Contacts report. The Contacts report exports your users and their contact information into a CSV file for use in your favorite spreadsheet application (like Excel, Numbers, Google Sheets, AirTable, etc). You can then manipulate the data however you wish. Add/delete columns, move things around, distribute electronically, or send the file to your printer.

We’ve built this report similar to our Print/PDF and Export reports. We provide a way to filter your users so you cam export only a group or certain users. We are also respectful of your role. You must have permission to run reports on others to export the contact information of other users. If you’re an administrator and your organization utilizes TimeClock, you’ll also have QR Codes for your badges in the export file.

We hope this makes life easier for those customers that need a quick contact sheet.

At the very core of Simple In/Out are automatic status updates. Whether using Geofences, Beacons, WiFi Networks (Android), or desktop computer activity, having your in/out board always up-to-date has never been easier.

Even before we had our first paying customer, we’ve had requests to add more monitoring of automatic updates for administrators. These requests generally come in three flavors:

• “I want to know whether an employee updates their status automatically or manually because I cannot trust them.”
• “I don’t want my employees to ever make manual status updates, only automatic updates with their phones because I cannot trust them.”
• “I want to see where my employees are on a map because I cannot trust them.”

We understand that not every industry can hire folks that can be trusted implicitly. We also understand that our solutions for updating from a physical place via a tablet running FrontDesk or TimeClock may not be for every organization. But, we always need to balance user privacy with new feature requests.

Most of the users installing Simple In/Out for automatic updates are doing so on their personal devices. We take privacy very seriously. We never transmit, store, or display location data. Period. That’s the commitment we’ve made since Day 1, and one that we will continue to honor each and every day. This precludes us from ever being able to show maps where users are located. That’s a feature, not a bug.

Not allowing users to make manual status updates at all presents a whole new set of challenges. For starters, removing manual updates also removes the ability for users to add comments that provide valuable context about status updates. Deeper still, if a user doesn’t have internet access then an automatic update can fail. Simple In/Out presents a notification to the user that the update wasn’t made, and the user must react by updating their status manually. Taking this away places more burden on administrators to correct the record.

That all being said, there is absolutely value in providing information to administrators so they can make determinations about whether users are performing dishonest status updates from their phone or computer.

To that end, we’ve added new information to many of Simple In/Out’s reports displaying whether statuses were updated automatically or manually. By displaying this information, we provide additional clarity to administrators and managers. This information can also aid administrators in properly configuring Geofences, Beacons, and WiFi Networks to maximize the effectiveness of automatic updates.

This information is now presented in the following reports: Activity, Print/PDF, and Export. We’ve also added this to our API, allowing access to third-party developers (with your permission, of course). This information is only available to those users either viewing their own report or to those users that have permission to run reports on other users.

We hope that by adding this information to reports, we’ve properly balanced the need to know how status updates were made with the privacy of all our Simple In/Out users.

We’re happy to announce the newest member of the Simply Made Apps team. Today, Kenny Lindley is joining Simply Made Apps as a web developer.

While we’re making this announcement today, Kenny has been interning at Simply Made Apps for the past several months. He’s already shipped substantial Simple In/Out features such as Status Resets and our Quote generator. As I write this post, he’s placing the finishing touches on another feature request we’ve had from our customers, all while coding part time.

Kenny has a Bachelor of Science in Game and Simulation Programming, a natural curiosity in all things technology, and is a quick study. Having Kenny in our Fargo office full time is going to enable us to deliver even more features that delight our Simple In/Out customers.

We’re thrilled to welcome Kenny to the Simply Made Apps family.

With Simple In/Out’s automatic updates, Quick Picks, and our easy to use interfaces, it’s never been easier to have an accurate in/out board available everywhere. Even with your best efforts, sometimes the in/out board can become stale. Perhaps your users have forgotten to perform updates. Maybe a user is utilizing automatic status updates, but their phone battery was dead. Occassionally the internet is unreachable. When users are never around overnight, you may wish to reset your board to start fresh every morning.

We’ve had a feature called Everybody Out for years that has done just that: reset your users OUT every evening. While this worked great, we’ve fielded requests over the years for more options. Today, we’re announcing we’ve completely rewritten Everybody Out, which we’ve renamed Status Resets. With Status Resets, you have all the features of Everybody Out and much more.

For starters, you can update everyone that remained IN to OUT every evening just as before. By default, that’s what a new Status Reset will do. For existing Everbody Out users, you’ll have a Status Reset that works the same as it did yesterday. No intervention is necessary.

We started by adding more advanced scheduling options. Everybody Out only allowed scheduling at the top of the hour every day. Status Resets allow scheduling at 5-minute increments, providing 100 times more possibilities for scheduling. Status Resets can also be executed on specific days of the week. It’s now possible to set up multiple Status Resets to craft a perfect resetting strategy for your organization.

Status Resets can also be established for subsets of your users with Groups. Resetting your board no longer has to apply to everybody.

Finally, you can reset everyone that is OUT to IN. While this is an advanced feature, there are use cases that this fulfills.

We hope that Status Resets provide extra power for our power users while maintaining the simple “reset my board every night” vision we initially had for Everybody Out.

Simple In/Out’s most popular feature, the feature that put us on the map back in 2011, is the ability to update your status automatically via Geofence. Carrying your phone equipped with the Simple In/Out app is all that’s necessary to keep your in/out board up to date. We perform these automatic updates while respecting both the user’s battery life and their privacy.

Earlier this year, we shipped new features and stability improvements to our Beacon and Network system. These changes have been well received, and we’ve been working to bring those same improvements to Geofencing. Today we’re launching our new and improved Geofences for all our customers on both iOS and Android.

What’s changed? To be honest, everything! Geofences are now more intelligent, more reliable, and offer more control for administrative-level users.

Reliability has been improved dramatically thanks to the new system that underpins Geofences. We’re now smarter about retrying attempts, confirming you are indeed in/out, and differentiating between Geofences, Beacons, Networks, and devices. This increased intelligence allows us to make better decisions, which leads to better success rates with Geofences.

Administrators can now control both the status and the entire comment applied when an automatic update occurs. These settings allow for some advanced use cases we couldn’t cover in the past. We’ve also launched a brand new Geofence editor on simpleinout.com that is easier to use and easier on the eyes.

After updating, most users will see an increase in Geofence consistency. For users on iOS that are monitoring more than 20 Geofences, they will notice a new screen asking them to pick no more than 20 Geofences to monitor at once. Apple limits phone developers like us to 20, and while we were attempting to get around that restriction in the past, it came with mixed results. It wasn’t very reliable at times, and to make matters worse it required us to ask for more permissions that we really would like. Now we are playing by Apple’s restrictive limit (Android users can monitor up to 100 Geofences at once).

A special THANK YOU to our customers for the great feedback and to our beta testers for kicking the Geofence tires over these past several weeks. With the help of many around the world, we couldn’t be more excited to place this update in everyone’s hands.