week one and a bit
ok- so the final stage of SoulTrader preparations has begun – ive been using basecamp to organise / set up the milestones and to -do’s . and – also to familiarise myself with it, as we hope to have optional integration with it,…also with ical and address book …and so with iphone
Our added offerings will be Project management, Time Tracking and Marketing… the design and implementation of SoulTrader’s project management and scheduling is now well under way and, with the option of sharing info with colleagues and customers and sometimes suppliers – i feel sure this will be a useful app.
Trying to keep it clean and uncluttered is always difficult for a sort such as I, but the lessons learnt from this latest CrystalSolutions Revision (mac out this week i hope and the Windows update within a month) give me optimism. as the program has to cater for many differing and individual approaches to process analysis,
it has been paramount to allow flexibility – and to create an environment where someone can fit their existing processes into the SoulTrader scheme,
which has been designed to have always, where possible 2 ways in / out — giving people choice as to how much and, often, where in the program, they will input their data.
and to have greenfield areas where we can experiment/ and toss ideas…
… this approach can leave the first time user daunted – so often we don’t want to just go in and break it! (some of us of course just love it), but we have tested folks for some 10 years now with differing layouts –
i was the scattergunapproach and when chris helped the 7 transition – we all thought it was time for some structure – this has allowed a framework where there is a semi solid system and a flexible /multilayered outer – a bit like an m & m with a belgian beer
. 
the statistics really need more work but as is said on basecamp’s front page
“Projects don’t fail from a lack of charts, graphs, stats, or reports, they fail from a lack of clear communication”
the software musn’t get in the way –it’s there if you need it —
– anyway much decluttering is going on and the CrystalSolutions is looking better for it too.
shame the weather is so lovely – but this latest rainy spell has allowed much work!!
the whole idea of this app and good apps is to allow you more time to work and play – getting the fundamentals of your business setout am and pm for 10 minutes or so , and then – depending on how busy you are – inputing info as it comes in (or later on at the end of the day again 10 mins or so– we have tried to make all fields editable drop down lists and are striving to make it as intuitive as possible but — it is so difficult when there is much to offer..
. not quite the freemium model but we are considering 6 months free use with a 50 record limit –
unlimited records—–with 3 months support and free updates for the year,,,£68
and any online realtime interaction a premium to allow us to pay phil to help
and then there’s chris and i to sort out too!
