Basecamp is "a must have practice tool" for lawyers

Home Office Lawyer, a blog devoted to you guessed it, posts about 10 Must-Have Apps for the Mac Using Solo Practitioner. On the list: Basecamp.

Finally, Basecamp is a must have practice tool. In my own practice, Basecamp is used to manage cases and clients. Each client has access to their own case. By using Basecamp, each has access too all the documents in their case and also know when important court dates are. They can leave comments or questions about their case and they can keep up on the progress of their case. It keeps clients more involved in the process.

Check out the complete list.

New in Campfire: Better hospitality over spotty Internet connections

We just released an update to Campfire that we have internally called the "hospitality" feature. Before today, it was possible that you could type messages into a Campfire chat only to later discover that your Internet connection was acting up and the messages didn't send. Campfire never gave a clue that your Internet connection was spotty, so missing messages or miscommunication could result.

We thought Campfire should be a better host than that, so we built a new feature to keep track of any messages that didn't send. If for some reason your messages, pastes or images don't send correctly, Campfire will now try again another time. If Campfire still can't send your message, it will show a red notice below your message to notify you that the message wasn't sent. This helps to make sure nobody miscommunicates or misses out in the event of a troublesome Internet connection.

We hope this update makes Campfire just a little more hospitable in those disconnected moments. Please enjoy the update and thanks for your continued support.

5 Basecamp tips from creator of web design bootcamp that teaches Basecamp 101

On September 17th, Ivan Stegic will be conducting the following workshop in Minneapolis: Web Design Bootcamp - Web 101, Drupal 101 & Basecamp 101 ("a full day seminar of everything you should know before you design your first website"). We asked Ivan to give us a few Basecamp tips. Here's what he sent along:

1. Use <code></code> to escape most any HTML or XML in messages - great way to show literals.
2. I use the textile codes *strong*, _italics_, * bullets, # ordered list -- these are obvious, but kinda important to know.
3. If you're familiar with HTML, you can add divs with classes to your messages to make things stand out. Something like:

   <div class="flash_notice" id="Flash">Yippeeee, I'm right on!</div> -- for green boxes

   <div class="flash_alert" id="Flash">Uh ohhss, boo-boo :(</div> -- for red warning boxes

   <h1 class="blankslate">Info bar in yellow!!!</h1> -- for yellow info boxes

4. Create an "Announcements" category for your messages. If you're ever creating more than one message that is important at the same time and for the same people, do so -- but don't notify them of the messages' existence yet. Instead, create one message that is categorized as "Announcements" and refer to those messages (using links) in this announcement. Make sure you notify everyone with this announcement... this also lets you categorize the important messages appropriately. It helps in preventing your users (most often clients) from getting too many messages and lowers the risk that they get confused.
5. Be sure to associate To-do lists with Milestones. You can do this with more than one to-do list and they are all retained as belonging that milestone. Break up your milestones further into manageable chunks of things to do, and sort them all into nice lists associated with milestones. (see screenshot -- three to-do lists associated with the milestone "Launch Website")

The 9/17 bootcamp will cover the following topics relating to Basecamp:

• Simple, simple, simple project management
• It’s a web app, everyone can use it
• Different plans, choose the right one: we use time tracking
• Organize into clear projects and companies
• The dashboard, and why you’ll love it
• Do all your communication through Basecamp: messages, files, threads and comments online, through email or an app.
• To-do lists, milestones and when to use each one
• Writeboards, for those of us who are writers! Or, need to share private information.
• Throw Microsoft Project in the trash

Learn more or sign up.

TeamSupport integrates with Highrise

TeamSupport is an app that "integrates Customer Support, Product Development, Product Management and Quality Assurance so you can offer outstanding support to your customers." It now offers native integration with Highrise so that company and contact information can by synced from Highrise to TeamSupport, and ticket information can be sent back to Highrise.

Learn more about how to set it up and see a video of the integration in action. (Note: The integration currently only works with Highrise accounts that support SSL. Basic and Free accounts do not currently support SSL and do not currently work with TeamSupport.)

Vote Basecamp for .net "Best of the Web" Awards

Basecamp is nominated for the .net "Best of the Web" Awards.

The .net Awards celebrate the best in web design and development, mixing public opinion with the insights of a leading panel of judges from the likes of Yahoo, Clearleft, Nomensa, Opera, 2Advanced Studios, Microsoft, and the BBC.

For the 2009 Awards the .net team and its contributors have scoured the web to put each list of nominees together, choosing the sites, services and people that we believe have made a serious impact in the last 12 months.

Thanks .net! You can vote here.

(Almost) Introducing 37signals Accounts

"(Almost) Introducing 37signals Accounts" [SvN] talks about a change coming to our apps in the future: Every customer will have a single username and password to get into any of their 37signals product accounts.

If they have one Basecamp and one Highrise, the username/password would be the same. If they have 4 Basecamp accounts, a Campfire account, and 2 Backpack accounts, they’d be able to log into any of them with the same username/password. This is called a global namespace.

A global namespace means the “joe123” username in Basecamp is the same person as “joe123” in Backpack or Highrise or even another Basecamp account. This is the same way Google, Yahoo and many other companies with multiple products are set up. It’s the right way.

This means customers will get a global login at 37signals.com, integration, better security, and lots more. Read the full post to learn more about why this will be a big improvement.

New in Backpack: Improved "All Pages" screen

We've just improved the way pages are listed on your "All Pages" screen in Backpack. The redesigned list's clear alphabetical groupings make it easier to find the page you're looking for.

The old screen featured two newspaper-style columns of pages listed in alphabetical order. This meant that if you had a lot of pages, you sometimes had to scroll all the way down one column, then back up to the top and down the other to find your page.

The newly redesigned All Pages screen maintains the two column grid so that you can still see many pages at once. However, it now reads left to right so that you'll only have to scroll once to find your page in a long list. We've also grouped pages alphabetically with a clear separation between each. So now you when you're looking for the "Receipts" page, it's simple to find the "R" section and locate your page.

We think this change makes finding a page on your Backpack account faster and easier, no matter how many pages you have. We hope you enjoy it. Thanks for using Backpack!

Basecamp is the "glue" at iSeatz

Companies like Air Canada, Amtrak, CitiBank, and MasterCard all rely on iSeatz, a global provider of customized online travel solutions. In turn, iSeatz relies on Basecamp to keep everything organized. COO Allen Darnell tells us more below.

As the COO of iSeatz, I’m constantly challenged to simultaneously juggle a few time-sensitive projects for some of the biggest names in travel and financial services. These companies rely on iSeatz to create and launch highly customized booking engines that tap into our exclusive network of almost 200,000 suppliers across the globe like OpenTable, Avis-Budget Group and TicketNetwork Direct. Inevitably, the multiple players involved in each project have diverse work styles, may speak different languages, and typically aren’t used to agile product development — a cornerstone of iSeatz’ solution development process.

Basecamp is the “glue” that helps to hold all of these moving parts together. It provides a powerful, efficient, and secure framework that enables the full team — including iSeatz’ executive and development teams and our clients and partners — to collaborate, track deadlines and easily communicate.

iSeatz started using Basecamp three years ago for client engagements such as Amtrak, Delta, Air Canada, Northwest Airlines, MasterCard and Citi, as well as internal development projects.

But we realized its value to the ‘nth degree’ during our recent, high-stakes engagement with KLM:

There we were… a small New Orleans-based company taking on a massive international project with Europe’s largest airline. The project involved working with over 70 international points of sale, handling six different language translations, seven new currencies, extending our global customer care capabilities, and coordinating with dozens of players, from design agencies and vendors to translation providers and (of course) our overseas client. The development process to create KLM’s enhanced online booking engine was intricate, extensive and intense—but much more manageable because of Basecamp’s ability to enhance visibility and foster streamlined communications.

Tips of the Trade…Based on my experience using Basecamp, I’ve found that most new users need minimal training to get up and running. However, when working with new users – especially those who work for big companies-- it’s critical to reinforce the fact that it MUST be used for all communications. If someone responds via email, I make a point to reply via Basecamp or post their comment on the Basecamp site. A little push goes a long way.

Basecamp continues to play a large role in our day-to-day work and is hands-down, a HUGE contributor to our ongoing success — and the success of our clients.

Improved File Upload features return to Basecamp

We're excited to announce the return of a set of improvements to File Uploads in Basecamp. These updates include an easier way to select multiple files and a new progress bar that gives feedback as your files are uploaded.

We originally released this update in June 2009 and shortly afterward we discovered some compatibility problems that required us to temporarily withdraw the update. We worked hard to solve those problems, and today we are happy to announce that all the File Upload features are working perfectly and the compatibility issues are fixed.

The improved file selection and progress bar are back on all Basecamp accounts as of today. We'd like to sincerely thank you all for your patience, help and feedback throughout this process. We hope you enjoy the new features!

Here's a video demo of the File Upload features from the original post:

Thanks again for your support. We wish you the best success on all your projects!

Highrise customer: "For the first time in my life, I actually enjoyed using the CRM"

Mark A. Anderson writes: "Kudos to Highrise CRM, another brilliantly simple, but extremely usable application from 37signals."

I have never been a huge fan of CRMs. I know they are necessary and without them effective sales, business development, and client support would not be possible, but they are still painful to manage. My primary beef with most CRMs is the fact that they all try to provide every piece of functionality that any user ever might want and the end result is a cluttered, unusable dashboard of feature sets of which only a small percentage are ever used. As a result, the load and wait times become unbearable and it seems as though there are 6 steps to be followed every time you pick up the phone, send an email, or meet with a prospect or client. God forbid you get really busy for a few days. It might take you a full day just to try and get everything loaded into the system properly.

Two months ago, I was looking for a simple contact management system to keep up with my intensified focus on Business Development and decided to see what 37signals had to offer. Within minutes, I was up and running, happily loading contacts into my new Highrise account and I never even had to call in the techies. For the first time in my life, I actually enjoyed using the CRM. It is so easy and intuitive that anyone can use it and it is actually designed to make the user’s life easier. While most systems are built first around the kind of trend data and reporting metrics that can be pulled with the user a distant afterthought, Highrise is built to help the user keep organized...

For anyone who is looking to get organized and looking to build an easy, usable contact database, I highly recommend it.

Do you use a 37signals product in an interesting or noteworthy way? Let us know.