Last year, for quite a while, it seem as though we were churning out feature updates for BatchBook at a dizzying pace. These weren’t enormous new features, but just smaller updates that simply made the lives of our users easier. Since the start of 2009, however, we’ve been busy on a few rather major updates. Some have launched (like our integrations with FreshBooks and Shoeboxed), some are in beta (like Google Contacts sync), and some haven’t been released yet (I’m not telling!).
The month of June has been a welcome return to the “flurry of updates” release schedule. Over at the BatchBook forums, Keri posts detailed notes about product releases. Today, I wanted to tell you about the “Greatest Hits” from these updates.
Batch Updating of SuperTags
Ever want to update the SuperTag field on dozens of contacts at once? Use the checkboxes on the Browse Contacts page to select a whole bunch of contacts (tip: filter by tag first!) and choose the “edit SuperTag field” batch action. With a couple quick clicks, you can update hundreds of contacts at a time!
Google Contacts 1-way Sync
Sean posted an update on the forums about Google Contacts sync becoming a one-way sync.
More Ways to Filter and Search
We known your contact list can grow quite large. Ours sure has! That’s why we’ve added a whole bunch of new ways to filter and search your contacts. Many of these were very popular requests on the forums.
- New Browse Contacts filter: Not contacted in past month: Will filter your contacts to show only those you have logged a communication with in the past month.
- New Browse Contacts filter: Not contacted: Will filter your contacts to show only those you have never logged a communication with.
- Advanced Search: Contact Type: In addition to “Individuals” and “Companies”, we now have an option for “Individuals & Companies”. Why? Because we also have one just for “Communications”!
- Advanced Search: Record Created: Search for records by date they were created. You can search for an exact date or for records created before or after a certain date. (Tip: Use multiple search criteria to search before a certain date and after another date to get a specific window of time).
- Advanced Search: Record Last Updated: Search for records based on the last time they were updated.
- Advanced Search: Record Last Communicated With: Search for contacts based on the last time you logged a communication with them (including an option for “never”.
Twitter and Google Search Widgets for all!
The live-updating Twitter Search and Google Search Dashboard widgets are now available for free accounts as well. Monitor your personal brand, your company brand, your competitors or your industry at large right on your BatchBook Dashboard!
New Dashboard widget: Lists View
This brand new widget gives you a dropdown menu of all Lists in your BatchBook account. Pick a list and see the contacts. There’s also one-click access to the List Report.
LinkedIn now part of Social Media SuperTag
As reported last week, LinkedIn profiles are now officially part of the Social Media SuperTag.
Default Tags & SuperTags
Last but not least, this is another popular one from the forums. Affectionately code-named “sticky tags” by forumgoers, you can now choose a tag or tags to be automatically applied to all contacts (or all individuals or all companies).
We hope you’ve enjoyed the recent updates. We promise more will come soon!
Want to see the complete list of updates?
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Tags: linkedin, small business CRM, social crm, Social Media, supertags
One of my favorite BatchBook features is the Social Media SuperTag. This week, we enhanced it by adding support for LinkedIn profiles. All you have to is enter address to a public LinkedIn profile. When you save it, we’ll replace the link with a widget that looks a lot like this:
Out of the box, the Social Media SuperTag allows you to enter a contacts usernames on Twitter, Flickr, or Delicious and we’ll show the last three tweets, photos, or bookmarks. You can also enter a Blog feed and see excerpts of the last three posts. This will actually work for any RSS feed. In the screencast below, I add a Slideshare presentations, Last.fm recent tracks, and BatchBook forum feeds to a contact record.
We think this is a great way to see what’s on the mind of your most valuable contacts right before you pick up the phone or start that email. Watch below to see the Social Media SuperTag in action!
Screencast: Social media integration with the Social Media SuperTag
The Flash Video runs 5:18 and is 34.9MB. (Download iPod compatible version, 17.5MB)
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Tags: delicious, flickr, linkedin, rss, small business CRM, social crm, Social Media, supertags, twitter
We’ve been in beta with our sync offering for a couple months and I wanted to give you all an update as to where we are at.
Shoeboxed and Freshbooks have been working very well and it’s been great to see all the positive feedback. We’re still looking for ways to make them even better, so if you have any feedback or ideas please let us know.
The one that has not gone as planned has been Google Contacts sync. It’s the only one of of current offerings that does provide two-way sync and that has proven to be trickier than we at first thought. The good news we have ironed out most of the issues but one remains, which we (not so) affectionately call “the Blob”.
At BatchBlue, keeping your data organized is obviously very important to us. We strive to keep all your data in such a way that is easily searched and also logically organized for use with lists and reports.
Therein lies the problem. Google Contacts does not force one to be strict about how they enter addresses data. Data is entered free form (a.k.a. the Blob), which is handy in some cases but for data junkies like us is problematic. We like to keep every part of an addresses saved on its own so you can then search contacts by state, country, zip/postal code etc. It really makes address information much more powerful if you can search on its parts.
Since people can enter free form data into Google, we’re having to work on our own address parser to parse these addresses for entry into BatchBook. Seems easy enough, but just think about all the ways one can enter an address. Plus, every country in the world seems to have different address formats. Once you delve into it, it’s actually a very complex issue and one that may not ever be solved 100%. But we’re now at a point where we’re close to having a workable solution that we can keep building on.
Look for Google Contacts sync to really improve over the next couple weeks. We are bummed it is taking us longer than planned because we know people are anxious for it to be up running. However, the time we’re taking in getting it right will mean a more solid offering once we’re out of beta.
More updates as we have ‘em. And thanks to all for your patience and feedback along the way.
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Last night we made some (mostly) cosmetic updates to BatchBook. Here’s how she looks today:
The highlights:
- We consolidated help text and screencasts into a context-sensitive footer that provides support options for the tab you are currently on.
- We reorganized the rest of the footer as well.
- We anchored the primary column to better establish the visual hierarchy of the main column vs. the sidebar.
- We removed redundant headers to make more room for the data that matters.
- We moved the search bar to the header, bringing other sidebar elements up the page a bit more.
- We used more subtle color to cater to those not in love with blues and oranges.
- We made an assortment of other minor tweaks.
When it was all said and done, we removed a lot more than we added. To me, that’s the sign of a successful redesign. 
We’re curious to hear what you think!
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Tags: batchblue, batchbook, design, small business CRM
The lawn needs mowing and the Red Sox are on a winning streak, so that can only mean one thing… it’s spring! We have a bunch of cool things under development (if I do say so myself), but before we start adding more to BatchBook, we felt it was time to do a little spring cleaning. The community over at the BatchBlue Forums has helped us so much along the way that we consider it an additional team member. For that reason, we’re giving the forum users a sneak peek at the updates we’re making.
If you’re a forum user, we’d love to hear your feedback. If you’re not a forum user yet, we’d love to welcome you to the community. As forum user Kenny recently said:
One of the key benefits BB is becoming for me is an excellent source of tips on new or emerging web sites / services that I hadn’t been aware of previously, via users on this forum.
This is great! Thanks all for participating on this board
Hope to see you on the forums soon!
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Tags: batchbook, Community, design, forums, interface
