Skribit...Skribit.... Nov 13 Patrick Clements

I had a great experience this past weekend.

I attended an event this past weekend called Startup Weekend.  It’s a concept that is built around building a community of like minded individuals over a weekend time frame to conceive, develop, and launch a web technology company.  All skill sets were invited and needed (i.e Developers, UI designers, Biz Dev, Marketing and PR, Creative and Design, etc).  We started with 60, but when it was all said and done we really ended up about 35 at launch date.  The company we launched is called Skribit www.skribit.com  and it’s already been covered by techcrunch.com, one of the top tech blog sites out there  - Ok, here is what I learned…

1. Getting a load of smart people in a room focused on a single core objective was not only very cool to see take place…but it was fun!  I mean I spent over 36 hours on this project this weekend and loved every minute of it.
2. The relationship between Developers and Usability Designers halted the project for about 3-4 hours as they got heated about forward development…weird to see this always exist no matter where you are or what you are doing.
3. Feature creep, feature creep, feature creep…was a huge issue in delaying the production of what started out as a super simple idea.  The moral of the story is this, Google started out as 1 thing.  A simple text box that created the best results in website indexing. The marketing plan has obviously changed from then, but it’s easier once you have sustainability, traction, and big ‘Mo is on your side (that’s momentum)
4. Energy was there when the vision of what we were trying to accomplish was written in stone….it left creative designing .psd mock-ups until about 4AM, developers coding around the clock, and biz dev guys getting extremely creative on how to create a model out of this company.

Once again, the challenge and the experience were a lot of fun and I look forward to continuing to develop the Atlanta entrepreneurial community.  We need more company's out there like bigWebApps and Skribit.

Email Notification Errors, bigWebDesk Nov 07 Jason Moore

We experienced a problem with our email notification system yesterday.  This problem was corrected last night, so you may have received a large amount of emails this morning from yesterday's activity in bigWebDesk.

We apologize for the inconvenience and the confusion that this caused you and your team.

If you have any questions, please send an email to support@bigwebapps.com.

Thank you for using bigWebDesk!

Scheduled Maintenance Notice Nov 06 Jason Moore

bigWebDesk will not be available on Wednesday, 11/07/07, from 2 am - 5 am EST during a production site upload of necessary fixes to fix the issues related to emails not being sent properly.

Beyond the necessary updates to the database, the following enhancements will also be added:

• "Ticket Count" Report sort order updated to alphabetically
• Limit Technicians to Search & Assign only in Asset Manager (suggested by Lavern Manzano, Chapel Hill-Carborro City School District) -- this can be turned on in Configuration > General Options
• Tech Check In/Out moved to greeting on Home page (suggested by Gryphon Networks) -- this will allow easier check in/out use for technicians
• Confirmation Page from email improvements -- Easier to type custom note and approve in two clicks
• Printable version of multiple tickets -- Limited to 12 per page to minimize the occurrence of tickets breaking from the end of page to the top of next
• Only Active Logins to show on Account Manager page (suggested by Claudette Hixon, Classroll.com)
• Increased viewing capabilities of Super Users to building level
• Notification Rules engine
• Ticket Count Report filter added:  Global vs. Filtered Technician; also utilizes Call Center Rep if you have that feature turned on
• Ticket Count Report filter added:  Handled by Call Center (Yes or No)
• Auto-Confirm: If Techncian and Customer (End User) are the same person, the Confirm Now? box is automatically checked
• Scheduled Tickets now able to have attachments

If you have any questions about any of these changes, please feel free to send us an email at support@bigwebapps.com