Just how important is SSL?

SSL, or Secure Sockets Layer, protects your data when you’re working in a web browser by encrypting all the information that is sent to or from your computer.  SSL is important because unencrypted information can be seen by other people when it is in transit.  You’ll know when your data is being encrypted because the browser will display a small picture of a lock.

Projjex takes the security of your data very seriously.  So seriously, in fact, that we subscribe to the highest possible level of encryption (1024 bit) and we automatically use this encryption with every single one of our customers.  As soon as you land on the Projjex sign in screen, you’re encrypted, and your entire session with Projjex is encrypted until you sign off or close the browser window.  This is equivalent to the security of the best on-line banking systems.

The reason we wanted to discuss this is that almost all of our competitors provide SSL encryption (a good thing) but almost all of them DON’T provide SSL encryption to their free or non-enterprise level customers.  In our view, this is unconscionable and unacceptable.

Hosting other people’s information is an extraordinary responsibility.  In our opinion, we must protect our customers’ information not only while it is on our servers but also while it’s in transit.  Anything less is to breach an expectation of security that many customers have.

Providing SSL encryption to some customers but not others seems to say that some people’s information is more valuable than others.  Is your information less valuable because you choose to use a free edition?

What do you think?

Useful new things, April 22

Early this morning (when you were likely sleeping) we added a couple of new items to Projjex that we think you’ll find useful: daily email notifications and data imports/exports. We also increased the disk limit for Personal (ie. free) users from 10MB to 100MB.

By the way, all of today’s changes came from suggestions from our customers: thank you for letting us know what you need - we’re listening!

Daily Email Notification
Projjex will now email you a summary of your Dashboard items every day. It sends this email at 3:00 a.m. (your local time) so that you will have it first thing in the morning.

You can customize this email to get only the things you want. To do this, simply:

- sign in to Projjex
- click on “settings” at the top right of any screen
- click on the “Email Notification” tab
- check the items you wish to receive in your morning email
- click the “Save” button at the bottom of the screen.

By the way, if you don’t receive these emails, it may be because your email program or internet service provider (ISP) blocks Projjex emails as spam. Please change your email settings or contact your ISP to allow emails from Projjex to get through.

Data Imports / Export
Projjex now allows you to import data from Microsoft Project, BaseCamp or a generic comma-separated-value (CSV) file.

Projjex also allows you to export your Projjex data to a CSV file.

For a Microsoft Project file, you’ll first need to export this file to XML. This is easily done and will only take a minute or two.

Projjex imports BaseCamp project information directly from BaseCamp without requiring you to perform an export.

To read more about them and to try them out, simply sign in to Projjex and then click on the new “tools” button that appears at the top right of the screen, between “settings” and “sign out”.

Thanks again for all your great feedback - and please keep it coming!

Alex Glassey and
The Projjex Team

Response to some survey questions

We sent out a survey to our customers last week and got some great feedback. Thank you to everyone who contributed.

Here are answers to some of the questions we received. And check out the next blog entry for some great new features!

How can I see the breadcrumb trail of the parent items?
To see the breadcrumb trail of any item, hover over the ellipsis (three periods that look like this “…”) that appears to the immediate left of an item’s icon. After a very brief delay, a yellow box will pop up to show you where that item belongs.

In the Dashboard, what’s the difference between “Recent Activity” and “Activity Log”
The Activity Log allows you to find (and print) activity for any date range, any project (or all projects), any person (or all people), and any item type (or all item types). The Activity Log will also show your own activity as well as your team members’ activity. For example, you could find and print all of the tasks and notes for the Acme Project between March 1, 2008 and March 31, 2008.

Recent Activity is designed to show you only the activity that has taken place since the last time you looked here. It won’t show you your activity because Projjex assumes that you know what you’ve done Remember to mark each item as “Read” once you’ve looked at it. That’ll remove it from Recent Activity and keep this section fresh for you.

By the way, if you don’t want to see certain items types show up in Recent Activity, you can adjust this in your “Settings” area; just click on “settings” at the top right corner of Projjex and then click on the “Recent Activity” tab. Select the items you want to see and then click “Save”.

Is there a better way to be reminded when we’re waiting on a team member to do something?
As of today there is! See the next blog which announces our new email reminders. In short, you can get a daily email reminder of overdue items (and other items as well). This will help you understand who’s a little behind. It also helps remind the person who’s a little late.

Can you speed up the “documents” tab? And can you help us sort documents?
We’ve spent a ton of time speeding up the “documents” tab. You should see an extraordinary improvement here!

And you can sort in the “documents” tab as well: simply click on any of the five column headers that you wish to sort by: click once to sort in ascending order; click again to sort in descending order.

Can documents be associated with a task or project or meeting or milestone?
Yes. In order to do this, documents need to be uploaded in the “projects” tab:

- click on the “projects” tab
- move to the item you want to attach a document to
- click on the menu’s down arrow and select “Documents”
- the item’s edit window will open and you will be on the Documents tab. Use this tab to upload one or more documents
- click “Close” when you’re done. Projjex will pause briefly while it stores your documents

You can access the documents here by hovering over the Paperclip icon that now appears next to this item. Click on a document to view it. And you can also see all your documents in the “documents” tab as well. Note that you can tell which item they’re attached to by hovering over the ellipsis (three periods “…”) that appears just to the left of the document icon.

Can I import data from MS Project files?
A very common request indeed! Today the answer is “yes”. Check out our next blog entry to learn how!

Thanks again for participating in the survey. Even though that survey is now closed, we’d love to hear your comments. Send email to feedback@projjex.com. We’re listening!

Alex Glassey and
The Projjex Team

Welcome to the Projjex Blog

So the question is: “Why create new project management software for small teams?”

Good question! There are lots of project management software applications out there, believe me. We’ve looked at hundreds. However, they all suffer from one or more of these problems:

- they take too long to set up
- they’re too complicated to use
- they’re too expensive
- they’re not collaborative

In short, we didn’t find a single example of an intuitive, collaborative, inexpensive tool designed for small teams.

So how is Projjex different?

Projjex takes only 30 seconds to set up. Type in your email address and a password and you’re set. Nothing to download. Nothing to install. Everything works within your browser.

Projjex is easy to use. It does only what small teams want to do. It doesn’t do all the complicated things that big teams need. It’s logically laid out. And even though it runs in a browser you’ll think you’re using a desktop application because it’s really fast.

Projjex is inexpensive. Create your first project for free. Invite your entire team to work with you. Still free. Work with your project for a year. Yup, still free. Need to create another five projects? Okay, now it’s going to cost you twenty bucks a month. But your colleagues and clients can work in these projects for - you guessed it - free! And you can upgrade or downgrade or even cancel at any time without penalty or additional cost.

Projjex is truly collaborative. Like Myspace, Facebook and YouTube, Projjex is a great place to work together, to share stuff, to get things done. It’s like a great big to-do list in the sky that keeps you and your team organized, focused and productive.

In short, Projjex is the intuitive, collaborative, inexpensive tool designed for small teams that we’ve been searching for. We think you’ll love it too!

The Projjex Team

P.S. Try it here for free!