Blog.

Fixes & Features.

Today we have released a few new features and some fixes.

Even though we are still in beta and updating the system all the time, ideapi continues to be a useful brief and idea collaboration tool for a growing number of companies.

New features in this release:

• Sign in from ideapi.com homepage, incl. single sign on for multiple accounts
• Enhanced email notifications for briefs & ideas
• Improved actions menu on briefs and ideas
• Comment count on sections
• Enhanced comment look and feel
• Brief tagging
• Custom message with account creation invites
• Template headings

Fixes in this release:

• Template section order now fixed
• Delete briefs now fixed
• Reactive briefs now fixed
• Brief title lengths showing correctly

Extra notes:

• Important to note that Internet Explorer 6 and 7 are not supported during the beta.

Upcoming features:

• Dashboard notifications
• Enhanced brief permissions when adding users to account
• User interface enhancements
• Improved idea workflow
• Improved workflow and permissions for client role

If you have not already got an account, please check out the new features by signing up to a free beta account from the homepage.

As usual, any feedback, please email us at feedback@ideapi.com. For support, please email us at support@ideapi.com. Thank you.

New Features!

Manage Your Own Templates

ideapi now allows users the ability to create, edit and manage their own brief templates. It works very much like the dashboard but for templates. Useful for companies with varying brief templates depending on the type of client.

Formatting Help

ideapi utilizes Textile, a way of adding a little bit of formatting magic to your briefs or ideas. When editing a brief or idea, check out the Formatting Help widget on the right hand side - it will guide you as to how Textile works.

Permissions

Add other people to collaborate on your brief, allow them to help author the brief and add idea approvers. The Brief Collaborators widget on the right hand side of the brief allows you to easily assign the right permissions.

Upcoming Features

• New and improved Dashboard with notifications of tasks outstanding and the ability to sort briefs into Job Bags.
• Improved functionality for adding users to your account.
• Brief meta data, including dates, responsibilities, client, etc.
• Brief attachments.

Feedback

So far, the feedback that we have been getting from our beta users has been very positive. They are helping us shape the future of ideapi and getting a fantastic tool to collaborate on briefs and ideas in the process. Please check out our tour screencast for a little taste of what’s inside.

If there are any other features that you would like us to consider, please let us know at feedback@ideapi.com.

Happy collaborating!

Tick Tock

Too much stuff to do, too many papers on my desk that I’ve promised various persons I’ll read.  I am like a brief-writing cow that is being milked into submission.

These are the times when I wish I had a slave.  Someone from the serf-classes to order everything: IMMEDIATE ATTENTION REQUIRED / LOOK AT THIS BY END OF WEEK / MAKE EXCUSES FOR ANOTHER FORTNIGHT.  That kind of clear hierarchy.

Right now if I actually chilled the f*** out and took stock I know I’d have 5-6 totally do-able things on the IMMEDIATE LIST.  Why is that stressful?  Why is knowing what you have to do - or moreover the very idea of stopping and working out what is left to do - so unbelievably terrifying?

Sometimes Partners are cool

Bingo. I had a revelation today. It happened at the end of an all agency status meeting that I was dragged along to.

Check this: me, my senior suit, the media geezers, the PR pashminas and the experiential whatevs having done the usual all-agency status mine-is-bigger-than-yours in front of the man day to day clients across a fake hardwood table - got the shuttle bus to the station together. I initially thought it was going to be cliques of sotto voce chat about what ****ers we thought one another was, but NO - thanks to my suit’s interpersonal ninja skills a conversation about  the clients comms issue ensued.

Moreover it got heated, and passionate and interesting IN A GOOD WAY - so much so that we all got on the same train to London and sat in the same carriage - talking all the way back to town about the issue.

By Waterloo we had a whole new GENUiNE 360 solution to the client’s problem.

Damn. Hate to say it but we should collaborate more.

Rug pulls from Client

I nearly cried today.  Not some pathetic foolish weeping but tears of pure rage (and if I’m honest frustration).

We’ve been working on a project very intensely for the last month/6 weeks - and all the work, all the hours of excited debate, dashed optimism and re-built excitement is in tatters after today’s massive unveil-the-curtain reveal of our work to the client was met by a massive rug pull: that he felt the focus of our endeavours was mis-directed.

Mis-directed?

Yeah - I’d love to have been involved in this process iteratively as there’s loads of good thinking - it all makes sense - it’s just there are some fundamentals that you’ve got wrong.

MISDIRECTED? I’m sorry- I know this client well but don’t have a pally relationship with him as it’s being jealously guarded by our lovable suits. Not that I blame them because this pan-Euro behemoth client is NEVER available for calls or meetings. I just wish there’d been more time spent keeping the grand fromage clientside abreast of our thinking and development - rather than this soul destroying mess.

Pitches - Hurry up and Wait

Working on a pitch right now and it’s dawned for the umpteenth time in my career how much time gets wasted waiting. Waiting for everyone to have their say on something.  Even the post-rationalised guff that gets done.

The amount of time I have sent stuff out on email to creative director, founding partner, head of planning, BAD and have teams waiting to get cracking on but there’s no point starting down any creative path until we have a consenus on the brief.

So I’m in work with 2 teams - we’re all going to order x5 take away and all get x5 different cabs home (unless the boy/girl team get the ‘orn - then it’ll be x4) - and our productivity will be almost nil tonight because I have a senior suit in Prague, a founding partner who wants to be involved but is on holiday somewhere and a head of planning who is AWOL - and me and the teams are stranded in the office until these 3 disparate stakeholders sort their shit out and talk to one another about the brief we want to work on.