New Features

Updates 17.12.09

The new home

Based on constant and valuable feedback from our users throughout the year we have worked hard to change the design from a typical webdesign to a more application design inspired by Apple's applications. The first part of the new design is visible on the first page when you log in; the home page. Our focus when we redesigned the home page was to make it easier and more intuitive to navigate, check messages (communicate), see events etc. To the left you will find the navigation menu. This menu is available anywhere at Symphonical when you are logged in simply by clicking the Symphonical button at the top left. In this menu you will quickly get an overview over your conversations, events, contacts and you will also find the places you last visited. We have also added the possibility to add a status message. This can be found under "Profile" in the navigation menu. Another main issue when redesigning the system was to reduce load times significantly. When you visit your home page you will experience that the system are responing much faster.

We will work hard to redesign the whole system and in the following months you will see that more and more parts of the system are upgraded to the new design.

This is a screenshot of the new home

Preview a tool

You can now preview a tool before using it. Also, you can preview a tool without being logged in simply by clicking the Preview tool-button.

Visit our toolbox

Voting and estimation on notes

The possibility to vote on notes, which can be found under the "Add" menu in the header of the wall, has been upgraded. You can now create several rounds of voting and estimation. This can be useful when you estimate tasks or just need more rounds of voting to reach a decision. Also, you can see the history of what you voted/estimated in earlier rounds when you view the note. The report created for following up the statistics from the vote/estimation has also been upgraded to a more intuitive interface which give you a complete overview. These reports are found under the "Reports" menu in the header of the wall.

The wall

We have also redesigned the wall in the same style as the home page. Making it cleaner and less noisy. This will hopefully make it much easier to use the wall. Also, when you share a wall, much of the admin functions will be removed so the users who visits the wall can focus on what you want them to do on the wall. This is a huge step forward in making Symphonical the easiest way to collaborate.

Other upgrades

• The note's description will now auto-save if you should accidentally close the browser, or go to a new URL.
• You can now drag and drop events in your callendar.
• Notifications from events will be gathered in one conversation.
• We have fixed several bugs and many important, but less visible, features have been improved.

Release notes - July 1, 2009

Website

• The website has been redesigned

Marketplace

• The marketplace is now known as the Library, and features a new design.
• Templates are now known as tools. You are now able to save a wall as a tool and share that tool with others. You can also publish it in the Library for all to see and use.
• Tools can be decorated with an image of your choice to stand out in the Library.
• You can now select to use a tool when logged out. This will send you to the login page and remind you to load the tool once you log in.

Rooms

• The room page has been redesigned.
• A timeline widget showing aggregated changes within the room has been added to the room-page.

Walls

• The ribbon menu has been re-organized and now sports quick-buttons.
• The dropdown menu for rows and columns has been redesigned.
• Drag&drop for rows and columns has been altered.
• Several bugs regarding note colors have been fixed.
• A new concept, Guides, have been added to walls. You can add a Guide to a wall, containing simple instructions to others on how to use the wall in question. The old concept of a Wizard is still operative, but differs from a Guide in that a Wizard may span multiple walls, whereas a Guide can only be attached to one wall. We plan to upgrade wizards to be collections of guides.
• Exporting a wall now respects the ordering of your notes, includes a list of files uploaded to the wall, and features slight changes in the design.

Notes

• The vote interface has been redesigned and now displays some statistics.
• A new concept, Connections, has been added to notes. You can now add a Connection between two notes, linking them together. In the future, you will be able to connect other objects, e.g. a note and an event.
• The rampant creation of empty notes has been addressed: Closing an empty note will silently delete it. A note is empty if it contains no information whatsoever; thus, notes with empty descriptions are still allowed.
• Embedding an image into a note description has been made significantly easier; we hope that this encourages everyone to illustrate their notes.

Home

• Most of the tabs have been redesigned.

Digest & notifications

• We have added more notifications to your inbox and to the digest system. You will now be notified of new calendar events, new invitations and possibly some more. The notifications you receive will now contain links to the objects in question.

Sharing

• Sharing a wall now allows you to add a Guide that will be automatically started when people look at the shared wall.

Help

• Two new sections have been added, visible as you log in: A yellow box containing the most important functions to help you get started, and a popup window with help topics and a video. You can tell both of them to go away if you no longer need them.
• The help popup will display relevant help depending on the page you are visiting.
• This help popup can be opened at any time from the help button in the headerbar.
• It is now possible to search our help forum from the bottom left column of your Home.
• New help videos are being created; expect to see them soon.

Import

• It is now possible to import a Microsoft Word document into Symphonical. This creates a wall populated with notes based on chapters and headings in the document. You can choose which headings become notes. For this to work properly, the word document must use standard heading styles, e.g. "Heading 1", "Heading 3", etc.

Invitations

• You can now invite a friend to join Symphonical without inviting him or her to any specific object.
• You can now add people to conversations and calendar events by email address, even when they are not yet Symphonical users.

Various

• Support for IE8 and Firefox 3.5 has been added.
• Several bugs related to IE and Chrome have been fixed.
• Invitations to join an Arena are now automatically accepted. Declining such an invitation is no longer possible.
• A new interface for uploading files has been added. This allows you to upload multiple files in one operation. The new interface requires Flash; if you do not have it installed, the old uploader interface will be used.

Update 31 october 2008

Marketplace

The first version of Symphonical Marketplace has finally arrived!

You can now share your templates with others, as well as find templates suitable for your use!

The marketplace is accessible from:
www.symphonical.com/library

When you are logged in, the Marketplace is accessible from the "Go-to" dropdown to the left in the header.

New features and upgrades will be added continuously during the coming months.

Templates

Template creation has also been made easier with the help of a simple step-by-step wizard to guide you through the process.

See the "Template" tab on your home for further information.

New wall features

Order View
Organize notes the way you want! This is perfect for to-do lists or for prioritizing tasks. When an order has been set, other views will list the notes according to this order, meaning you have more control over how the notes will be displayed, even inside a cell.

"Changes since last visit"
This attribute is back on walls, enabling you to quickly find out what changes have been made since your last visit. A note´s "History" tab also gives detailed information about what changes made. Notes cannot be moved in this view.

Uncategorized
This attribute property has been upgraded so it is now possible to change its name, position and color. We recommend you use this attribute value as a container for notes that have not yet been handled.

"Number attribute"
This new attribute has been added to walls, and is the first step towards making calculations (e.g. timetracking) or price-tagging of notes possible.

To add a new number attribute go to "Options" on the wall, then Choose "Number attributes".

We will add additional functionality in the upcoming releases to take full advantage of this attribute. Soon, you will be able to calculate rows and columns almost like in Excel, but with the huge advantage of the yellow notes. We will, however, move some of these new functions to payment modules early next year.

Timestamps
Notes with timestamps are now visible in the calendar, SymphoniCAL. Hence, notes with a timestamp will appear in your calendar.

To add timestamps to wall notes, go to "Options", then choose "Timestamps".

Sharing

The sharing concept has been upgraded including corrections to sharing features as well as a new how-to wizard for sharing. You no longer have to enter a password to go to a shared object if you are already logged in to Symphonical.

Other

If you haven't already noticed, a popup window for entering proper profile information may appear after logging in to Symphonical. Please enter your name, select a timezone and language. This makes it easier for others to know who you are and makes sure the calendar and language settings are set correctly for your needs.

In addition to all of these new functions and enhancements, several improvements and bug-fixes have been made, specifically for better browser support and usability.

Happy Symphing!

Release notes - May 11, 2009

Quickbrowser

The old quickbrowser is gone and replaced with a Find link. We've combined search, last visited and a simple browser together so that you can find (almost) anything from this window. We apologize for our limited search functionality. We are working on it.

Subscription

Email feeds of conversations was released a few releases ago. In this release we've added feeds for Watched items and Polls. Watched items are items that are labeled with the system label Watched. You can add or remove this label from items as you see fit. We have also added subscription settings for those feeds, so you can decide when to receive the feeds - or turn them off completely. To edit your subscription settings, open Preferences and select Subscriptions.

Invite users and edit access rights

We've completely renewed these two functionalities.
Accessrights is a complex feature, so we will try to explain briefly how it works: The Arena level has members. You can invite/add members to that group freely if you are administrator. Those members will not have access to anything except the Arena unless they are added as "Administrators" - in which they will have access to everything. So, after you have invited members to your Arena, you have to decide what they can access. This is done in the "Edit accessrights window". Sharing is a quick way of giving access to a specific wall or note to a person. That person will then be listed as a member of the Arena, but will only gain access to the shared note/wall. So remember, after inviting people, be sure to setup the accessrights properly.

Labels

It is no possible to set colors on custom made labels.

Branding

It is now possible to buy branding module (in addition to the security module). Branding allows you to add your company logo (an image) to arena, room and notes and add a slogan for your notes aswell. Since we have not yet added online payment, you have to contact us for this feature. For those of you that previously had an image set on your Arena, this image is no longer present if you don't already have the branding module enabled.

Name-changes

Naming concepts are difficult. We've done a few changes, but suggestions are always welcome.

The following namechanges are applied in this release

• Attributes -> sorting
• Number attribute -> number-field
• Quickbrowser -> Find

Other

There are now more colors too choose from on wall.

Release notes - April 22, 2009

Redesign of home page

The home page has been through a huge redesign. The redesign has been done to make it

• easier to get started. Users can now create notes directly without having to create an arena, room and wall. Consequently, users can now create a wall or room directly without having to create an arena.
• easier to get an overview of all information and to sort the information. Users can now sort their arenas, rooms, walls and notes into labels. The labels concept is almost identical to the folder concept. However, a wall can possess many labels. In this way, a wall exists only one place, but you can label it with many different labels, e.g., "Private", "To-do", "Sport". Consequently, the wall will appear when you sort all information on "Private", "To-do" or "Sport". In this way, you don't have to decide only one place to store the wall.
• easier to browse through all information in the system. Actually, you can now browse your way from an arena, through a room and wall to a specific note and open the note directly from your home page.

Redesign of arena page

The arena page has also been redesigned to make it

• easier to brand the arena (as for now, only partners can brand arenas)
• easier to see members of the arena
• easier to get an overview of all the content in the arena

Webpage

The main web page (www.symphonical.com) has been updated with the latest company tweets and the latest feedback from our user community. You will find this on the right hand side of the web page. Also, we have added user videos and an introduction to the Symphoncial concept.

Release notes - Feb. 27, 2009

Conversation concept

We have improved and innovated how messaging works. With a usable, chat-like dialogue that occurs on all objects. It also appears in your inbox, similar to an e-mail. The Conversation concept will replace and combine the old commenting and messaging system. An e-mail will also be sent from Symphonical each day with an update of unread conversations (only if you have any unread conversations).

Faster and more stable server

Our platform now runs on Amazon Elastic Computing Cloud (EC2) in Europe, which means that the accessibility from different countries will be much better and faster.

Create guides in a simple and efficient way

We have acted on the many feedbacks regarding the guides. Creating or editing a guide is now much more intuitive and simple.

More usable notes

The yellow note is now easier to use. Each note has its own dedicated page which you can access by clicking the maximize button or the full page link in the note-window. Furthermore, we have improved the description field with auto save. We have also included a new embed type: docstoc embedding.

Moving or copying notes across your arenas

Moving notes across different arenas are now possible. Just by clicking the move/copy notes button (see the functions tab/ribbon on the wall)), and then select the proper path to a wall, and drag and drop the notes you want to move or copy.

Export your walls

You can now export walls to Word, PowerPoint, PDF and HTML. This feature is available at the function tab in all walls.

Other updates

Highlight notes on a wall. Try it out to discover how easy it is to find a note if you have many notes on the wall.
Tab-clicking and linking. Many windows have been adjusted to be more intuitive and supportive of tab-clicking. Several "blue-links" is now supporting browser specific handling (like right click->open in new tab).
Sharing. It is now possible to set a specific wall-view in a sharing to make it easier for the receivers to view the wall as you wanted them to see it.

Release notes December 17, 2008

Homepage

- Private Arena

As part of our mission of making Symphonical easier for new users, all users now have their own Private Arena with three default walls. This is also important in the future development of mobile accessibility (e.g. creating notes from your mobile phone). You cannot invite people into this Arena or its sub-objects - It's strictly private. However, you can share the walls and notes.

- Observed walls and notes

The old concept of "Your bookmarked walls" has been improved and been given a new name: Observed Walls and Notes. This Observe functionality makes it easy to bookmark and access objects that are important to you. In the next release we will improve this feature by showing a more thorough event log so you can see the last changes and interact with them directly.

Editor

A rich text-editor has been added to note description, template description and sharing instruction, making it possible to edit your text with colors, bold and even add images and links. When copying text from other sources (e.g. a word document), the style formatting will be kept.

In addition we have added a special module to this editor making it possible to embed YouTube videos, slides from SlideShare and external webpages as components into the text area. Note that the embedded components will not show up correctly unless you switch the editor to "view modus".

Wall

- Presentation View

A new view, Presentation View, has been added. This view takes one note at a time, presenting it in a slideshow manner. With the rich text editor the notes (slides) can be very creative.

- Created by / changed by attributes added

We have added two new system attributes: "Created by" and "Changed by". These attributes are generated by the system and re-arrange notes according to either who created the note, or who made the most recent change. When using these system attributes, notes cannot be dragged around.

- Ribbons

A new user-interface concept called "Ribbons" has been added to the wall making it easier to locate all the wall functionality. The ribbon concept also modifies the features available according to view-type and access rights.

- Discuss on wall

The side-panel (or side-flip) on the right-hand side of the wall is now consisting of a discuss feature. The discussion feature works the same way as commenting on notes. Anyone with access to the wall, regardless of access level, may post messages there.

- Collapsing on wall

When collapsing rows or columns in a Structured View on the Wall, you will be prompted to save the changes. If you do so, the collapsed rows/columns will stay collapsed when you return to this view. This also works in shared walls.

- Export to Excel

Our first version of export to Excel is ready. The function is accessible from the Ribbon->functions menu on the Wall page. This will trigger a download of an excel file.

- Estimation vote

There are a few changes to the Voting module on the Wall. The old "Distribute Points" type of voting has been changed to "Distribute Points / Estimation". This enables every user to give a certain amount of points to a note.

A typical use for this is the estimation of work hours where collaborating team members can help each other estimate their tasks and workload. When the vote is finished, a report is available for all Conductors on the Wall.

Branding

Customizing Arenas, Rooms and Notes with images (e.g. Company logo) and a special text is now available for some users on certain Arena's. An example is having a company logo placed on notes.

Contact us if you want to know how you can get access to this functionality.

New infrastructure for portal-page / marketplace

www.symphonical.com has been changed radically. We have rewritten the entire infrastructure to make room for future plans and new design. New sections have also been added.

Certified orchestrator

As part of our quest to help people organize and structure their private, business and community lives, our first Certified Orchestrator course has been held. Certified Orchestrators will get a banner added to their profile picture.

This title is exclusively for people who have attended the course.

Upload files to arena/room

It is now possible to upload files directly to Arenas and Rooms.

Sharing

Sharing a yellow note or wall is now easier and you can customize the email text that will be sent.

Template: "short description"

We added a new text field to templates: "short-description". This description will be shown in template lists on the marketplace while the "long description" will be shown on each individual template page. The "long description" is now editable using the new rich text-editor.