FUNCTIONALITY

The application has a straight forward functionality, allowing even users who aren’t very experienced with computers to find their way easily and do what they need to do. A lot of JavaScript was used to create an enjoyable and fast experience for the users.

We will not try to create a user manual here, because it would be quite redundant, considering the simplicity of using the application. We will however try to present all of the features that we have included and that can make your office life much more structured and enjoyable.


The First Page
The first page displays :

The list of links the user has added.
The urgent tasks.
The tasks that the deadline is approaching (defined by the user)
The tasks that depend on the user or a task unfinished by the user.
The latest messages that the user hasn’t read, that are addressed to the user.
The daily calendar.
The today’s appointments.
The appointments that the user has been invited to by colleagues.

For the calendar the user can select a day, filter the employees and clients to see the public appointments that they have for that day.

The user can select another day and add an appointment there or simply see the appointments for that day.

There are 2 types of appointments. The general day appointments, which can me considered closer to a task (I have to do something at a certain date but I’m not sure when) and the programmed appointments, where a user has a begin hour and an end hour which are correlated with the rest of the schedule, so one can’t have overlapping meetings, etc.

When adding a meeting the user can invite other users (administrators, employees or clients), persons present in the Contacts section or other people. For the users of the Sapient an invitation will appear in the program, for the external people (contacts or others) an e-mail will be sent where they are invited to the meeting, they can confirm the invitation or not. This information will also be available to the rest of the users involved in the meeting.

A user can filter the calendar to see the public meetings of other employees or administrators.

After a meeting has been concluded the users present at the meeting can comment on the meeting, This is especially for the administrators because they can see what the staff has concluded during a meeting in an easy to access report from wherever the world.

These meetings can relate to projects inside the application.

Admin
The admin tab allows the user to administrate their information, add and edit links, change their information (contact details, password, etc) and it also allows the administrators to add clients and other users.

Infos
The Infos tab allows all the users to access and add information about a client, usually used to keep information such as access information, various pieces of text that may be useful in the future on a regular basis. This information can be setup-ed to be accessed only by the administrators and clients, by all of the users or only by users involved in projects of the specific client.

Projects
This is the most important part of the application. The idea is that an administrator can add a project for a client, name a project manager, and then any administrator, project manager or employee involved in the project can add tasks to themselves or one another. The application counts the time used for a task or a project because the users can “click play” whenever they start to work on a certain task. This makes it a lot easier for administrators to see how much time the company or an employee has spent working on a project or task.

One of the most important advantages of this section is the ergonomics of it. Tasks are easily split in 4 sections: tasks that are in progress, tasks that are deferred, tasks that have not yet been commenced and tasks that are finished.

The projects are displayed as tabs, 3 per line and they can be minimized or maximized. The position on the page and the configuration of the collapsed projects are remembered while the user navigates to another page to ease the navigation.

The list of tasks can be also minimized or not.

The users can filter the projects see only the projects for a client or for an employee or filter them together, he can see what an employee has to do or has done for a client or for a project.

When defining or editing a task the user can change the:
Name
Description
The employee it has been assigned to
Error task: means that the task is a task to fix an error that has been done on the project, and it’s time is not market as a billed time
Privacy: whether the task is visible to the client in the section it accesses
Priority: urgent or not, if a task is urgent it will show to the user it has been assigned to on the first page until the task is completed.

The status can have the following values:
In progress
Deferred until: here the user can select the date the task has been deferred to and the reason.
Waiting on: the user can select the waiting reason: another task, another employee, a client user for that project. (the users that own the task or are named are announced that a task is waiting on them.
Not started
Finished
The due date of the task: the user can select the date the task needs to be finished and the amount of days he wants to be notified of the task in advance.
The price can be selected along with the currency as well as the flag indicating whether it was paid or not.
Cyclicity marks that a certain task will repeat after a certain number of days or every month at a certain day or every 6 months or every year, etc.

When editing a project you can change the
Client: select another one from the list of clients
Project manager: select another one from the employee list.
Price and currency: the price / budget of the project and the currency.

In depth details about this section can be obtained by accessing the demo version. Please request a demo of this product for comprehensive information and a complete experience.

Messages
A user can add a variety of types of messages. This variety relates mainly to the users that can view the messages. For example: messages can be sent concerning a project, a task, to a project (the clients and the employees involved in the project), concerning a task, a message can be a global announcement or a question to a client concerning a task from a project.

The latest messages are shown on the first page. All the active main messages are shown in the messages page. The replies to a certain message are shown in a “tree view”. Messages are marked as read or unread.

The clients only have access to see, add tasks, messages to the projects, without assigning them to an employee, without seeing times and confidential information.

In depth details about this section can be obtained by accessing the demo version. Please request a demo of this product for comprehensive information and a complete experience.

Contacts
The contacts section is extremely useful, it allows anybody in the company (administrators and users) to easily access contact information for companies or persons.

This information is organized on companies, with certain information that has contacts, with another set of details.

Another type of tasks is present here. A user can add an action for a contact for another user or him at a certain date. This is especially useful for PR or Marketing departments that need to contact persons outside the company.

As we have said before this presentation is meant only to introduce you to the application, please see the demo for comprehensive information.


All of the information in the application has 2 states: Active and Inactive. The Active information, users, projects, information, messages, etc is shown in the site, easily accessible. The Inactive information is always shown if the “Inactive” button is pressed. Only inactive information can be deleted, after a period of time by an employee or immediately by an administrator.

Search
The search option allows the user to search through the information in the site, but only through the information he has the rights to access.