Feel the need for speed?

You may notice when you next sign in that the Saasu Dashboard loads much more quickly. Some customers felt we could do better, so we did.

The dashboard was one of our oldest components, it has been revamped to load about 10-20 times faster. We have even more speed and feature improvements coming too.

New widgets

While we were looking at the dashboard improvements, we also lay the tracks for future components (usually called widgets) to be added. If there are some regular summary snapshots you would like to appear in your dashboard please make a specific suggestion.

Saasu News Feed (RSS Feed)

All Saasu product and company announcements will now feed into the Saasu Dashboard via a feed from our blog. If you haven’t read our blog or learnt about RSS now is a good time. RSS stands for really simple syndication and it basically lets you build your own newspaper of stuff you really want to see from anywhere on the web, not just in saasu.

We see a gradual global shift happening with people moving from email to RSS for some things because it can shrink your email in-box and grow the relevance of what you read.

Widget controls

Saasu refreshes your dashboard information automatically or if you are in a hurry use the new Refresh icon on the top right of each widget to update instantly.

Use the new Report Icon to drill down to the full report for each widget.

We were pleased to roll out another release recently with a whole bunch of new features.

The level of positive feedback across all our channels and countries has been excellent, from phone calls, emails, twitter, skype, instant messenger and more.

There have been so many positive comments and it has only been out a few days - have a read below and you will get the idea. Try it and tell your friends!

Sure, there were a few areas that needed a tweak or two, but 90% of reported issues were cosmetic and the vast majority are already fixed and live. This the great thing about SaaS - continuous improvement and community driven quality and ideas. We love it!

Faster. Better. Easier.

That is what we live for - saving you time and helping you do more while simplifying your life. It is being made available to all users immediately. No upgrade hassles, no effort no additional cost. That what I call Good SaaS.

The main areas of improvement are listed below the comments from our fans.

Fans love it

• Congratulations on the new release going live – it looks and feels terrific - Marytn from My CFO
• New version looks great. Huge improvement on the previous one (and that one was pretty good anyway) - Ben from CompSyc
• Love the improved interface, abundance of printing and export options. Accounting that makes sense at last, thank you. I will be migrating several other accounts at the end of the financial year as there is no point in struggling with the obtuse behaviour of MYOB any longer !! - Hew from Coral Sea Superannuation Fund
• Love the new look - Michelle from Lorose
• Overall very good. Think you are doing a great job, well done - Jason from Computer Support Partners (Ryde Franchisee)

The new stuff

• Speed - some of screens in our top 5 have been reduced by 60%
• Look and feel - most screens make better use of real estate and improved readability
• Transact - cleaner, simpler faster transaction screens that work faster and make your keying easier but have more features
• Activities - manage your to dos, meeting minutes, docs and more. Do the same for your team. Show the boss how much you do every day. Rack activities at the project, client, tag and even transaction level (complex quotes are now easy). This was talked about earlier.
• Catch - the quick way of capturing activities in seconds, now you can easily remember those five action items from every phone call.
• Just one click - extended the number of features that are one click away to over 90%
• Reports - better access to loads of reports, lists, views, exporting and more
• Tags - No more inflexible categorisation, use one or a dozen tags across the whole system to file, group, filter, list and more. Probably a world first(?) for online accounting we think.
• Get social - one click access to around 200 million entries in professional and social networks like face book, linked in, my space, bebo, orkut to see info on your prospects, partners and more. This was pre-announced recently
• Get connected - see maps of addresses on Google maps, search from the dashboard using Catch, connect to salesforce.com for advanced CRM, connect to 88miles.net for project timesheetings, connections for more banks, improved security logging, improved security reporting, improved security control for system-to-system connectors.
• Get control - improved role based security to span one or more businesses and subscriptions, franchises and corporate
• Payroll - drop your old payroll provider and get online, email payslips, automated bulk processing and banking

See it scream

See the new features page for more details and screen shots or watch the new quick tour video.

By the way, it looks sensational on the Mac, and screams on Safari and firefox on Mac OSX, Windows XP and Vista. The best thing? This just the beginning

This release is timed to coincide with CeBIT too so make sure you come on down and see the greatest technology and business show in the southern hemisphere. Our stand and a little of our presentation will be featuring the new release.

Clone, Connect, Automate - saving time and reducing errors is just the beginning.

One the of great things about SaaS is the ability to opt-in permanently (or on a transaction by transaction) basis to information from a counter-party such as supplier, customer, employee or other legal entity you ‘trade’ with in a broader sense.

We call this automated exchange of information ‘Transaction Cross-Docking’ or TCD, just like the traditional cross-docking of pallets of physical materials in warehouses (more…)

Two major global developments in the SaaS (Software as a Service) world show the blue sky is really here today. (more…)

I was thinking I might sit in the sun at Hyde Park (Sydney CBD, Australia) and answer my emails on wireless.

What Wi-Fi can I get? A quick search found a search tool for Skype that gives you a list of free or paid Wi-Fi points. Being a skeptic I tried it and it works really well. I even tried it in my home suburb and yep my local Starbucks is a go-er. Happy now

You will need Skype to use it and then get the search tool at the JiWire Bot for Skype download page.

In Skype there is an extension you can use with your Firefox web browser that will convert any phone number on a web page into a Skype phone call link. This can be very handy if you want to use your “Contacts List” screen in Saasu to make Skype phone calls.

The Skype website isn’t very helpful in trying to find the download. It says you get it when you download Skype but I haven’t tried getting that to work. Here is another download source of the Skype Toolbar for Mozilla Firefox 2.3.0.31

Phone numbers need to be in international format with spaces. e.g. 61 2 8003 7222

You need Skype to have this work… Download Skype | Get SkypeOut | Get SkypeIn