QG Software & 5pm Blog

Some of our users asked for the possibility to duplicate existing projects and tasks or to define projects/tasks templates. We have good news for them - our latest feature, Project/Task Cloning, does just that. With a single click you can duplicate an existing 5pm task or project (with or without its sub-tasks). The dates and status fields are automatically adjusted.

Read more about this feature on our website.

How much paper do you use in your office every day? Ever considered reducing the waste and save some trees? Today is a good day to start, since it’s the Earth Day.

A good way to save paper is to go electronic. Documents, notes, calendars - everything. Especially when you have to share it with others (imagine all the print copies of the same document). Web-based software makes the sharing even easier, since the data can be accessed from any computer that has access to internet.

Is your task list still on paper? If so, you may want to try 5pm web-based project management tool - it will definitely reduce your carbon footprint, not to mention the increased productivity:

Want to find more about 5pm? Visit our website at www.5pmweb.com .

This weekend we added a bunch of small updates to 5pm. They may not be noticeable at first glance but can be very handy.

Firstly, the “Filter by any user” dropdown was updated. It’s not just about the look - now you can sort the projects/tasks not just by any team member but also by any client, with a single click:

The popup window’s design was also updated. Now it includes the “expand” button to maximize its size - it expands the Description/Content field, giving more space for the input text. Some useful rollover hints were added (did you know, for example, that in the calendar you can select the day one week from today by just typing in “+7″):

We believe that a good product is as much about big features, as about small details. In fact, good design is in details.

Want to find more about 5pm? Visit our website at www.5pmweb.com .

We recently got multiple requests from universities that use 5pm and want to pay on a yearly, not monthly basis. It’s linked to the University & Federal Fiscal Year-End.

We decided to make an exception for such clients and process yearly payments. Note, that the Educational Institutions also take advantage of a 50% discount.

In order to take advantage of this deal, just contact us directly. We accept credit card payments, wire transfers and checks.

For more information about 5pm project management service, visit www.5pmweb.com.

We are glad to welcome all our users on our new 5pm server. The transaction went according to the schedule.

Existing users will notice a significant improvement in speed, due to a more powerful server.

We also updated our backup procedures - the backups are created nightly between 2AM and 4AM EST to three different locations, two of them in different data centers, with different hosting providers. We are also planning to add an additional backup storage in Europe.

We are glad to announce that this weekend we are upgrading to a bigger, faster, better server. The transaction will happen on 5:00 PM EST on Friday, March 7. All the services will continue working as before, while DNS changes will be propagated during the next 48 hours. We will be tracking the servers closely during the weekend to make sure everything goes smoothly.

At the end of the weekend, after the DNS change will be finished, we will do the final synchronization of the databases at 2:00 AM on Monday, March 10. The service will be stopped for 30 minutes at that time in order to do the synchronization.

Feel free to email us if you have any questions.

We updated our Timeline design today. It’s been compressed to fit more project/task information. In fact, it can fit double the information now.

Here is what the old and new Timelines look like:

We plan to add soon new features to our Flash Timeline and, in time, even make it editable.

Want to find more about 5pm? Visit our website at www.5pmweb.com .

We are planning some major infrastructure upgrades soon to keep up with our growing user base. We purchased new servers this week. To assure the quality, we are evaluating two separate servers from different hosting providers.

We are excited to match our software upgrades with hardware ones to create an even better 5pm service.

The schedule of the upgrades will be posted soon.

We experienced some problems with our hosting provider. As a result, our website and services were down. We were dealing with it the whole weekend, and we restored the server earlier today. Our website is up, and the 5pm users can login into their accounts. Some services and features are still being fixed as we speak.

We will send a separate email to our users about it.

We are sorry for the inconvenience. We are taking measures to avoid this issue in the future.

Now 5pm tasks can be viewed in calendar software like Apple iCal, Google Calendar, Mozilla Sunbird and any other calendar that supports iCalendar format. You can view all the tasks, just the ones you are attached to (are a part of the Task Team) or just the tasks from a particular project. Tasks can be imported into the calendar as tasks (”to do items” in Apple iCal) or events. Read more about it here.

You can register your own 5pm account and try it for 14 days for free: www.5pmweb.com.