Capsule

More context in the history

The layout of the the contact history in Capsule was designed early on and it’s been long due for a tidy up.  The main problem with the old design is that the sender of an email wasn’t clearly identified. This made it difficult to know if the email was sent by you or by a contact.

The new design shows the sender and recipient(s) of the email so it’s clear whether the email was sent by you to the contact, or was received from a contact.  We’ve also included the contact’s picture alongside each entry in the organisation’s page.  The user and entry date are still displayed, but are given less prominence to make it easy to scan through the information in each entry.  Here’s a preview showing the new design:

New in Capsule: Pictures from Social Networks

With so many businesses now using social networks such as Twitter and LinkedIn, we've been looking for ways to include the information from these social network profiles inside Capsule. With our latest update to Capsule, pictures from these profiles can be pulled into contacts in Capsule. When you add a social profile such as a twitter account, LinkedIn or Facebook profile to a contact, Capsule will check to see if the profile has a picture, and if so automatically display it when viewing the contact. Capsule also checks for a gravatar which is a picture associated with an email address, so in many cases Capsule can grab a picture for a contact using just the email address.

To see it in action, add a social network profile to one of your contacts. Here's an example for Phillip, my co-founder here at Zestia.

And here's the resulting mugshot in Capsule:

We've also taken the opportunity to revamp the contact panel a little which you can see in the screenshot above. Rather than displaying the URL for a social network profile we show an icon which you can hover over to see the URL/account or click through to see the full profile.

Finally, we noticed a lot of users weren't aware that Capsule integrated with Twitter to show recent tweets (and now profile pictures) right inside a contact's page in Capsule. To make this more intuitive we updated the add new contact page to default the twitter input field. You can leave it blank or change it to another network, but hopefully this makes it clearer that you can add a twitter profile amongst other social network profiles to your Capsule contacts.

System Status page for Capsule

We had a couple of periods earlier in the week where the service was slow for some users. Sorry to those affected.  We are resolving this by adding server capacity, some of which has been put in place and we’ve got more coming.

A number of you asked whether there is system status page for Capsule. We haven’t had one, but as of today we’ve published a System Status page to keep users informed when the service is down or problematic. We’ll post whenever there is an issue or we schedule downtime. We’ve also also published our Pingdom Uptime Report which provides both current status and history of the system availability.

Hope you find this useful, and more importantly, I hope we don’t have to update it too often!

A PHP Wrapper for the Capsule API

At Capsule we love APIs; they allow Capsule to be connected with other popular web applications like Google Apps which we integrated with recently. It's also great to see developers using the Capsule API in creative ways such as Alive Docs' recent integration with Capsule, FreshBooks, Gmail and Xero.

David at echolibre has created a PHP wrapper for the Capsule API and has kindly made it available on github. PHP is a popular framework for creating web applications so our thanks go to him and his team for making it easier to integrate PHP applications with Capsule. Examples and further details are available on the echolibre blog.

Capsule integrates with Google Apps

We’re excited to announce our long requested integration with Google Apps.  Google approached us late last year to ask us to participate as a launch company in their new Google Apps marketplace.  As announced by Google earlier today, the Google Apps marketplace provides a range of cloud apps that integrate with Google.  Capsule is one of the first 50 apps to be offered in the marketplace.  It can be installed using the “Add it now” button inside the Capsule marketplace listing.

Here’s how the integration works…

After installing Capsule into your Google Apps domain, users access Capsule straight from Google’s universal navigation in the same way as they would access other Google Apps such as Google Mail or Calendar.  Here’s an example of what that looks like for a user:

Pretty neat huh! Also, since the user’s Google Apps credentials are used to log them into Capsule, there’s no extra user name or password for the user to remember.

Google does email and collaboration well and it has a basic personal contact manager.  However it doesn’t provide a good solution for sharing your company contacts with multiple users.  Capsule provides a solution to this since a CRM is the natural place for your company contacts to be stored and shared with other users.  In this model Capsule is the master repository for all company contacts, and users can choose to have their Google Contacts inside Google Apps kept up-to-date by Capsule.  This is a user choice, and is easily enabled from the user’s setting page in Capsule:

Once enabled, Capsule will push a full set of contacts from Capsule into the user’s Google account.  Any time a new contact is added, or a contact is updated in Capsule those details will automatically get pushed to the user’s Google account.

Another enhancement we’ve made for Google Apps users is to have Google Mail pop-up when a user clicks on a contact’s email address inside Capsule.  This is a user choice, and is easily enabled from the user’s setting page in Capsule:

Finally, users can also see their Capsule tasks inside Google Calendar (we actually released this feature last month).  Follow the “Subscribe to iCalendar Feed” link from the Capsule calendar page to enable this.

Many thanks to the users that beta tested and provided feedback on the Google Apps integration. If you are an existing Capsule user and would like to integrate, please get in touch with us so that we can provide instructions for connecting with your existing Capsule account (rather than creating a new account as per the default process). Hope you all find the new functionality useful and we look forward to refining and extending it further based on your feedback.

Quick contact preview

We’ve had lots of feedback from our users asking for a quick way to view email addresses and phone numbers of contacts on the case and opportunity screens. Until now to view the contact details required clicking through to the contacts page.  So now we have added a contact preview. To view the preview hover your mouse over the contact card next to the name of the contact to see phone numbers, emails and addresses.

New in Capsule: calendar view and task categories

We greatly value suggestions from our users in making Capsule the best CRM around for small businesses.  Some of the more popular suggestions on our uservoice forum have been to add a calendar view of your tasks in Capsule.  A related suggestion has been to show your Capsule tasks in your favourite calendaring apps such as iCal on the Mac, Outlook Calendar and Google Calendar.

Over the weekend we rolled out the new calendar view and the iCal feed.  You can see how the screen looks below.  We also introduced task categories so that when you add a task to Capsule you can give it additional context such as it’s a Meeting or a Milestone or you need to Follow-up.  We think this is a useful productivity improvement to the tasks functionality in Capsule.

We’ve added a default set of categories to all Capsule accounts which you’re welcome to edit and extend.

Javelin is now Capsule

As per our previous blog post and email notification to users, Javelin is renaming to Capsule. The switch over of the branding and the change of the domain name from javelincrm.com to capsulecrm.com has been completed today. We've sent an email to users with instructions for accessing accounts and support. If you have any trouble, let us know on .

And now for a bit of nostalgia here is the old logo alongside the new:

Javelin is being renamed to Capsule

This weekend Javelin is being renamed to Capsule. Accounts on the system will continue as before with the same data, username and password.  However the URL that you use to access the CRM system will change and we’ll notify users of the new URL once the change over has completed. Integration with 3rd party applications will not be affected as we’ll continue to make the API available on the existing URL.

The reason for the name change is that we have been contacted by a company who has a trademark on the name Javelin.  While we don’t agree there is an infringement of their trademark we figure our time and resources are better spent building a great CRM rather than fighting court battles. We’ll share further details on this once the change over is complete.

To complete the changeover, Javelin will be unavailable this Sunday from 12:00 to 16:00 GMT.

Javelin saving the UK millions during big snow

Here in the UK we’ve had the worst snow in decades according to the minute by minute news reports.  Apparently the place has been bought to a standstill. According to the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), lost employee productivity could cost the UK £600m per day.

The bad news for our Javelin users is there is no excuses for an extended holiday since Javelin can be accessed from anywhere you have an internet connection. As tweeted by one of our users, “Hmmmm, I think I’ll work from home today using #googleapps, Javelin CRM & Xero”.

So while it might be a stretch to say Javelin is making the whole of the UK more productive!, businesses using cloud applications like Javelin, Google Apps and Xero have a much better chance of remaining productive if staff can continue to access the systems they rely on. If you are considering home working for your staff, SaaSage who offer services for Javelin and other cloud apps have put together a list of considerations for home working

For any businesses out there still using traditional software instead of cloud applications, here’s an incentive for you to convert to Javelin.  This week only get 25% off your first 3 months by signing up with discount code BIGSNOW

Opportunities & Cases now with more flexibility

Custom fields and Data Tags have been a very popular feature for contacts in Javelin with good reason.  By adding your own custom fields you can adapt Javelin to better suit your business. Now the same feature is available to Opportunities and Cases.

As a simple example to demonstrate the power of this feature, let’s say I’d like to use Javelin to keep track of my client projects.  First I configure a new Data Tag called Web Project and add fields for start date, planned end date and planned budget.

Now when I apply the Web Project tag to a case, Javelin prompts me to enter the new information and when I’m looking at the case in Javelin I can see the Web Project information I’ve entered alongside other case information.

Finally, it’s easy to use the new fields to add conditions to lists that are created in Javelin.  For example, I can create a lists of projects due in due by February adding the following condition:

Hopefully this demonstrates the power of the custom fields and Data Tag functionality and has given you some ideas for your own.  If you’ve got an interesting use of this functionality that you’d like to share with the Javelin community then we’d love to hear about it.

Internet Explorer is officially square

We’ve been introducing rounded corners into the Javelin user interface recently.  Rounded corners and curves are nice and they provide us with a simple way to keep Javelin looking fresh, or at least it should have been simple.  As any web designer will tell you in words I can’t print here, Internet Explorer is a party pooper.

We’ve looked into using the many hacks for round corners in Internet Explorer and we tried a couple but they all have their issues which leads us to this position:

So instead of spending our days making Internet Explorer fit a round hole we’ve left it square.  In Firefox, Safari and Chrome you’ll get some rounded corner love:

And in Internet Explorer you’ll see square:

And another example:

I’m not on a crusade to change your web browser.  The beauty of web applications is you get to choose your operating system and browser, but if you are using Internet Explorer and want to consider an alternative then Mashable did a browser round up recently.

FreshBooks Integration

Javelin now integrates with FreshBooks. FreshBooks is a great way for you to track time and invoice your customers. When you use Javelin with FreshBooks you'll get the complete view of your relationships including notes and files you've added, emails to and from the contact, tasks that need to be done, sales opportunities, along side invoices from FreshBooks.

Integration is easy, simply enter your FreshBooks account API details into your Professional Edition of Javelin. Javelin automatically imports your customers from FreshBooks and you're ready to go. Here's a summary of what you get:

• When viewing a contact in Javelin, you'll see a summary of invoices and outstanding amounts from FreshBooks
• Contacts can be exported from Javelin into FreshBooks so that you can start invoicing them
• Amend invoices and view contacts in FreshBooks by clicking through from the contact in Javelin
• Updates to contact details such as addresses in Javelin are automatically synchronised to FreshBooks so you only need to make the update in one place

Capsule API for Developers

We're pleased to announce the Capsule API is now available. Developers can use the API to access Javelin whether you're planning on creating a clever add-on you want to share with the community or hooking in one of your internal applications. The API is implemented using XML or JSON over plain old HTTPS allowing developers to use existing tools and languages.

The API closely follows RESTful principles with every resource like person, opportunity or tag having its own URL. Resources can be manipulated using standard REST commands GET (view), POST (create), PUT (update) and DELETE. For more details and to get started visit our API guide.

We would love to hear ideas you have on how you plan to use the API. Drop us a note at .

Javelin Affiliate Program

A number of you have been recommending Javelin to your clients, associates and even random fellow Twitter users.  We are very grateful for this support and we’d like to say a big thank you for bringing customers to us.

In return we are launching an affiliate program where you can earn money for referrals.  The Javelin Affiliate Program is a revenue share between you, the affiliate, and us.  You’ll receive 20% of our revenues from a referred customer for the life of their account. 

The sign-up process for the affiliate program is easy and we’ve kept the program as simple as possible.  There’s no fee or other obligation in joining.  To get started, visit the affiliate program overview.

We’d love to hear how you get on, and feel free to drop us any questions on our support email address .