The Capsule Blog

Bringing Opportunities to Capsule Mobile

First off I’d like to introduce myself. Hi I’m Tom and I’ve recently joined the team at Capsule as a front-end developer. My background was originally working with .NET, Ruby and Node.js and now I’m working in JavaScript and CoffeeScript to make Capsule’s user interface more interactive. I’ve started looking at the mobile application and the first of these updates are now publicly available.

You can now view your open opportunities by tapping the new Pipeline button on the mobile app’s main menu. Tapping on an individual opportunity will take you through, showing more information about it. Opportunities are now listed under notes and emails for individual contacts. Currently, opportunities are only available when your device has a network connection.

If you don’t see the new Pipeline link you need to update the app so that you’re running the latest version: in the mobile app go to ‘Settings’ and tap the ‘Check for Updates’ button.

New API documentation

We’ve recently updated the Capsule API pages. The API itself is more or less the same, there’s a few updates and we have improved the design and overall look and feel of the API documentation.

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.

We’ll be removing the old documentation shortly so you should update your bookmarks with the new URL. Check it out here: http://developer.capsulecrm.com/

Capsulecrm.com refresh

We're excited to have rolled out a new design for http://capsulecrm.com.

Technically we've made use of web standards such as HTML5 and you'll find some very smooth CSS3 animations dotted around the site. In terms of content you'll still see familiar pages such as the blog and features page, but we're sure you'll find the new design smoother and easier to navigate.

We've also added the ability to login to your Capsule account through the website. This feature is a response to our customer request and something we felt was useful for the new website.

One final thing you'll find is a video showing off Capsules features on the home page, including a look at the mobile app, just click the play button to watch!

We hope you like the new design and don't hesitate to give us some feedback!

Navigation refresh

We’ve rolled out an update to the Capsule navigation bar. Along with a fresh look for the icons and styling, the new navigation bar improves the way the navigation elements work.

With ever increasing screen resolutions we wanted a design that took advantage of the available screen space.  Over 90% of our users have a screen resolution that exceeds 1024x768.  In the previous design the number of recently accessed records that showed across the top was fixed to 5 links.  In the new design this section expands and contracts to show as many recently accessed records as you’ve got space for.

In the previous design the search box sat below the navigation bar in the page header.  The new design unifies the search with other navigation links in the navigation bar.

And finally, the “more” menu has been removed and replaced with the name of the logged in user which also acts as a drop down menu to provide links to user preferences, help and logout.

The new design:

As before, the color of the navigation bar is customisable so that you can match Capsule with your brand if you wish.  Here’s an example in blue:

The old design for comparison:

We’ve taken advantage of a number of CSS3 features in the new design such as transitions and the usual rounded corners and shadows. To get the full experience be sure to use a browser that supports the latest web standards such as Chrome, Firefox or Safari rather than Internet Explorer.

Speedy date entry

We've recently updated Capsule to make it easy to enter dates, such as entering a due date for a task, or the expected close date for an opportunity, or for a custom fields that you've defined. The old date input did a fine job of selecting an upcoming date from a calendar but it prevented direct input of a date, so in situations where you knew the specific date you had to click through the calendar to find it. The new date input allows both options. You can key the date directly into the field if you know it, or you can pick a date from the calendar as before:

We hope you find this makes date entry speedier and more enjoyable.

Launch of Capsule Mobile

We're pleased to announce the launch of Capsule Mobile for the following devices:

• iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4
• Android phones running Android 2.1+ such as Motorola Droid X, Motorola Droid 2, HTC Evo, Samsung Galaxy S
• BlackBerry phones running BlackBerry OS 6 such as BlackBerry Bold and Torch

We're sticking with the beta label on Capsule Mobile for now. It's had extensive testing over the past 6 weeks with help from a small group of beta testers and the feedback has been very encouraging. We figure it's time to open the beta up to all users since we know how popular the mobile application has been on our uservoice forums!

Getting it

Enter the the following URL into the browser on your phone to install Capsule Mobile:
https://[your-account].capsulecrm.com/m

Be sure to replace the [your-account] bit with the relevant part from your Capsule account URL. You'll be prompted to enter your username and password and a pop-up message will ask your permission to allow additional storage space to be used on your phone. It may take several minutes for your contacts to be downloaded to your phone. Note that the application will only run on the default webkit browser. It won't run on Opera or Firefox.

Adding a short cut to your home screen on Android

• Bookmark Capsule in the browser
• Open the bookmarks page
• Long-press the Capsule bookmark
• Select Add to Home screen

Adding a short cut to your home screen on iPhone

Once you've logged into Capsule Mobile you can add a short cut to your home screen by tapping the bookmark button in the middle of the toolbar below the browser and then Add to Home Screen button.

A bit of background on the native vs web app decision

It was clear by August last year when we started looking at a mobile application that we couldn't just focus on the iPhone. The Android has exploded in popularity and the BlackBerry continues to be a popular choice for business users. We spent time looking at options for our mobile application including building native applications for each platform. The obvious drawback is that each of these platforms has its own unique development and deployment environment. The other drawback is lack of control. For example if we had fixes we wanted to release quickly for a native iPhone app we'd need to wait for Apple to review and approve the update.

The great news is that the web browser has rapidly become a potent deployment environment for applications on newer phones especially those using the webkit browser like iPhone, Android, Blackberry 6 and WebOS. It turns out that the webkit browser on the current generation of smart phones is pretty powerful and can offer most of what users have come to expect from native apps.

Here are some of the things to expect from our application:

• Offline storage: Capsule Mobile uses your browser's own internal storage to install a copy of the contacts on your phone. You can access and make changes to your contacts even during periods where you are out of network or wifi coverage. Each time the application starts it synchronises any changes you made while offline and retrieves the latest copy of the contacts from the server.
• Responsive UI: When you navigate between screens in Capsule Mobile they are being redrawn by your Phone's web browser using cached information where possible. This gives the application a faster response time than you would traditionally get from a web application get where the screen is redrawn on the web server. This is important on a phone because the phone network speeds fluctuate widely.
• Phone integration: Tapping a phone number will start a call for you. Tapping an email address will open a compose window in your email client and BCC the dropbox automatically. Tapping an address will show you the contacts location on Google Maps.
• Automatic application updates: Each time we release an update to Capsule Mobile your phone will automatically download it. There's no need to update Capsule Mobile manually. You'll always be running with the latest features and fixes. This also means We don't have to wait for approval from another organisation to release an update to Capsule Mobile.

Building a browser based mobile application has been a steep learning curve, particularly with regards to offline storage. However we are very happy with the result and it's reassuring to see other application vendors treading the same path by releasing browser based mobile applications rather than native apps.

Keep in mind this is our first release and we will continue to refine. We hope to add support for opportunities and cases soon.

Windows phone 7 and other devices

Unfortunately Windows phone 7 doesn't support the necessary standards for Capsule Mobile. It's unclear at this stage when or how Microsoft will implement the latest HTML5 standards on their platform. At this stage we don't have any plans to support Windows phone 7 devices.

Devices other than those we've listed above that deploy a recent WebKit browser may work with Capsule Mobile. However we haven't tested on these and so your millage may vary. This includes the likes of the PalmPre. We'd welcome any feedback on experience running Capsule Mobile on WebKit based devices that we haven't listed.

Capsule contextual gadget for Gmail

One of the projects we've been busy with recently is the development of a Gmail contextual gadget. A Gmail contextual gadget is a gadget that is triggered by clues in Gmail, such as the contents of Subject lines and email messages. For example, Gmail already provides a YouTube contextual gadget. If the body of an email contains a link to a YouTube video, a clickable thumbnail view of the video appears at the bottom of the email.

Rather than replicate the CRM functionality in a small window at the bottom of each email, we've designed the Capsule contextual gadget to improve the workflow around receiving an email and the actions that you need to take as a result.

Here's a summary of Capsule contextual gadget functionality:

• Add new contacts straight into Capsule
• See details you hold about the sender and click through to their page in Capsule
• Store messages in Capsule without using the dropbox
• Create an opportunity or case linked to the email
• File the email under an existing opportunity or case
• Create a follow-up task

If you are already using Capsule and want to take advantage of the gadget you'll need an administrator of your Google Apps domain to grant access to the gadget for the new information required to support the gadget. To do this visit your Google Apps dashboard by following Manage this domain from Gmail. Scroll down to the Service Settings section where you will find Capsule listed and follow the View and grant access link:

Then accept the new data access requirements by following the Grant data access link.

It can take up to 10 minutes for the gadget to propagate through Google's caches and appear in your account so hold tight if it doesn't appear straight away.

Here's just a sample of the positive feedback we've had from users of the gadget:

The gadget is phenomenal. If we had known about this beforehand, we would not have hesitated to use Capsule. It's a gamechanger for our business.

I think Capsule just gave me the excuse I needed to finally ditch Outlook!

This is great productivity tool. Really integrates your email with Capsule

It has by far pushed the use of Capsule here to a higher level due to the simplicity of connecting the emails to the contacts and opportunities.

We hope you find this addition useful. Thanks as always to our beta testers and customers on uservoice for their feedback and suggestions on this.

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.