The Capsule Blog

Updated Twitter integration

We've updated our Twitter integration to support Twitter's latest API and display requirements. At the same time we've taken the opportunity to improve our Twitter functionality. Now when you view a contact in Capsule that has a twitter account you can see more tweets and you can reply, retweet or favourite tweets directly from Capsule. You can also view pictures that have been included in a tweet.

As consequence of Twitter's latest requirement we can no longer show tweets for a contact unless you've connected your Twitter account to Capsule. If you are already taking advantage of our awesome social search functionality then you're already set-up and good to go with the new tweets display. If not you can connect your account via the Social Integrations page in your preferences. See our social search configuration guide for more info.

We've also taken the opportunity to tweak the display of history so it fits more neatly alongside the new tweet styling. In particular the edit and delete actions for notes and emails are now activated on hover.

New in Capsule: Update to tasks & new buttons

We have made some new design and functionality changes to Capsule that we'd like to tell you about. First off, we have now added the ability to add notes to tasks. This has been a popular request and we hope you find it useful. To add a note to a task, click to edit the task > click the link to add more details. A note box will appear on the left hand side where you can enter any additional details about the task. In addition, you can now edit a task simply by clicking on the task title.

The 'Actions' buttons on contacts, cases & opportunity records have been re-designed to stand out more. You'll find buttons 'Add Person', 'Add Organisation' and 'Import' on the 'People & Organisations' screen have also been given a similar refresh.

In this realease we also experimented with moving the tasks list to the right hand side on the dashboard. However, the overall feedback was that the task list worked better on the left hand side. Based on this we have decided to move it back to it's original place on the left hand side.

We hope you guys like the new design updates. If you have any more feedback we would love to hear about it in the comments on this blog post.

Duplicating Opportunities

For those users that have recurring sales opportunities we have introduced a handy feature to duplicate existing opportunities. For example if you have renewable orders or memberships that are to be renewed on a regular basis for the same clients.

To do this, go to the opportunity you want to duplicate > Go to Actions for this Opportunity > Duplicate. You will now be able to review the details that you are about to use in the duplicate Opportunity. Hit Save and your new duplicate opportunity has been created.

New in Capsule: find social profiles for your contacts

We've just launched a new feature in Capsule that makes it easy to find your contacts on social networks like Twitter and LinkedIn.

To get this working, you first need to link your Capsule account with your social network accounts so that Capsule can search those networks on your behalf. You can do this by clicking on your username in the top menu bar > My Preferences > Social Integrations. Once you've done that you'll start seeing a notification icon when you view a contact in Capsule that indicates Capsule has found social profiles for your contact. Click on the icon to see the matches and add the social profiles details to your contact.

As part of this release we've also added Google+, Flickr, YouTube and GitHub to the list of social networks that you can record on a contact in Capsule.

We take privacy seriously and Capsule honours the privacy controls of each network when searching for profiles. As a result you'll only see matches where the contact has made their profile public.

I'd love to hear how you get on with this. In particular, if you spot matches that are for the wrong person I'd be grateful if you could email .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) so that we can take a look at fine tuning our search algorithms.

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.

RightSignature now integrates with Capsule

At Capsule HQ we like to stay paper free. We keep all our paperwork digital which in addition to enhancing our green credentials means we never have to go through stacks of papers or filing cabinets to find our documents. So when we needed a process for getting legally binding signatures from employees and partners we wanted a solution that could load a document from Google Apps and allow it to be signed easily, without printing or scanning.

There are a few solutions for this in the market, but the one we choose was RightSignature which appealed to us with fair pricing and a simple, elegant approach. The good news for our customers is that RightSignature have integrated with Capsule and so you can now use RightSignature to easily send contracts, NDA’s, and forms to your customers and other contacts for legally binding e-signature online.

You’ll need an account with RightSignature to take advantage of the integration. For detailed instructions on how to link it with Capsule, visit our support page on the RightSignature integration.

Check out this video to see it in action:

New Capsule Support Portal

We have updated the Capsule support portal. It now includes full content search and it can be accessed from the support link on our main site.

For those who haven't used the support portal, it includes a range of help articles and instructions for using Capsule. It's a good place to start if you're ever unsure of anything.

View the support portal

Control who can export

One of the popular requests we’ve had from customers is control over which users can do a full export of contacts.  A number of customers have told us they’ve spent years building up their customer database and so they feel it should be possible to prevent some or all of their users from exporting a copy to keep for themselves.

It’s now possible to control which users can export contacts, opportunities and cases to CSV or vCard file.  When adding or updating a user, the following option will appear:

If the right to export is removed from an administrator then the administrator will not be able to assign the right to other users.

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 Capsule contacts onto 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.

Easy forms for your website with Wufoo integration

This is a handy new integration for Capsule users who want an easy solution for linking contact forms on a website to Capsule.  Capsule already provides support for building your own website contact forms that integrate with Capsule using HTML. However, the new Wufoo integration provides an easier alternative with no need to get involved with HTML. Wufoo provides drag and drop tools for adding forms to a website along with styling support so that you can match the form to your website style, and validation rules so you can control how the data is captured.

Wufoo provide a range of plans from free (for up to 3 forms) through to paid plans that offer extended options.

Full instructions for enabling the integration between Wufoo and Capsule are provided via the Settings > Integration page of your Capsule account.

We hope you find this integration useful and thanks as always to the many Capsule customers who requested the online form builder integration via our uservoice forums.

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.

One click export

Capsule runs on the battle-tested services from Amazon and we backup your data every hour and regularly test the restore process. So I've got every confidence in our restore capability should we ever need it. However there's nothing like having a copy of your data to hand for the ultimate peace of mind. We're also strongly of the view that customers own their data and should be free to export and move their data to another service. To make this easier, we've added a new one-click export function to Capsule.

The new export function generates a single ZIP file and emails it to you. The zipped file contains CSV files for your contacts, opportunities and cases, including a history of emails and notes. We've chosen to stick with CSV for the export since this is the most portable format for transferring data into another system.

By the way, if you're looking for a CSV file to support mail merging or analysis in spreadsheet I'd suggest using our lists feature. This excludes email and note history which makes the CSV file easier to work with.

We hope you find this feature useful, and many thanks for your votes and feedback on the uservoice suggestion.

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.

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.