Mobitect Blog

Now that the BlackBerry Torch SDK has been released I have been able to verify that Mobitect CRM works great with this new HTML5 capable device. For those of you who have access to one of these devices feel free to get started using this application by visiting http://mobitect.com/crm from your mobile browser.

Liam

I am extremly happy to announce the release of the first public beta version of Mobitect Mobile Enterprise CRM for Highrise.  Some of the highlights for this release include:

• Automatic download of Contact and Task giving you access to this infomrmation regardless of connectivity
• Ability to view and create new Notes assigned to Contacts that are automatically uploaded to Highrise
• Mapping, Telephone and Email integration allowing you to launch these applications right from the Contact detail page
• Search capabilities allowing you to filter large lists of Contacts and Notes
• Ability to turn “Background Sync” on and off to help save battery life and minimize data transfer
• Support forum for suggesting new feature requests and to submit issues

For more details, please see the screenshots.

Liam

I am getting really close to opening up the beta of Mobitect CRM to the public.  I wanted to thank all of you who have helped me along the way.  Those suggestions such as the ability to create new notes assigned to contacts and the ability to support 14,000 contacts have been great!  There are still a few small things I need to do before I officially open it up but in the meantime, for those of you who are reading this blog feel free to give the early build a try. 

To get started point your mobile browser to:  http://mobitect.com/crm (you might want to bookmark this)

Then you will need to go to the Settings tab and enter your Highrise company name (this is the part of your highrisehq URL in the format http://XXX.highrisehq.com where XXX is your company name) as well as the API key.  To get this API key just go to your Highrise Web page and choose ‘My Info’ (top right) and click on the API key tab.

After you save this information you should start to see your contact and task data downloaded to your device.  You will also notice that all of the data is still there even if you open this page and do not have an internet connection! 

Also, as a warning, this sync service that downoads your contact and task data currently routes your data in an unencrypted format.   I will be adding a certificate to the service eventually to allow me to encyrpt the data as it is routed through the service, but that has not been done yet.  Please only use this current service if that is not an issue for you. 

Keep that feedback coming!

Liam

This post is a bit of a rant, so if you are not interested in my rantings about an issue I have with 37Signals, you might want to skip this post.

Up until now I have been so pleased with everything I have seen from 37Signals.  The way they opened up their product with a free edition to me was genius, the way they opened up their services to allow 3rd parties (like myself) to build new applications was amazing.  But I think I have finally found the biggest problem with 37Signals, and that is their communication and support of these 3rd parties.

For a few weeks I have been trying to talk to them about my new applications and have emailed them through their traditional “contact us” emails addresses and even made some posts about the beta version in the Google Groups newsgroups.  But after multiple attempts and multiple weeks.  Still nothing…

It is interesting that I look back about the content in the “ReWork” book that I also do not recall much (if any) content in the area of partner support.  I assumed since they had a page dedicated to partners that this was an area of interest for them, but perhaps I am wrong.

In any case, I want to thank all of you who have responded to me with feedback on Mobitect CRM.  So far some of the biggest things I know that I need to look into are:

• Flick Support on Droid:  For some reason the contact page is not flickable
• Search Support:  A number of you have indicated you have a very large number of tasks and contacts and rather than requiring you to flick through the entire list, I need to add a search page to filter this information

Keep that feedback coming!

Liam

I am really coming to love HTML5.  I was just in the AT&T store last night and while I was there I saw the Palm Pre which I have never had a chance to try before.  Of course, the first thing I always try is Mobitect CRM to see if it works.   What do you know, it worked perfectly!

People seem to like to complain about the fact that they need to handle differences between browsers in HTML and Javascript, but with HTML5 so far I have had very few times that I have had to account for difference in browsers.

I actually really liked the way the Palm Pre handled multitasking (this is the ability to run multiple applications at the same time) which for Mobitect CRM, is quite handy because I need to allow users to click on addresses to launch a view of Google maps or click on email addresses to launch the local mail application.

It looks like I am going to need to update the home page now to account for support on the Palm Pre.

Mobitect CRM was started due to of a combination of factors.  Back in March I read the book “Rework” written by 37Signals (the same people who created Ruby on Rails).  I was inspired by a number of things in this book.  One in particular was a part that talked about spending an hour or two a day working on your idea.  My job is pretty demanding so finding the time to work on a side project has always been a problem.  Although for a long time now I have wanted to learn HTML5 as well as what it takes to build a smartphone application for a device like the iPhone or Android.  So taking all of this and knowing that 37Signals had built a number of popular online services like Basecamp and Highrise,  I thought this was the perfect opportunity.  So off I went.  I signed up for a free version of Highrise and started writing the application and here I am today, about 90% ready to release my first version.  For those that read the book, yes I realize that I am ignoring the one part about the book that states that you should not talk about what you are doing too soon.  Although I suspect, it will be quite some time until the search engines see my site and people like yourself actually start reading this.  So I am probably safe.

I am also trying to follow a few other things suggested in the book such as the point about offering a highly useful component of your product for free.  It is for that reason that I have made what you will see with Mobitect CRM free and it is my goal to let it remains that way forever.  In fact, since this was started as something purely out of interest I will likely go a bit beyond what the book suggest and try to add even more features to the free version (even if I could have turned it into a paid version).  Some day I might create a paid version but we will see about that later on…

One of my biggest questions right now is the cost of hosting my sync service.  I am a little worried that if there are too many users that it might get too costly to maintain.  Although, then again I have a long way to go (and a lot of users to get) before I need to worry about that.

So if you are a user of Highrise, or even a user of other CRM services, I would love to hear what types of features you would like to see in mobile CRM software.  Feel free to leave comments on this blog.

Ultimately I hope you like what I am creating and look forward to your feedback.

Liam

I wanted to welcome you to the Mobitect blog.  Over the next few days I will start blogging about my plans for Mobitect CRM.  I want to outline the goals of the software, why I did it and why it is free.  I will also give you a look at the technical architecture of the project to help you understand how it all works.

Liam