Batchbook Blog

BatchBook redesigned, new features added

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You’ll probably notice next time you log into BatchBook that we’ve added a fresh coat of paint and moved some furniture around a bit. Actually, it’s much more than that — what you are seeing is a culmination of four months of work to bring you of what we feel is a significant upgrade both visually and functionally.

First, we wanted to thank Alex Taylor of Big Ring Design, who is responsible for the new design. The BatchBlue team had a great time working with and getting to know him better over the past few weeks and we’re very pleased with the outcome of his efforts. Thanks, Alex!

Over the upcoming weeks, we’ll publish a few more posts that go into more detail about some of the specific changes, but I wanted to touch on the main areas of the site that were changed/improved.

New Quick Add options
- Quick Add an Event and a Deal

Dashboard
- Deals widget now displays totals and there is a new comments widget

Batch Actions
- Now options displayed in a drop down. Much cleaner.

Contact Detail
- Click & drag sections in body of page
- Activity log in body of page (not new, just moved)
- New, integration partners section in body of page
- Contact info in sidebar (not new, just moved)
- Social network search ( a big add – more details coming on this in another blog post)
- “Customer touchpoint” stats (created, last updated) in header as well as last communicated dates.
- Notes & attachments grouped together in new sidebar section

Communication Detail
- Attachment section now on sidebar

Browse Deals
- Admins can now create custom statuses. Now you can create a deal status of lead, prospect, etc to better tune your sales workflow.
- Deal totals shown on sidebar for admins

List Detail
- Record created/updated stats moved to header

Browse Tags & SuperTags
- Manage tags & STs in new, tabbed table; no longer in 2 separate tables

Sync
- Sync and integration services now in new, tabbed table

We hope you like what you see and that you’ll let us know your thoughts and feedback. We wouldn’t be where we are without our all the support and feedback we have gotten from our customers over the past couple years. So thanks to you all, too. Our customers continue to be an invaluable resource in growing and designing our product.

  • http://marketingactuary.com Promod Sharma

    The changes are nice and seamless, so far :)

    Well done!

    PS I hope sync or integration with Google Calendars is coming soon.

  • http://rick.cogley.info Rick Cogley

    Looks very good and I like what I see so far, of the new features. Thanks for this release!

  • http://www.statenewslines.com Paul Helmick

    you guys have done a great job with this, and dramatically improved the layout in an extremely clean and crisp way.

    Congratulations, I know a lot of work goes into something like this, and you certainly made it much easier for your users to navigate and use the application.

  • axt

    Great, the new design is a big improvement. Looking forward for tighter integration of google apps and an accounting app like freeagent

  • Medical Education Jim

    Nice!
    Cleaned up and scrubbed, and ready to take on the Medical Education World! (I am and so is Batchbook!!)

    Thanks for such a usefull product.
    Jim

  • http://www.peoplereport.com Kacy Oden

    Love the new look – still playing with the new features but kudos so far! Keep it up! Thanks!

  • http://www.yogamatosinhos.pt Pedro Mar

    Hi guys!
    Great job.
    Tks for all ;)

    Pedro

  • http://webprojects101.com Gerald Lacuarta

    I love the new design. When I signed up last week I thought the design was a little cluttered (having been used to Basecamp and Freshbooks look) but now the Batchbook interface is cleaner and I love the icons. :)

    I’ve tested other CRM/CM’s in the past and Batchbook is the only one that makes sense to me. And now you’ve made it better.

  • http://www.cultivateminds.com Chris Patton

    Thank you!! It looks fantastic – a huge step forward. And the comments widget is great. Thanks for listening to your customers.

  • http://tjsol.com Tom

    Looks better and I think it is faster. Keep up the great work.

  • http://somethingmassive.com Julia Perry

    I love it!

    Bring me an iPhone app so I can access contact info on the road and I’d be pleased as punch.

  • http://davvi.com Davvi

    The layout works much better than previously. Good job on that!

    One thing that would be nice though is if there was a way to change the color theme, either with presets, or (preferably) by selecting your own colors. I think not everyone may like the new, bold, navy & orange color theme.

    The layout is wonderful though.

    Cheers,
    Davvi

  • http://www.njcroce.com Eric

    Love the new look! It’s now more intuitive and easier for our customer service reps to navigate. The touchpoint stats in the header is a great improvement.

  • http://www.adrianacasey.com Adriana Casey

    Like it A LOT!

  • Jim

    Good job on the re-design. I have not had time to try out the new features yet, but looking forward to doing so. I second the request for:
    - true iPhone app
    - ability to change color theme

    Thanks for the great product!
    - Jim

  • http://aesist.com darvin

    When we can add Communications recived from email on a specific Deels, i think is basic

  • http://www.heathjw.com Heath

    Really impressive. If I could get a fully functional iPhone app that was as high quality as the 37 signals app just released, I’d move my whole company to use you.

    Maybe if you sent a survey to all of your users you could see how many have iphones (I bet 50%) and ask us what we’d like you to develop next. I think surveys are more reliable than a forum. I bet you’ll see iPhone, iPhone, iPhone.

    Although I love your system it is just so strange to me that mobile apps are more of a focus for a company developing a contact management system. It’s such a waste of time to have to write everything down on paper or a note on a phone until you get back to your computer to enter it in the system.

    In any case, looks really great.

  • http://batchblue.com Sean Ransom

    Hey All,

    A big thank you to everyone for the kind words. It is a huge relief to get our UI up to snuff with the functionality we provide.

    Better mobile support is definitely on the list to focus in the next few months.

    I will say now that it will most likely not be a native iphone app. What it will be is a fully capable offline html5 app. Reasons are we can provide all the benefits of an iphone app but do it via the web. This makes it work across multiple platforms (android) for instance and not lock us down to supporting multiple versions of apps across platforms. Just too much work for a small team to manage when really offline contacts and access is easy using html5 capable browsers like the ones on iphone and android. Being in html also makes it much easier to being in new versions rather quickly and not go through the whole app approval process.

    I personally believe in 5 years the idea of apps is going to change and not be locked into specific platforms. We hope to start working on ours in the next month and are very excited about it. We will definitely include our users in the journey as we try and do with all new features.

    -sean

  • http://www.apanto.se Henrik

    Very nice update indeed! I really like that I can comment to-dos now. The contact an caledar views are much better.
    I am still hoping on getting the setting for calendar start day in the account settings. Over here the calendarweek starts on monday :)
    Keep up the good work.

  • http://www.EasyLunchboxes.com Kelly Lester

    I like it!!! Took about 10 minutes to get used to, but now it’s cleaner and things are more obvious. Love Batchbook!!!!!!!!

  • http://www.coast.co.nz Alex Webster

    Nice job. My only comment on the actual look and feel is that there may be too many fonts in play.

    I know this is a work in progress and I look forward to the ability to customise columns, fields etc in the various screens.

    +1 (of a probable 500,000) for iPhone app or HTML5 app.

  • http://www.thefullertonian.com Mark Stouffer

    I love the new style design. It looks like translucent blue milkdew. Yum.

  • http://www.batchblue.com Michelle Riggen-Ransom

    @Mark Stouffer “Translucent blue milkdew”? And from your website, “vintage modern”? I think we might love you!

    Thanks for the kind words all. It’s very gratifying to see that folks are enjoying it.