Batchbook Blog

The New Batchbook

Pamela O'Hara

We’re working on something pretty big here these days. It is a major rebuild of our flagship product Batchbook.

Batchbook is a bit of a paradox. It is simple, easy to get around, easy to update. And yet it is also powerfully complex. SuperTags, to-do templates and integrations allow for enormous flexibility in workflow customizations. The contradiction is by design, as we have learned that CRM success comes both from frequency of use (make it easy) and the deep dive (to work with a unique business process). With the help of tens of thousands of customers and our diligent support team we have been able to hone in on the useful aspects of the simple, while also expanding the power of the complex. And little by little, we have updated and iterated on Batchbook to maintain this careful balance.

The team has been working very hard over the past few months to take all of the knowledge we have gained over these past 5 years to rebuild, from the ground up, Batchbook. Much of the work is back-end streamlining and optimizing to make the infrastructure more powerful and scalable. We’ve also taken the opportunity to improve the interface and workflow to make it much faster and easier to use. And we’ve got some exciting new features built in, as well.

While we still have a ways to go, I wanted to start pulling the curtains back a little to let you all know about things to come. Over the next few months, as we continue to polish things up and test them out I will be sharing bits and pieces of the new and improved Batchbook here on our blog.

Stay tuned and, of course, let us know what you think.

  • http://waterwordsthatwork.com Eric

    Don’t break Batchbook!

    But speedier would be most welcome.

    • http://www.batchblue.com Pamela O’Hara

      Thanks for all the comments. Great to hear the enthusiasm. Eric – we’re just doing lots of fixin’, no breaking! :)

      Wish I could be more specific on the timeline, but there is still much to do on the integration, API, migration, testing and tweaking side so it is too hard to tell, yet. I’ll let you know when I know!

  • http://joe.hallissey.me Joe Hallissey

    Love the small icons across the top!

  • http://jasonbarone.com Jason Barone

    Aww, now that’s not right! You only give us one screenshot! :-)

    Congratulations on this big achievement! Can’t wait to see what’s under the hood.

  • http://www.coastnewzealand.com Alex

    very exciting

  • Michael

    This looks really great. I’m all for upgrading the UI and performance.

    My primary concern is that legacy functionality (especially the API) be treated very gingerly. We’ve dedicated many hours of development into custom integrations with BatchBook data, and a sudden move or change to the API or data structure could really bring us to a halt…

  • http://www.sitevalet.com Dave Hyndman

    I’m intrigued. There’s a lot I love about Batchbook, but I would love to see the UI get cleaned up and a number of tasks/workflows streamlined.

    So, I’ll be the one to ask. Timelines? ETA?

  • http://darrinrich.com Darrin

    Glad Batchbook is constantly improving the UI. Not to be rude but a few years ago it was flat out ugly IMO. Then the redesign was a huge improvement. Now from what I see in the screenshot, it will look absolutely amazing!. Can’t wait.

  • http://www.chrisjacobson.net Chris Jacobson

    Suggestion: It would be nice to be able to sync individual records between multiple batchbook accounts, so I can have the same individual in my personal account and also in one or more business accounts and only have to update it once and then sync – like with your mailchimp API. I’m a new user, loving it so far, looking forward to becoming an expert. I’ve already referred batchbook to two clients.

  • Jude Brown

    Looks great and I can only imagine all the improvements. Suggestions:

    1) MUST be able to assign to-do’s to more than 1 user at a time.

    EG – we all went to the bank and need to provide exactly the same information. Right now this is one To-Do per person. I just need a dropdown with checkboxes. Fixed!

    2) Admins need to see all To-Do’s in a LIST. The Calendar is absolutely useless for quickly seeing everything.

    Keep up the great work!

    • http://www.batchblue.com Pamela O’Hara

      Hi all – again, thank you for all of this wonderful feedback and input. We’re thrilled with the excitement over the new version.

      We’re working to set up a new set of forums to help us organize the feedback/feature requests. In the mean time, I’d love all of your thoughts on how you are currently using our advanced search/list building tools. This one is a particularly challenging usability vs functionality line to walk, so we’d love help from the crowd on what you are looking from from your BatchBook lists. You can fill out the super quick survey at http://blog.batchblue.com/tell-us-how-you-are-using-batchbook-searches-and-lists/ Thanks!

  • http://www.redpointrisk.com Chad Weinman

    I just want to add that this is great news!

    For me the past months it has been somewhat “quiet” as far as Batchbook development news and I was worried you were all focusing solely on a new product rather the CRM which we all love. Glad to see I was wrong!

    Very excited to see this come.

  • http://mediashout.com Nate

    We just signed up for Batchbook, specifically because of the Formstack integration and more importantly the 2-way sync between Batchbook and Mailchimp. While I’m glad you’re working the kinks out, I’m really bummed because I’m hesitant to start using Batchbook if our data will wind up being messy once the MailChimp sync is complete. Any tips or reassurances?

    • http://www.batchblue.com Pamela O’Hara

      Hi all – thanks again for the encouragement and ideas. I promise we are taking good notes!
      Chris & Jude – Duly noted. Though we might not get to everything in this update, the redesign will allow us to be much more responsive with the feature requests in the future – so keep it coming.
      Chad – We’re just introverts. :)
      Nate – Welcome – we are working to improve the 2 way sync MailChimp integration which will be part of the BB2 launch, but you should be fine to use the existing integration. That will be included in the migration.

  • http://www.nordicmarketing.de Jan

    Hi Pamela!
    Great to see that you work on a BB2 version.
    I hope you will have print options under work as well (as been discussed earlier). Something like Mailchimp published couple of weeks ago would be amazing to have in BatchBook :)
    http://blog.mailchimp.com/new-printable-reports/
    BatchBook: print + pdf option!
    Another thing I have been discussing yesterday with your support is the idea of a “multiSuperTag” = data that you can add to a company record that will be mirrored to all of the employee records linked to that company (like company profile, facts etc.)
    Our team look forward to see and use BB2 soon! :)

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  • http://www.ubercool.com Michael Tchong

    Pamela, I look forward to seeing BB2, I’m sure it will make the service even more formidable. :)

  • http://fatatominternetmarketing.com Chris B.

    Pamela,

    I have been using Batchbook to help our clients setup sales funnels. Our biggest frustration is that there is no way to use tags as a way to automate sending an email drip campaign. If you do a one-way export to MailChimp, it sends the whole list. This is good for email blasts, but not adding leads one-at-a-time to an automated drip campaign. It would be great if future MailChimp integration allowed an entry to be sent to a MailChimp list immediately when a tag is added as opposed to having to run a list and export.

    Love your product, look forward to more!

  • http://www.redcupconsulting.com Lee Schneider

    Great news … and here’s a suggestion. It would be great to be able to take a rss feed in and display that as a page. Something like a whiteboard would also be helpful for project planning.

  • http://www.biz360.biz Mark Guthrie

    Droid app and affiliate program please.

  • http://www.leadcreation.com.au Lincoln

    Love SaaS, it just keeps getting better!

    Pamela, my suggestions are as follows:
    - Allow the ability to add existing communications to new deals
    - Allow better customization of web forms (and for God’s sake please add the ability to make fields required!)
    - The ability to search and remove/merge duplicated records (de-dupe)
    - Better linkages between Companies and Individuals – this is a big one! – We simply need to remove the need for our business to internally create rules as to whether we add a work number to an individual or the company. There should be a linkage there where you have the option to say that the Company number is a switchboard or have the individual work numbers show when looking up a company record. Also, keep in mind that the majority of small business have only single numbers. A simple checkbox to make this the work number for all records from that company might work??? I’ll leave it up to you!
    - Customizable reports (as already mentioned)
    - 2-way MC sync (as already mentioned)

  • David D.

    Dear Pamela – I have like using and have recommended Batchbook for some time and am glade to hear about your pending rebuild. My single biggest issue with Batchbook as a social CRM tool is its social media integration is in need of a major upgrade, much more then simple links in supertags. Many other sites and tools allow for fair better / deeper connection, communication and integration with social media and networking sites. It would be awesome if some or all of this functionality would be part of your rebuild.

    - Dramatically enhanced integration with LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, WordPress, Blogger, etc. to see postings / feeds on contacts like status updates, wall postings, changes, etc. It would be extraordinarily useful to be able to go to a contact or company record and see a full overview of their social media / networking activities and presences as well as post or reply. I realize there are some limits governed by the social media/networking sites but sites and services are doing this now far better then you are.
    - The ability to grab profile images / photos from LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and other such sites a huge plus.
    - Much better integration with gmail and google contacts. Sync in both directions, ability to add contacts (all data not just email and name as Rapportive allows you to do), automatically know if a contact is in Batchbook so all communications are linked.
    - A much easier way of adding, uploading, capturing, cropping / scaling profile images and company logos.
    - A much faster and easier way of adding records similar to the way AddressGrabber works would be awesome. The process for adding new records now is slow and painful, it needs to be quick and easy.

    I know this is a lot but many of these requests are functionality currently available by competitors or online services and as a social CRM solutions Batchbook needs to be much more social.
    Thanks and good luck with the rebuild

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  • http://thesecretchocolatier.com Andy

    A little late to the party but we were talking about you all in the shop today and felt a change coming. We’re all looking forward to the UI/UX iteration and where it leads. Onwards! :D

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  • http://www.electionbuddy.com ElectionBuddy Dave

    I’d be really happy if

    * We could add a communication to multiple people by selecting a tag… eg. we sent out an email to all the people with the “customer” tag. So we don’t have to select each individual
    * Ability to archive deals so they don’t appear on the sales graph
    * sort and edit supertag options. Eg. If I have a dropdown as a field within a supertag, be able to edit the individual options and change their order
    * Updating supertag fields – the current mass update is ok, but I end up selecting “do not update this field” alot… why not make that the default and then give the ability to add an empty choice as an option

  • Lesley

    Looking forward to seeing new features. Mailchimp integration – would love the COMPANY field to carry through to my Mailchimp list. I can then subtotal my post-campaign Mailchimp Excel reports by COMPANY. So, I request the ability to specify fields from Bbook to be pushed to Mchimp list (my Mchimp list has a COMPANY field already)

    Thanks!

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  • jgov

    There should be the ability to link Supertag fields to individuals, communications, etc.

    One common field across our Supertags is “Person Contacted.” This needs to link to the person’s page!

    Also from the Quick Add link to add a contact, you should be able to SuperTag it and then edit the SuperTag right there. It is annoying to have to click through to the contact page to edit the newly created SuperTag.

    Another request me and my colleagues have is the ability for a standard form for phone numbers (eg. I type in 7778889999 and it appears as 777-888-9999).

    Good luck, I’ll add comments as I think of more suggestions!

  • http://www.warren-macdonald.com Warren Macdonald

    Great news re: redevelopment. Something I’d LOVE to see is a to-do template that’s more like an action list; anchored to a specific date. For eg: I’m a professional speaker. I book a date on my calender, Dec 12th. That becomes my anchor date; with the action items template recognizing that things need to happen in differing time-frames before and after that date. ie, “Book Flights” to-do date could be auto applied 4 weeks before Dec 12. “Ship Books” two weeks prior. “Send Invoice” three days after… All my events (and I’m guessing I’m not alone) require the same list of to-do items, which, while it’s great that I can presently create a template; it’s not great that I presently have to manually change the dates for each event I book…

  • http://www.sohosolutionist.com Brandie

    Love it so far! After reading through the comments, off the top of my head, the one thing I would like to see is an overall view of ALL my communications with each contact. Whether it’s Twitter, LinkedIn or (especially) email messages without having to blind copy my Batchbook account. I do this, but clients have trouble with this extra step, and it makes it much less likely they will use this fab product to its full potential.

    Look forward to more news!

  • http://www.goldmedalwaters.com Matt

    Glad to see you are progressing on a redesign.

    So I don’t forget what my suggestions are:

    To-do Templates:
    +1 to Warren’s comment on workflow style to-do templates that can be pre-assigned by date and also pre-assigned to have specific poeple complete task

    Tasks:
    +1 for recurring task feature
    +1 for ability to assign multiple people to task and ability to only require one (or all) to complete

    Calendar:
    Complete sync with GCal

    Users/Permissioning:
    More granular/deeper control over user permissioning and what that person sees

  • david

    Would like to see some basic text editing for comments and notes. Bold, Italic etc. also when importing a web form, I would like to see an option for import as company or individual, not just as an individual. thanks

  • http://Www.bravematters.com Peter

    We have high hopes for the platform, but if we don’t see a reasonable revamp and practical business approach to the deals features, were going back to zoho.

  • http://www.ubeon.be Stefaan

    + 1 for a better Mailchimp integration! We’d love to be able to select which tags are synced with Mailchimp… And we would like to specify the groups we sync with, too : ) Thumbs up for your upgrade!

  • http://Pelavingallery.com,blackumbrellas.com,folioleaf.com Todd

    Looking forward to the upgrade, especially since we lost our Mail Chimp overview on our dashboard—one of the main features why we switched to Batchbook—and have been told there is no way to correct this until the upgrade is launched.

  • Colin

    Looking forward to BB2 and like most others have a wee wishlist to share… Glad to hear you’re looking at improving Mailchimp integration – 2-way sync being the main thing for us. As we’re outside the US of A customising web forms and address labels would be a huge improvement (not sure what state Northern Ireland is in – possibly MA?!). But I’m surprised there aren’t more calls for 2-way sync of Google calendar appointments and contacts. I’m afraid I find adding appointments in Google much easier than using the Batchbooks interface (BB2 could be different of course) and because Google automatically picks up contacts as you use them they tend to get added there first and I don’t always remember to add them to Batchbooks later, so again a way of syncing a contact from Google Apps to Batchbooks would be fantabulous! Keep up the good work!

  • http://www.blumercpas.com Jason M Blumer, CPA

    Woo hoo. Can’t wait to see how you improve an already awesome product.

    Automatic recurring ToDos would be amazing!

  • http://www.praxiscg.com Alex Moss

    Very excited to hear, can’t happen soon enough! Critical requests:

    1. +1 for Mailchimp upgrade — we need to be able to manage our lists and tags in BB, and have MC pick up that info for targeted eblasts.

    2. Name fields that are appropriate for routine business use and that appear together, up top with the name info — Prefix, First (fullname), First (nickname), Middle, Last, Suffix. Supertags are good for many things, they are a lousy solution for this.

    3. Companies w/ multiple corporate addresses — need to store at company level, and pick which address to inherit to each indiv. I just spent literally 20 mins updating 4 people from 1 firm b/c none of the current methods really works for us and it’s all manual.

    4. Families feature: like Companies, Families w/ shared contact info (home address, phone) could be entered 1x and each indiv inherits that common info and is accessible via the family listing (just like Companies now) but still has indiv cell, email, and work info.

    5. Batch editing: you can’t batch edit very much info now, should be able to edit all. Best model out there: Bento (for Mac), essentially a spreadhsheet view where you can do what you want w/ your data, quickly and efficiently.

    6. Robust permissions: we want to put lots of data into BB, we don’t want everyone to have access to everything. Current “Basic User” method is not powerful, doesn’t give us flexibility. We just want a simple way to let different users have / not have access to different records.

    Bottom line: core functionality for us is critical. As good as the product is, there are some basic boring features that are “less developed” in BB now, hoping to see these enhanced.

    Thanks much,
    Alex

  • http://www.praxiscg.com Alex Moss

    Oops, forgot 1 real big convenience feature:

    Send contact info fr BB to someone else: I routinely need to send contact info for 2-10 people in BB to other clients (basically referrals, networking contacts, etc.) Current feature sends a BB ad w/ a single contact record attached. 1. wrong message, and 2. not flexible. So now I manually copy and paste every needed field from each record I need to share. Wow, gotta be a better way. Thanks.

  • http://identify.us.com Peter

    Hoping to see a “many-to-many” relationship between contacts and communications with communications supporting their own supertag-like information. We want to be able to supertag a communication with custom fields (a key point in integrating with other 3rd parties) and have that/those communications potentially point/link to more than one contact record.

  • Paul Harris

    I am really quite new to BB. One of the things I find refreshingly useful is the Affiliations Function, which allows me to utilize a single contact record for and individual who moves from company to company, and maintain that history. However, in a similar vane, I have quite a number of contacts who are the owners of multiple businesses. I currently can only connect their contact record to one business at a time. If I connect it to an additional company, that company replaces the previous company. If you could see your way into permitting a many to many relationship between company and employee I think it would solve a lot of problems for a lot of people.

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  • http://www.yodelay.com Duncan Johnson

    Hi BB,

    Do you have a release date yet for the new version of BB?

    Can you please let us in on some screen shots and functionality please.

    We are looking round again for a new CRM with more advance social connectivity (nimble) than the current BB, speed, and are needing a reason to stay (to be honest).

    Is there any insight into the new version and when it’s due to arrive you can please bait us with?

    List of New Features
    Screen Shoots
    Video of it in action
    etc

    Kind regards,

    Duncan

  • http://mmroofs.com Marty

    It’s already OCT..wazzup? Any word on your new release yet?
    Most all of the other CRM package’s are quite a bit ahead of you guys on “speed” and a “practical” flow of day to day business activities (take Insightly for example). The main thing you got going for you in my book is the ability to integrate with Freshbooks and a few other programs. But most business’s use email frequently, you are in desperate need of much better email integration system than you have now..I hope this gets face lifted in the updated version.

    • http://www.batchblue.com Pamela O’Hara

      Hey Marty & Duncan, I know, I’m pretty impatient myself. But we are taking the time to make sure we do it right and even I don’t want to rush that. I mentioned on the forums that it will not launch before early 2012 and that still holds true. I’ll be posting more screenshots soon with additional info on the coming attractions.

      All, Thanks so much for the feedback and patience. It is worth the wait!

  • http://www.data-trax.com Phil Correia

    Tighter integration with Google apps so that users do not have to jump from platform to platform. If you create an email intercept for Google to auto-create or populate a new customer record, please do NOT use the “from” field of the email header as the unique / common data element.

    Please allow users to identify and reference a unique qualifier from within the Subject Field and/or the body of the email.

    Next, it would be great if we could have a come project blog of sorts where all interaction and communication can be referenced from one location.

    Thank you,
    P. Correia