Things have been fairly busy for us at Skylight. We have been working hard behind the scenes on some awesome new updates and features, pushing out code to our live servers on a daily basis. Some of these improvements are implemented through suggestions we received on our forum. So here’s a quick preview…

We have updated our system so that now you get faster views for your contacts, projects, stages and milestone lists. The interaction between our servers and your browser is now almost 35% faster, this means less waiting time for pages to load specially for companies with large number of contacts and projects. You will also find that filtering is super quick!

Now see related comments, Tasks, Time schedules and files by simply hovering over links right under your main data model. So if you wish to see recent comments on a project from project list, then simply hover over the “Comments” link under you project title. A new pop-up window will show you the recent comments on that project. Saving you having to click through to that project. You can also create new comments directly through these popups.

Skylight has always had the feature of adding Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter links to each contact profile, now we’ve expanded on this feature. If you add a Twitter link to any contact and then bring your mouse pointer to hover over it, Skylight will fetch the 5 most recent tweets for that contact. This we hope will give you quick on the go access to whats been going on with a particular contact. You can do this on Projects as well as resources.

We have updated multiple selection option on all main list views.  Now you can hold “Shift” or “Ctrl” keys down and select multiple records on Contacts, Tasks, Projects, Stages and Milestones lists. This feature also works across pages so if you have selected two records on page 1 and 5 on page two then Skylight will remember how many records you’ve selected across these pages, thus assisting you with bulk editing or adding selected contacts as participants to a project.

We have added new filterable options on Time(Calendar) views.  You can create filters for specific contacts (resources) using tags. So you can tell Skylight calendar to show events related to any contacts with a Team, Client or Supplier tag or even their names. Again using the saved filter you can create a custom view of this data and call on these saved filters for later use. This will help to customise your business calendar and using saved filters will provide you quick access to these.

Now you can select multiple contacts from the contacts list and add them to projects in just a few clicks. To do this simply select the contacts you wish to add to a project, use the actions menu and select add to project.

Delete tags from any of the list views. No need to go in to a contact or a project to manage Tags. Simply click “x” option on the Tag itself to delete.

Yep if you have added address details for any contact simply click on address details to view it in Google maps! This will help companies that need to know where the project address on a map is or a contact lives to quickly view location information.

Hope these updates are helpful. Please feel free to drop us a line at Skylight forum, Facebook and Twitter or  comment below

Getting things done is not only reliant on getting a good solution to record, manage and organise your tasks but also being proactive and systematic about the way you go about managing your day. The fact is that in most cases no matter how well you plan your day, things will take their own course and will require you to reorganise tasks.
The hardest thing about being productive is not the work, but the split second it takes to decide to take control – David Allen

How you record what tasks need to be done, how you manage them and reorganise them –  is where Skylight comes in to play. Freeing your mind to focus on getting them done. And if you are running a business where you need to bill for time then time logging feature in Skylight is been described awesome, simple and efficient by of Skylight users.

The latest update of our new task management system.

Share this on Facebook & Twitter.  Read more about Tasks on our Knowledge Base

If you have recently assigned a task to a team member and a few minuets later a email turns up in your inbox from them, saying “they will get the task done in no time”. Don’t panic its not that they are sitting on Skylight all the time, its because Skylight had just sent them an email notification saying they have been assigned a task on Skylight by you.

When you assign a task, the assigned contact (user) gets an email. If someone leaves a comment on the project, stage, task, files or even marks complete a milestone, you will get notified via email. In Skylight you can have many email addresses for a contact so the only email address Skylight will use is the user’s log-in email address.

Email notifications work on a project level this enables people to take necessary action. Notifications are only sent to users of you business account i.e people who can log-in to your business. So if you assign participants to a project, who are not registered with Skylight they won’t get any notifications at all.

To turn notifications on and off, though we don’t suggest you do this or else what’s the use of us working so hard to get you this feature? May be you are working on a large project and don’t want to get every little detail or may be you are always plugged in to Skylight, so know whats happening across your project anyways. Then browse to your personal setting (top right ‘Setting’), then the 2nd tab for the business you are working on and deselect the ‘Receive Notification’ option and save. That’s it you won’t be receiving email notifications from then on.

Each of the settings for notifications are user and business specific. Meaning you could be a contractor working with a client who uses Skylight but also have your own business on Skylight. To change this you can simply select the business name on the top left of your screen and switch between different businesses you have access to or create a new business.

Do give us your feedback on how we should improve this on our forum and dont forget we have recently released new videos.

We are delighted to announce the news, recently BBC Click reviewed Skylight! The most exiting part was the words used to describe Skylight. I personally was glued to the screen (laptop in my case) waiting on every word Kate Russel of BBC Click had to say.

“skylighit.com, an organisational tool shed” while they take a tour around the app and finally.. we couldn’t have put it any better “This really is a one-stop professional collaboration & utility shop.” says Kate. Well said indeed and thats what our users love about Skylight, one App fulfilling most of their requirements for project management and collaboration.

So now Skylight is available in multiple languages. If you remember a few months back we asked our users to help us translate Skylight. Back then we didn’t have the right tools, meaning users had to download a piece of software and the files and what not to make that happen …. a long process indeed! Put it simply it wasn’t easy and the result was that we didn’t get much response.

Then we found a brilliant service that we could incorporate to make it easy for ourselves as well as our users to translate the application collaboratively; the result is now live at skylightit.com.

Simply browse to your personal settings page (top right when logged in to the app) and then select the drop down for the languages we have available. If you don’t see your language then it might be that we are waiting for translation on that particular language to reach a certain level before they are integrated in to the Skylight app.

So if you are feeling productive then head on to our translation portal and help us make Skylight available in other languages.

Don’t forget to share Skylight love with your friends and colleagues.

We are pleased to announce the launch of our new webinars, where we’ll give you an insight into Skylight and if time permits a glimpse into some of the upcoming features.

Here is the list of what we’ll be covering:

• Project management, Time, Budgeting and Scheduling.
• Task based work flow
• Time Billing
• Resource Scheduling
• Accounts
• Permission groups
• Preview of next up coming features.

There are imited seats only 100 at this point, so please book in advance and cancel if you can’t attend so that other users can join in.

Click Here To Reserve Your Spot Now!

So how do you come up with something like Skylight? What has driven our team onwards and onwards to constantly improve the functionality and interface of Skylight?

The Skylight team – as diverse as we all are – have had one thing in common. While establishing new businesses and working in older ones, one issue that cropped up time and again was managing information as the company grew.

Skylight was our solution

All possible address book-type software fell WAY short of keeping track of which Contacts were related to which companies, through which colleague, and who had made contact in the first place. We wanted to keep track of our valuable people when they moved jobs and wanted to know who in our company had last spoken to any client or supplier… and what they had talked about.

And then… we had relationships that became “stranded” between initial contact and our invoicing and accounting system. We were using a  separate system for each part of the company. Spreadsheets for contact lists, accounting software for financial information, databases for project bookings, a big old server for our valuable files and templates. Our team worked together and made it work, but there was something missing in the company – a smoothly oiled machine!

We wanted our data management system to reflect the collective knowledge and history of our organisation and talented people working for us. And we wanted it to be easy to use.

Simply put, we couldn’t afford the fully integrated systems available out there!

The IT infrastructure alone was pricey and we just muddled along with several stopgap solutions that fell short of what we knew we wanted. And we spent our valuable time double-checking everything we entered into our databases, cleaning contact lists, removing duplication of information and making sure nothing could be lost from our own servers.

And then we decided that the only true solution was to build it ourselves – a cloud-computing solution called Skylight.

As Skylight has solved the many issues we struggled with we hope it solves yours! Data management that actually manages our data! What a revolution! What a relief…

We at Skylight care about your time and ours, so if we find ourselves doing the same task over and over again, we try to find a solution to reduce repetitiveness in our work. So if you’ve been creating similar invoices, quotations or estimates then we have just got the solution for you.

We have had invoices, quotes and PO modules for a while now, where users can add time data and expenses in projects and then send them to invoices. When using the accounting module, they can further edit the line items, reorganise if need be and then print, download as PDF or send as an email attachment (coming soon).

So for instance let’s say you are a company using time billing for your services or you would like to track quantity based items like mileage or printing costs on projects. You simply create these in the time section of a project, assign relevant roles, resources, costs and  then switch to the list view of this section. And then select the items you would like to quote or invoice by using the action menu to send to either the quote or invoice.

The next screen gives you the option to group and structure the data you are about to send over. So you can group by roles, resources, tasks etc. based on what information was added for each time block. Then send to the invoice and your line items are now in the invoice.

But if you find yourself going to invoice stage and creating these directly without using time or expense items in project, then each line item has to be entered manually. We have drastically improved this process of entering or editing line items.

Skylight invoices have become super fast, now that you have a spreadsheet-style data entry system. You can scroll up,down, right, left and move around and enter data as you please. You can also add headings and descriptions, as well as drag and drop the line items to organise them. Finally don’t forget to save the grid when you’re done.

For the folks in North America, Canada, USA and other countries working with compound taxes, we have provided a way for you to add a 2nd tax rate to your business. You can enable this option in your business settings and then taxes tab, set it as a preset so that every time a new invoice is created you have this new taxes available.  You can also turn 2nd tax option on when creating a new invoice. Once enabled, you will have another column “tax2” on your invoices. You can only specify preset taxes only admin on your business can add these through the setup process.

You might not like to call Quotes and instead wish that they were called Estimates instead. Well if that’s the wish then it has just come true. Skylight is a highly customisable application and keeping in with that tradition we now allow you to change invoice, quote and purchase order names. To do this, simply go to your “Company settings” and then select “Business”  tab. All the accounting titles and default tax option are available here. Selecting any tax option means that when you create a new record in the accounting module like an invoice, it will have these option preselected as defaults.

Another one of those features we should have done a while back and recently requested by our users, a quick overview of state of their accounts. So now we are launching new accounting overviews each section clickable to take you to the list of records related with outstanding, overdue and debtors list.

When you need to recreate regular invoices with the same information over and over again, it’s best to use templates and when you need to create estimates where adding additional files and links are important, then Skylight templates will come in handy. This is particularly true for invoices, quotes and if you use purchase orders for suppliers then this is the best way to create customised looks.

To create a new template, simply go to the new drop down menu on the top right, go to accounts and the new templates section. Then select “add”.

Drag and drop sections like rich text, image, file and grid elements to customise layouts and structure of your template. Once you are happy with the structure you are ready to start entering some data.You can add multiple text, image & file elements but only one grid element which represents actual invoice/qt/po when applied to those modules.You can also drag and drop blocks to reorganise them or to change their order. You can upload images and files in some cases users need to add terms and conditions documents files i.e designs, mock-ups etc this is what files & images are for. Then we have the Grid. You should always have this enabled or you won’t get your line items in the invoice this is the only way to do that.

The rich text editor with field insertion allows you to write any text as you would in a document but use actual fields to replace client name, project start end dates and much much more. Now when you create a new invoice or quote you will have access to your new templates.

Hope you enjoy this new feature, please feel free to comment or join our forum.

Knowing who has what access to what information is critical for any business using SAAS applications for collaboration with internal teams, external contractors and clients.

Looking at our competition in the market place – which is getting more crowded every day – the likes of Basecamp only offer predefined settings which users can’t change. Huddle has the concept of teams and a massive guide to go with it, and lets not go into Zoho – you will need “Zoho for Dummies” to understand it all. But it’s inevitable that as an app grows, so do the various complexities of managing user permissions.

Business needs are always evolving and today’s requirements might not work tomorrow: some want clients to have access to projects alone; some need clients to create tasks on the projects; and some need varying levels of access for the internal team, i.e. a junior might not need access to invoices. In some cases freelancers or contractors are actual project managers and will need to see the financials and accounts to better manage projects and teams. All this and more is now in your total control.

Now when you create a new business or log in to an existing one, you have a new tab in your business setting “group permissions“. Here you will find four new presets: Administrator, Manager, Client and Team (details below), these are what we call “system presets” they can not be deleted or edited. These might work for you from the word go, or you might want to amend them by duplicating or selecting the “add” option to start a fresh. Always remember to save!

As the old Jedi master said “…with great power comes a great responsibility” so as an administrator who is responsible for what data is seen by any internal and external collaborator, its also important to know what each preset does. We have solved this by creating a way for admin users to switch user profiles.
The new “Switch” option lives right under your company name(image above), selecting this “Switch ” option will temporarily allow you to chose a saved permission group and browse your account with the profile. This gives you the ability to check what the other user will see before shipping out access privileges to new users. A must have feature for your security and piece of mind.

Let us know how we can improve on this, the places to visit is ofcource the app itself. We still have those free accounts going. once logged-in you can access our forum and get involved in the discussion on what you need from Skylight or if you prefer a more social route then connect with us on Facebook and Twitter.

May the force be with you.