Release of Upvise version 2.5

With the new version 2.5 of Upvise, we now fully support Blackberry Storm and Nokia 5800 XpressMusic devices. We have also enhanced the Android UI (T-Mobile G1) with native smooth scrolling of lists and alphabetical filtering.

What’s New:

• Customize the Upvise home page on your device. Choose the most frequently used apps you want to see on the home page. The others appear under More Apps.
• Add new apps listed in the Upvise catalog, directly from your mobile.
• New Sales application to manage your leads, sales opportunities, products and quotes.
• Relooking of UI for edit forms, simplified signing in and out of account (sign in with pairing code is removed)

New Sales application

We have introduced a new Sales app to help you manage your leads, sales opportunities, as well as products and quotes.

A lead is a contact that can potentially lead you to new business. Whenever you meet someone that can be relevant to your business, just enter the person’s contact info in the Leads section. With the task wizard, you can quickly add one of the preset tasks like Call, Email or Setup a meeting with the person. It’s also easy to convert the lead into a new Opportunity. 

Keep track of your business opportunities and make sure you never miss any deadlines by setting a due date. The app automatically groups opportunities so that you know which are overdue, to be handled this week or later.  To get things done efficiently, you can easily create tasks related to the opportunity using one of the preset actions like Call, Email or Setup a meeting. The tasks will also appear in the Upvise Tasks app. You can also manage notes and create a quote for the opportunity.

With Products and Quotes, you can manage a database of items that you sell and then easily create a draft quote by adding items from the Products database. The total amount of the quote is calculated automatically, including discounts and sales tax if applicable. The default currency and sales tax used for Products is a new setting in your user account.

Important note: Opportunities previously listed under the Business Contacts app now appear in the Sales app and data was automatically copied to the new application for existing user accounts.

Upvise Sales is a Premium application.

Business Contacts renamed to Contacts and is now free

The Upvise Business Contacts application has been renamed to Contacts and is now a free application for all user accounts. There was previously a Contacts app available for personal accounts.  Users can still access this application if it had been added to their account, but it is not maintained anymore and is no longer available in the Upvise catalog.

Note also that the Opportunities section of the Business Contacts app has been moved to the new Sales app.

Changes to Upvise licensing

We have switched to a less restrictive licensing scheme. We now enforce licenses on application access and not at account level.

Previously an Upvise account was either a free personal account or a business account with a 30-day trial. At expiration of the trial, business account users could no longer sign in to their account and access any of their applications. Accounts are now all free, and users can continue to use all free applications. When you sign up for an account, you can choose to have personal or business apps preloaded into your account, but you can also add on any of the applications that are available in the Upvise catalog.

Some applications are free and some require a premium access license. The first time a premium application is added to an account, the user automatically gets a free 30-day trial. At the end of the trial, the user has to purchase a premium access license ($49/year/user) in order to continue accessing premium apps. The license also gives access to additional security features and the backup and restore functionality. If the user decides not to acquire a license, he can still log on to his account and use free applications.

To date the list of premium and free apps is as follows:

Free applications: Contacts, Notebooks, RSS News, Wikipedia, Shopping Lists

Premium applications: Projects, Tasks, Sales, Ideas

Merging Workspaces and Notebooks

We merged yesterday the Workspaces mobile application with Notebooks. We found that most Upvise business users actually added the free Notebooks mobile applications, in their account. So we decided to merge the 2 similar application into just one.

With the combined new Notebooks applications, you can:

• Create, organize, search and share notes
• Notes can be orgnized into notebooks
• You can easily import / export in CSV format from the Upvise web interface
• Notes can be linked a to Contact, a Company or a Project.
• You can quickly add a new note from your Google toolbar on your desktop

Shared or private data in a Business account

In your business account, you can now configure each application to either share data amongst all users of the business account, or else restrict access to only the owner of the data. For example in Workspaces, if the setting is Private, a user can only see Posts that he has created. In Business Contacts, or Tasks, or Projects, a user can only see contacts or tasks or projects that have the owner field set to this user.

By default, data is shared for all applications. You can change these settings from the Manage Apps section of your web account. Click on the Sharing tab, and choose for each app whether the data is Shared or Private.

Note that users who are administrators can always see everyone’s data, even when the setting is Private. In the web account, Private data is marked by a red label at the top right of the toolbar, when viewing or editing an item.

Business Contacts, Projects and Tasks file attachments

In the Business Contacts application in your web account, you can now upload files of any type as attachments to a contact. Goto the Edit Contact page and upload a file from the Attachment section at the bottom of the page.

In Projects and Tasks, you can upload files of any type as attachments to a project or a task, from the Edit Project or Task page.

Task Reminders and Notifications

We have enhanced the Tasks app for all Upvise Business accounts with reminders and notifications.

Reminder of due date

The owner of a task receives a reminder by email on the due date for the task. The reminder is sent at 00:00 on the due date. Remember to set your timezone in the Settings of your web account.

Owner assignment notification

When you assign a task to someone in your company, this  person automatically receives a notification by email.

These two functionalities have been activated by default for all users, so you should now be receiving emails for your task reminders and assignments. Administrators can change the default settings in the Manage Apps section of your web account under the Notifications tab. Note that the setting applies to all users of the company account, and not for an individual user.

We currently support only notifications by email, and not by SMS. To use Upvise you need a data connection and therefore your phone can support reading emails. On the latest smartphones whether iPhone, Google Android or Blackberry, you are also alerted by a beep or vibration when you receive an email, which means that receving an SMS is really the same user experience as receiving an email. Thus SMS notifications are not absolutely necessary.

Wikipedia in Swedish

You can now access the Swedish version of Wikipedia in Upvise. To get the latest version of the Wikipedia app, make sure to do a refresh on the Home screen of Upvise to update the library of applications.

Upvise wins Sony Ericsson Content Award 2008

Upvise is the proud winner of the Sony Ericsson Content Awards 2008 in the Being Productive category. Winners were announced at a very special online awards ceremony. 

 

Here is a video from the Jury.
Listen to what Roger Entner - Senior Vice President, Communications Sector, Nielsen IAG, member of the jury, is saying about Upvise.