Hi all!

We know the ability to reach out to us and ask a question or report an issue is extremely important for you. But what about when nobody's available? Getting a reply the next day is okay, but we’d like to do better than just “okay”.

We used to work from 7 a.m. London time until 7 p.m. New York time. That’s pretty good for Europe, sort of okay for the U.S., and terrible if you are in Asia, Australia or New Zealand.

That's why I’m happy to announce our Support Team is now available for 24 hours on weekdays! You can reach us via live chat or support@targetprocess.com. By the way, I'm not talking about live chat bots, which are becoming popular these days. No, we are all humans, with all the pros and cons that entails.

So, we now start on Monday at 8 a.m. Melbourne time, and will be happy to chat with you until 7 p.m. on Friday, New York time. In fact, we've been doing this for about a month already – we just wanted to polish our internal process a bit before the big announcement.

We're still not working on weekends, but there's not that much activity around those times anyway, and you might want to get some rest on weekends too.

Please note that we're only talking about customer support here. In the unlikely event of some server issues or an account becoming unavailable, there is still an infrastructure engineer on duty 24/7, so we have you covered there.

We really love talking to you, fixing things, and sometimes breaking things together. We hope this will result in us having more conversations, and at moments that are more convenient for you. Don't let time hold you back!

Hello everyone!

I am glad to let you know we are working on language localization for our Service Desk. We know that some of your customers and users might not speak English, so now it will be more convenient for them to start using Service Desk – we're aware this was a blocker for some of you.

We have completed the background work to make localization possible. There will be a global default language for the whole application, but users will be able to pick their own language if they prefer something different.

The next phase is translation itself, and here is where it gets tricky. We don’t speak every language that we would like to add (or, at least not well enough). As you know, we are not charging for Service Desk, so it is not likely that we’ll be able to hire some translation agencies to do the job. This means we need your help if you want to see some particular language.

Luckily, there is not much text to be translated. Currently there are around 150 “lines”, and most of them are very short (e.g. “Log in” or “Add a request”). We are using Transifex, so the translation and approval process is easy and won’t require much effort from you. If all 150 lines are too much, you are welcome to translate as many as you can; even one line can make a difference. If the line was already translated by someone else, you can review it and leave a comment if you have another suggestion.

UPD: Here is the current status of the languages translation:

• German - 100%
• French - 100%
• Portuguese (Brazilian) - 100%
• Polish - 100%
• Dutch - 100%
• Italian - 100%
• Norwegian - 91%
• Spanish - 89%

If you need some other language and are ready to provide a translation, we will be happy to add it to the system.
If you are want to participate or have any questions, please contact me directly via sergey.gnedin@targetprocess.com, and I’ll send you a meeting invite. Thanks everyone!

Our new Service Desk application can be used to manage almost any kind of Request. One of its most common use cases is Idea Management, which allows you to gather feedback and prioritize features in your product based on your customers’ needs.

For the past several years, we’ve been using UserVoice for Idea Management. Now that our own Service Desk provides the same functionality and more, it’s time to move on. Last week we carefully moved about 10,000 users and 2,800 ideas to https://helpdesk.targetprocess.com to make sure your feedback is not lost.

This means that the forum at https://tp3.uservoice.com is now deprecated. You are welcome to share your ideas at https://helpdesk.targetprocess.com.

The other thing we want to highlight is that you can also use the Service Desk + Targetprocess combo to collect and manage ideas for your own projects. Service Desk has all the usual features such as voting and comments, it allows you to easily link ideas to particular work items in Targetprocess, and it’s free. Also, as our own Product Owner observed, it's much more convenient to manage incoming ideas when you have all the power of Targetprocess to back you up.

Service Desk can be enabled from the Settings page in Targetprocess. Take a look at our guide if you need help getting started, or send us a message at support@targetprocess.com.

In addition to all that, we have just released a widget that can be handy if you have your own system and don’t need the full Service Desk application, or if you just want users to submit requests without leaving your website.

We understand that you might need some flexibility from the default settings, so we made the widget customizable. You can hide elements like top requests, description, and attachments, define default request types and privacy, and change the form's subject text. It is already available for you and you can embed it anywhere – all you need to do is to provide a link to your Service Desk with the correspondent parameters. See our guide for more information.

Earlier this year, Realm Digital brought their company culture of embracing new technology to life by consolidating their suite of software tools and introducing Targetprocess to manage workflows.

Previously, Realm was using a host of software for their Scrum-based Agile development, including Harvest for time tracking, Mantis for bug tracking, and Float for resource scheduling (to name a few).

They needed a solution that could help them to both improve their Scrum process and unite the different functions of their various other software tools. To ensure that their business processes remained agile and lean, CEO Simon Bestier championed the migration to Targetprocess.

Now that they’re a few months in, their marketing manager sat down with Developer Kyle Mulder and newly appointed Project and Operations Manager Hans Croukamp to see what kind of a difference Targetprocess has made at Realm Digital so far.

Q. Kyle, what has been the most noticeable change in the way we approach projects since Realm moved over to Targetprocess?

      Kyle: After switching to Targetprocess, the most noticeable change has been that we now set achievable two week sprints. Thanks to the effort-based point system that Targetprocess uses, we can now see what project teams are capable of accomplishing by checking out a project’s sprint velocity. This enables us to set realistic targets for our sprints, rather than packing them with too much work, resulting in a sprint not being finished.

Q. Do you think the entire Realm team has embraced Targetprocess and all it has to offer?

      Kyle: While I’d like to believe that we have fully embraced Targetprocess, I still think there are a lot of hidden features and functionality in the tool that could come in handy to ease our workflows and minimize the amount of other applications we require on a daily basis.

      Hans: Targetprocess is vastly different from any other project management software I’ve worked with before. From a project management perspective, I find the different customizable views, dashboards, and reports to be extremely helpful. The buy-in from the team is very positive and the tool greatly assists us by presenting a 360-view on every project. It is quite a powerful tool and can be customized in numerous ways. The more you play around with the tool, the more you find the features and views the platform has to offer.

Q. Which Targetprocess feature, in your opinion, adds the most value, but is underused?

      Kyle: From a Developer and Team Lead point of view, the most valuable, yet underused feature, would be using the “relations” functionality with User Stories. The ability to relate multiple stories a big Feature is quite useful.

We also often use Burndown Charts to review a sprint’s progress and get insight into how much effort is remaining to complete a User Story . There is also a sub-tasks functionality, but these provide estimates based on hours, rather than story points, which is less useful for us.   

A Burndown Chart in Targetprocess

      Hans: The customization of views and boards is probably the feature that I use the most. I can’t necessarily say it is under-utilized, but the more I dig into the views, the more I find value in the details. I can also see the “eureka moment” for colleagues and clients when Targetprocess is used to explain the status of a project.

If I had to highlight something that I do think has tremendous value but that we’re currently not using to the full extent, it would be the ability to see points and work allocation per person/resource.

Q. Hans, is there anything you can think of that can make learning how to use Targetprocess easier?

      Hans: Targetprocess is a comprehensive tool with different functionality for different people; Project Managers, Account Managers, Developers, Management, etc. We all use the tool slightly differently.

Although I love the videos on the Targetprocess YouTube channel, it really takes you awhile to understand the tool as a new user. I do believe that breaking the learning process down and approaching it from how each person in their respective role will use the tool can help – rather than to trying to comprehend everything the tool can do at once.

I also think it might be good for them to raise 'Targetprocess champions' – people from different companies who can share their experience with the software. The recorded Webinars also really helped me when I started learning what the tool can do.  

This post was submitted by Realm Digital, a global digital strategy and technology partner located in South Africa. The company specializes in digital solutions including web and mobile development. For more information, visit their website at www.realmdigital.co.za.

Looking to publish your own article on our blog? Send your pitch to news@targetprocess.com. We publish articles on Agile, team communication, software development, your own experiences with business software, and anything else related to collaboration.

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