It appears that the leap year might have been causing problems with Leave Requests and some Time Entries. A quick bounce of the service fixed everything up, but apologies for people where time entries were put into the incorrect day.
Thanks to a new hosting platform, all users should see some zippier performance, particularly running reports.
The migration was completed with minimal outage (just a few minutes), and has been running strong for several weeks now.
* Not an actual statistic
For the first time in 4 years, iZepto has come across a data corruption that has resulted in us having to roll back to a previous database backup to restore the site.
The corruption was identified at 07:21 UTC Nov 23rd, and the backup used was taken at 12:20 UTC Nov 22. This amounts to a roll back of some 19 hours.
Please be assured, we are taking this situation very seriously, and are deeply disappointed in this loss of data. An investigation is underway to ensure that future corruptions do not occur, and that the time window of data loss is reduced or eliminated.
All paying customers will receive 1 month free subscription, which will be applied in the next few business days.
Again, please accept our sincere apologies.
Mark, on behalf of the iZepto team.
Thanks to a high Australian Dollar right now, our prices have risen without us doing anything! So, just to show how nice we are, we have decided to update our pricing to make it more appealing. As of today, our pricing has been adjusted to:
Up to 3 users: Still Free!
4 to 10 users: AUD$15 per month (down from AUD$35)
More than 10 users: AUD$65 per month (down from AUD$75)
Enjoy!
Task requests prior to 2.3 were created ’silently’ as an option in task search. These tasks were added to a special client and project and needed to be moved into the correct client and project by an administrator. This didn’t give the requestor much credit, since most of the time they can probably make a good guess as to where the task should go.
In Version 2.3 released today, they entire task request process has been updated. Requests are now obvious (there is a pop up screen that the requestor fills in) and the requests are allocated to an administrator (just like leave requests).
Work for the Admin should now be greatly reduced in most cases. If the requestor has got it right, just clicking “Approve” should be all they need to do!
Again, we are aiming to make iZepto the easiest time sheet system possible!
It is a simple change, but one that was voted on the feedback forum.
You can now delete all time entries for a day with a single click.
Keep the feedback coming - we are already working on other things but vote up your favourites and we will go through them in priority order.
We have just added a new feedback mechanism using UserVoice. It is that cool ‘Feedback’ link on the left of each page and let’s you tell us what you want by either adding a suggestion or by voting up a suggestion you like.
We have already done or started two of them, so you know it is working!
Check it out by clicking the link or by going directly to: http://feedback.izepto.com/
Although the functionality has been there for a while now, we thought it was worth blogging about some new functionality in iZepto - Leave Management.
At Shine Technologies, we found that the process of leave requests and time management were pretty closely linked. So, we updated iZepto to handle it. Now, you can mark a task a ‘leave’ task. For instance, you probably have a task for ‘Annual Leave’ or ‘Maternity Leave’. You can now mark that as a leave task and your users can request to take ‘Annual Leave’. They pick one of the Admins as an approver.
The system emails Admins daily if they have any requests that need approval. You can easily see a Gantt chart of all leave requests, and even filter them by status or date range or group.
Once approved, the requesting user gets an email and their time for that period is automatically filled out. Neat!
A final feature added today is Leave Reconciliation. Now your accountant or book keeper can do a check between what was requested and what was actually taken. At Shine we use this as the last step prior to updating our payroll system with leave actually taken.
As a nice extra, check out the iCal feed beneath the Gantt chart. I have a subscription in iCal on my Mac (but any iCal conforming application will work) that shows all leave requests for people in my group. They show up as an all-day event at the top of my calendar and is a nice reminder not to expect a certain team member in that day!
This is just a quick note to let you know that Version 2.0.5 was just released and it actually enforces the subscription model that was announced on December 4th last year. So, if you signed up after then and you have more than 3 users you will now be asked to subscribe to the service to continue to enter time entries.
If you have any problems with the subscription process please use the feedback page or email us directly on info at izepto.com.
An updated version of the iPhone app is now in the App Store. You can now add notes to time entries and more easily navigate forward and back in time.
Thanks for all the feedback! We are working on more enhancements so let us know what you would like to see!