ZCOPE Blog

Der Frühling ist da und an allen Ecken und Enden spriesst es aus dem Boden, die Vögel haben allen Grund zum Zwitschern und am Abend kann man endlich wieder länger draussen bleiben. Das hat natürlich auch Auswirkungen auf unser Entwicklungs-Team. Darum können wir in dieser Info-Mail wieder von vielen neue ZCOPE-Updates erzählen.

Mehrwertsteuerfreie Rechnungen
Die von unseren Kunden wohl am meisten angefragte Funktion ist das Ausstellen von mehrwertsteuerfreien Rechnungen. Dies ist ab sofort möglich in dem Sie uns Ihre UID-Nummer bekannt geben. Und so einfach geht das:

• Öffnen Sie das ZCOPE-Dashboard
• Klicken Sie auf den Link “Konto-Einstellungen”
  
  (Achtung: Diesen Link sehen Sie nur, wenn Sie der Konto-Inhaber sind!)
• Fügen Sie im Bereich “Rechnungsadresse” Ihre UID-Nummer ein
• Klicken Sie auf “Speichern”

Ab nun werden die Rechnungen ohne Mehrwertsteuer erstellt. Bitte beachten Sie, dass dies nur die zukünftigen Rechnungen betrifft. Der Vorgang ist nicht rückwirkend.

Sollten Sie Fragen zu diesem Thema haben können Sie sich gerne per E-Mail an uns wenden: billing@getzcope.com

Mehr Projekte zum selben Preis
Ab sofort werden die abgeschlossenen Projekte nicht mehr in der Anzahl der möglichen Projekte berücksichtigt. Das bedeutet, wenn Sie ein Projekt abschliessen, wird Ihr Kontingent automatisch erhöht.

E-Mail-Benachrichtigungen mit Projekttitel
Im Titel der E-Mail-Benachrichtigungen wird nun der Projekttitel angezeigt. So wird die Ablage und das Auffinden dieser E-Mails deutlich erleichtert.

Verschiedene Bug-Fixes
Im Rahmen unseres technischen Frühjahrsputzes haben wir diverse kleinere Bugs korrigiert. Das bedeutet für Sie noch mehr Stabilität und Spass mit ZCOPE.

Ab sofort können Sie ZCOPE auch auf Facebook treffen. Dort reden wir nicht nur über unsere Plattform sondern auch über interessantes rund um Projektmanagement. Wir möchten jedoch das weltweit grösste soziale Netzwerk auch dazu einsetzten, unsere Benutzer besser miteinander zu verknüpfen. Nutzen Sie unser Facebook-Profil also auch um sich über ZCOPE auszutauschen.

Zur Facebook-Seite von ZCOPE

Normally employees are set against two different hourly rates, an internal and an external rate:

• The internal rate are the costs that the employee causes internally per hour.
• The external rate are the price that the client is charged for this employee‘s work.

Both values are pulled up for the calculation of the manpower costs on the basis of the time tracking. For this, both rates must be given for all project members.

The burndown chart is a graph that visualises the project‘s progress. This curve shows the project performance. The dark blue trend line shows the actual project course: if it lies directly on the light blue line, the project runs „normal“. If it‘s in the pink area, the performance is under quota, in the light blue area it‘s better than planned.

The figure beneath the graph states, how many percents the project is performing above/under the planned time. Thus discrepancies between plan and reality can be recognised early on and countermeasures can be taken.

ZCOPE doesn‘t have (yet) an explicit area for knowledge management but there are several possibilities how to organise knowledge.

At first let‘s talk about the „implicit“ information. Each description that will be added to tasks, task lists, milestones, dates and budgets might contain important knowledge. The same is valid for the journal – it shows what happened when (grouped by days, the single areas are marked by colours). Also the project templates hold know-how from previous projects.

The instruments most obviously suited for knowledge management are the document archive and the project blog. Documents may be updated at any time, the old versions will be kept (can be deleted as well of course). Blog entries may be edited and enhanced by the author, other team members can add comments.

In ZCOPE, documents are not only saved centrally but also in a versioned form. This means, that you can upload an updated version as an addition to already existing documents – the older version will be kept.

Thus e.g. design developments can be reproduced chronologically correct or different people can work consecutively on the same document.

Even if we support transparency in projects – there are things that should remain „among us“, therefore „internal“. All employees of the account owner automatically have the „internal“ status and thus more rights and access to more data.

But also people from outside of the company can get the „internal“ status, e.g. an agency on friendly terms, with which also confidential information will be shared. Due to the extended settings, certain things can remain within one company: in this case one simply deactivates the reading and writing rights of the corresponding area (e.g. time tracking).

What can be marked as „internal“?

• Tasks
• Dates
• Documents
• Blog entries (of course the corresponding comments are „internal“ as well)

Task lists cannot be „internal“ as there would be too many dependencies in the case of task moving between multiple lists.
Budgets are invisible for not-“internal“ team members by default (this can be changed redefining the extended settings).

The project manager can adjust the „internal“ settings. Only „internal“ project members can  mark elements as „internal“.

Not every team member should have access to all information resp. the right to write. E.g. trainees should be able to see tasks but shouldn‘t be authorised to create new ones: they get reading rights for this section but the writing rights will be deactivated.

Extended settings can be defined for the following areas:

• Tasks
• Time tracking
• Dates
• Budgets
• Documents
• Project blog

These settings can be determined for all project members, no matter if internal or not. The latter by default have fewer rights – this can be changed with the extended rights.

There are a lot of projects with a similar setup. To save time in the planning phase, we developed the project template feature.

As an example, I use the organisation of an event. There are several tasks that have to be done with every event:

• Location: Selection, bid solicitation, booking, fire authority inspection, etc.
• Entertainment programme (live music, all-round entertainer, etc.): Selection, bid solicitation, booking, etc.
• Catering: Selection, bid solicitation, booking, etc.
• Guest list: Listing, design, shipping, etc.
• Security
• Permissions
• Etc.

In the template you may define task lists, tasks, dates (milestones) and budgets as well as the responsible persons. If you notice something missing later on (e.g. the renting of parking lots) you may adapt the template at any time.

Now you start projects as always but are able to select a template under point 4.

Order the BASIC plan, get the services of the EXTENDED plan and save almost 600 Euro a year!

You pay the BASIC plan but use the services of the EXTENDED plan. A ZCOPE life long!

Order the BASIC plan and save almost 600 Euro!

*Promotion valid until the 24th of December 2009.
The account may be canceled at a monthly basis.