Something I’ve been planning for a long time is the ability to track attendance for events. Just basic head counts collected over time. Every Sunday at church I see a volunteer in the back, pen in hand, counting each person and writing the tally down. Perhaps it gets put into a spreadsheet, perhaps just written down in a book. Either way it’s nice information to have and I thought Stafftool would be a great place to keep track of it all, however, it wasn’t something that made it into the initial launch. Recently, though, some of the great users in the support forums were asking about and discussing Event Attendance Tracking and it got me excited about it getting it going now that it looked like it was indeed something that people needed. So, I’m happy to announce a first pass “preview” of attendance tracking.
Archive for March, 2008
Stafftool, being a web-based application, of course runs in your web browser with nothing special to install or keep updated on your computer or servers. In fact, that’s one of the best parts of using web apps.
However, there’s a certain appeal to having a specialized program on your computer for some things…it makes it feel a bit more “real” to see a program icon in your dock, waiting for you to click on it to get some serious business done. Also, it would be nice to have something productive like Stafftool or your Gmail account open in something that won’t be affected by something like a Rickroll gone bad or someone’s bloated MySpace profile page that takes your entire browser down. It would be great to be able to separate the things you need open from the things that are nice to have open…but how?
The answer? Site specific browsers. In this post I’ll show you how easy it is to create a Stafftool “application” on your Mac.
Continue reading ‘Announcing Stafftool.app (well, kind of…)’
Just pushed out a couple really cool features.
First up - Improved Searching.
You can now search in the iPhone version. Need to look up someone’s info really quickly but don’t know their last name or don’t want to go through a few pages of contacts? Just search!
Simply click on the search icon and a search form will appear. Just type in what you’re looking for and click the go button. If your search results in one contact match, you’ll be taken directly to that person’s page, otherwise you’ll be shown a list of results.
Now, if you use Firefox, you know it’s a great browser. You might even know there are other search engines available in the search field where Google usually sits. And, if you’ve really dug into Firefox, you’ll also know that you can add other search engines to that list. I’ve got good news - you can now add your Stafftool account to that list of available search engines for easy access to your information at any time.
Adding Stafftool is easy…just go to your account in Firefox and you’ll notice that the drop down menu will have a bit of a glow to it:
Click on that glowing menu icon, and you’ll see this:
Click the Add “Stafftool” menu option and you’ll be greeted with the Stafftool specific search box!
Now, as long as you’re logged into your account, you can enter anything you’re looking for, such as someone’s first name, or the name of an upcoming event. Type it in, hit enter and you’ll be taken to your Stafftool account with either a listing of results or the person you’re looking for.
Next up - iCal Organizers
The ability to add organizers to events was recently added. However, it didn’t carry over to the public iCal feed that is available to subscribe to. So, that’s been added. Now, when you view an event that has an organizer (iCal only allows one organizer per event to the best of my knowledge) they’ll show up and you can email them.
Much easier to see who to contact with any questions.
Enjoy!
