Handshake HQ Blog
Copying From Word
Posted on June 20th, 2007
The release of Handshake HQ is going well. Right now it is a soft release to see what kind of feedback we get and to ensure that we do not experience a rush of users.
One thing to keep an eye on is copying from word or other products. The text must be plain text or it will send come crazy characters. Smart Quotes in word seems to be the biggest problem. The trick to fixing it is to simply retype any characters that do not show up well after saving it.
We also added a message on the template page to watch out for that issue.
The good news is that the templates only need to be set up well once and then used as often as you like, with minor modifications before you send them.
Beta Handshake HQ Open
Posted on June 12th, 2007
You can now sign up for the beta version of Handshake HQ. It is fully functioning and only remains a beta because we are considering a few more features, refining the marketing, adding some form validation, adding additional public email templates and collecting feedback.
Beyond those improvements, we have already started using it to grow our business and create a buzz online quickly. Go ahead and give it a try.
Great Progress
Posted on June 5th, 2007
I have a bunch of loose ends to clean up and then we will be launching quietly to a larger group of beta testers. The only major functionality I am not going to add for release is the uploading of data from excel. It is only available for people that are using the more expensive packages and I do not want to hold things up for it, as it is unlikely to be used in the first week or two.
Handshake Development Progress
Posted on May 31st, 2007
As I close out the week, I have gotten some great feedback from the couple of users and have implemented most of the suggestions. Before going wide scale, I still need to add the user management, charge card processing and excel import and export.
I also do not plan on having the main web server process emails for long. We will have to put that engine on another server. However, we can get that done in a day or two, so I am not particularly worried about not being able to handle the load. It would be a good problem to have.
Beta Test - Round One
Posted on May 24th, 2007
Today we launched the first round of beta testers. Ok, it was just beta tester. One external person to give us good feedback. It is working well but we spent some time figuring out the signature could not be NULL.
Here is the list as it stands right now.
Improve reporting on dashboard with graphs
Add credit card processing and SSL
Upgrade and downgrade accounts
Add/edit group user management
Add additional public templates
Add help file and screen shots to marketing
Add public new account creation
Add default if a merge item is missing - later removed for spam reasons
Cache emails for processing on dedicated server
Add reports - admin can see stats on everyone
Search for contact
Que of people not contacted yet
Account Manager Change
Account Hold for payment failure
Account cancel - deletes all data
Edit Template
View and edit existing contact
Handshake HQ Admin Tools
Add free account Handshake HQ signature
Test quotes in all situations
Update right columns with useful items
Write toc and privacy
Add limits and checks on # of msgs and contacts
Excel Export
Excel Import
Transfer contacts to another user
Review all interfaces for consistancy
Default last used template to top
Paging for long lists
Link all necessary support pages