November 2013 - Posts

• Happy Thanksgiving!!!

  Greetings Method Community! This week I hope you'll find time to take a break from your hard work, relax with friends and family, and enjoy all that Thanksgiving has to offer. I asked my fellow Method friends what they were thankful for, and altough many voiced their gratitude towards various foods, what everyone here expressed the most was how grateful they were for you - our customers and resellers.   Have a safe and happy Thanksgiving and if you need us, we'll be here this week during regular office hours.  From the bottom of our hearts, THANK YOU for choosing Method CRM as your Customer Relationship Management platform!   What are you most thankful for?  Tweet me at @MethodCRM - I'd love to hear from you! Until next time, Lynda Posted Nov 25 2013, 10:14 AM by Lynda Byrne with no comments

• Brand new documentation for Method CRM!

  Hello again Method users; it’s Alex (your friendly neighbourhood documentation specialist), here again with more good news for those of you pining for some down-to-earth Method support.  I’m pleased to announce that even more documentation has recently been added to our Help Center (courtesy of yours truly), including a full section detailing Campaigns, and a section we're calling Common Lists.  The articles in this section focus mostly on transaction-related screens, including how to create and edit Invoices, Estimates, Sales reps, and Sales receipts, plus a whole lot more. But why put these in a separate section when almost everybody accesses those screens through the Customers tab, a savvy Method user may ask.  Well, savvy Method user, since you’re so savvy you’re no doubt aware that all these screens can be accessed from a variety of different places throughout the Method environment.  But not every user is quite as savvy as you (at least, not yet!) A user who regularly accesses estimates from the Leads tab, for example, might not think to look for our Estimates documentation in the Customers section of the Help Center.  So, we’ve given a whole section of the Help Center over to these screens in the interest of making it easier to locate the information you need, when you need it. And on that topic, I’d like to bring up something else.  During my time here at Method, I have learned a great deal about CRM and what it means to small businesses.  My father was (and still is) a small business owner, so I have some idea of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs striking out on their own.  I sincerely believe (and not just because it’s my job) that Method offers extremely useful solutions for small businesses of all stripes, and I want all our users to be able to make the most of these solutions.   To that end, I entreat each of you to get in touch with me (yes, me personally) with your questions, comments, and feedback regarding our documentation.  If something doesn’t work, or doesn’t make sense, I want to hear about it!  If something made your life easier, I definitely want to hear about that (writer’s ego, you understand), but joking aside, I want to make sure your experience with our technical documentation is as smooth and helpful as possible.  And that goes for videos too: Errol and I can only improve our service to you if we know what’s working and, more importantly, what isn’t.   So feel free to drop us a line anytime at documentation@method.me.  We will respond to you just as fast as we can (and that’s pretty fast).  We look forward to hearing from you! All the best for a happy November, Alex Krueger Documentation Specialist Method CRM Posted Nov 11 2013, 10:42 AM by Method_Alex with 4 comment(s)

• Method V2 is Rapid, Responsive, and Radical

  This is a guest blog by Advanced Certified Consultant and Method Solution Provider, Mark Crews. The Cloud Consultancy team is just back from the 1st Method Solution Providers (MSPs) Retreat, adeptly run by Scaling New Heights. Over the course of the retreat, we had a chance to preview the next generation of Method, and participate in many jam-packed, cutting-edge sessions presented by the Method team, as well as other MSPs. We loved the chance to informally network with our fellow MSPs and spend three days immersed in Method. The best part though, was getting to see the future of Method CRM. Joe Woodard and Paul Jackson, Method’s CEO, kicked off the retreat with keynote presentations. Paul coined the concept of “frankensteining” or putting together a business system made from many different applications which may or may not work well together. Naturally, Method is the antidote, since it can provide the functionality of many different apps, and reduces the number of moving pieces. Paul unveiled the new Method logo, which incorporates the infinity sign, reflecting the infinite possibilities of Method. Finally, his keynote included what we were all waiting for, a sneak peak at the new version, known as V2, and a timeline for its release. Method users should be excited to know that V2 Mobile Beta will be available soon. The developers at Method have been hard at work on the next generation platform over the last year, and it shows. It’s built on a proprietary markup language using HTML5, taking advantage of the latest in web technology. For the first time, Method screens really are true web pages, with all the power that implies. The User Interface (UI) is greatly simplified, which will lead to easier adoption for new users, and it is slick and fast. Of course it is responsive, allowing designs to work equally well on any device: mobile, tablet, desktop. Under the hood, we have all the great drag and drop design tools that have made Method such an awesome platform for creating custom applications, but V2 goes even farther with some advanced filtering and expressions, which gives us more power as developers. Method gave all the attendees a demo account to play with V2, and the designer is as slick as the user interface, making it a joy to use. The sessions then broke up into two groups - new Method Solution Providers training for Method certification for the first time, and a post-certification track for advanced developers. Paul and his team presented topics ranging from Marketing to UI Design to Advanced Report Designer tricks, and many of the sessions included peeks into the capabilities of the new version. Throughout all sessions, the Method team reiterated their core vision for V2 - rapid, responsive, and a radical new approach to business software, which seeks to unify all the different areas of a business - marketing, sales, accounting and management reporting - on one platform. We also had some great joint sessions: Selling Method, an open forum sparked by a conversation with three long-time MSPs, Robin Hall of VARC, Matt Raiser of Tech in the Field and Gale Kirsopp of Kirsopp Consulting, and Consulting Legalities, presented by Joe Woodard. Cloud Consultancy really enjoyed participating in the Advanced Think Tank, where the post-certification group had a series of open discussions led by different MSPs: Database Naming conventions, using Method on QBO vs QB desktop, UI design principles (led by Carol Oliver of Woodard Consulting) and a continuation of the selling discussion (led by Robin Hall). Those MSP’s who missed the retreat should be able to access some of the presentations in the MSP only V2 forum. Three days went by very quickly! Thanks to the Scaling New Heights team, Joe Woodard, Ardel Strother and the ever capable Wendy Rohrssen, the event was a great success and return on investment for everyone who attended. We can’t wait for the next retreat, but in the meantime, we have V2 to assimilate and look forward to implementing, soon! Mark Crews Cloud Consultancy Mark is an Advanced Certified Consultant and Account Manager for Method CRM, accorded “Guru Status”. His experiences have garnered the Method CRM Partner of the Year and Community Excellence awards.  Mark is also an avid music fan and the founding member of Cloud Consultancy, which was born when he found partners who share his passion for software development, cloud computing, Method CRM, and just having fun. Posted Nov 01 2013, 11:43 AM by Lynda Byrne with 3 comment(s)