This weekend we pushed a couple of new features to Basecamp. One was long overdue (email notifications on Writeboards), and the other is a sign of things to come (working with Milestones on the Dashboard).

Milestones

When you log into Basecamp you are dropped onto the Dashboard. The Dashboard is information rich but functionally poor. There’s a lot to look at but not a lot to do. We want to change that.

The first thing we wanted to tackle was milestones. Milestones show up in a few places on the Dashboard, but mostly you’ll see them right at the top of the screen. They are either overdue or they’re due in the next 14 days.

Prior to this update, if you wanted to change the date or check off a milestone you had to click on the milestone. Then you’d be taken deep into the project so you could do your thing. That’s fine if you only have one thing to do, but if you want to complete a few milestones or move a couple back because the schedule changed it was a hassle. You had to move back and forth between project and Dashboard repeatedly. It was click consuming and frustrating.

No longer. Watch the video to see how we solved this problem:


This is the first step to “flattening” Basecamp. We want to bring more functionality to the Dashboard so you don’t have to click deep into a project to take care of common tasks. We’re exploring more ways to implement this technique in more places.

Writeboards

Email notifications are a big part of Basecamp. Every time someone posts a message or comment or uploads a file or creates a to-do, they have the option to notify other people on the project via email. Basecamp sends out hundreds of thousands of these notification emails every day.

But there was a weak spot. A dusty little corner where email notifications were nowhere to be found. Writeboards.

It’s a long story, but let’s talk about the ending: Now you can now let people know that you’ve added a new comment or made a revision to a Writeboard. This works in both Basecamp and Backpack (since they both integrate with Writeboards).

We hope you like the new stuff

Thanks for your continued support. The new milestone quick window stuff has been very well received so far. We ironed out a few small bugs on day one, but now we’re full speed ahead.

We look forward to announcing more new features and improvements in the coming weeks.