A few weeks ago we gave everyone a peek at in/out, our internal app for keeping track of who’s doing what and what everyone’s recently completed.
We mentioned that we were considering building it into Backpack. Today we’re pleased to announce that the Journal is now part of Backpack. Just log into your Backpack account and click the Journal tab. The Journal is available on all plans—from free to Max.
The Journal eliminates the need to constantly ask each other “What are you working on right now?” and “What did you do today?”
Watch a video
A full-size video is also available.RSS and an API too
As part of the Journal launch, we’ve updated the Backpack API to include journal entries and status listings. We’re excited to see what people build with the journal API.
The Journal also has its own RSS feed so you can keep up to date on what people are doing without having to log into Backpack.
We hope you find the Journal useful
The Backpack Journal has become an integral part of our work day. We’re checking it all the time to see what everyone is working on and what’s been finished. We don’t have to bother each other to find out what everyone is up to. It’s a huge interruption saver (and we know how interruption is the enemy of productivity).
Special thanks to Jamis for prepping the Journal for launch and documenting the API at the last minute.
Aaron B.
on 21 May 08I really think this is a great feature. I just wish it was in Campfire and/or Basecamp.
Jason DiMambro
on 21 May 08Brilliant! It’s Twitter for business, only it’s up, available and stable. And I bet it’s built on RoR too! :-)
Thanks 37signals!
Chris
on 21 May 08I agree with Aaron …. Backpack goes unused by us, but we are in Basecamp all day long.
We use todo lists in BC to do a similar thing, and they get out of date quickly as people move on to other things … and since todos dont have a due date (grrr) or timestamp, it doesnt tell me how long its been since they were paying attention.
Nice work, tho.
Josh Williams
on 21 May 08Love it. We’ll start using it immediately. Backpack is pretty much critical to our day-to-day ops now.
davidconnell
on 21 May 08I want to third the comments from Aaron and Chris. This is something that should be part of Basecamp. Overall I’m quite confused by 37signals ability to develop features fro BackPack, but not Basecamp.
We currently use Basecamp for project management, but are seriously considering switching to a competitor because Basecamp lacks what I would think is some pretty simple funtionality, namely the inabiity to color-code milestones based on the project their assigned to or the “company” working on them, and the inability to schedule meetings directly in Basecamp. The calendar in Backpack is so rubust, why can’t we have a similar solution in Basecamp.
OK, so this is a bit off-topic, but I wanted to get it off my chest, with the hopes that 37signals will consider it.
Simmy
on 21 May 08Like Josh said. Love it. I’d love to see some sort of tie-in to Campfire as that’s where our team spends the entire day (for the most part).
Dave C.
on 21 May 08Add me to that list. This seems like the perfect app for Basecamp. I’d love to use it, but I don’t have the need to run both Basecamp and Backpack.
Joel
on 21 May 08Another vote for adding it to Basecamp!
Echo Man
on 21 May 08I think this would be good in Basecamp, too.
Hasan Luongo
on 21 May 08pretty clear feedback from customers that they want this in basecamp – whats the response/reply/thinking from 37
sw0rdfish
on 21 May 08To me they obviously want to get the business world to use Backpack as well… it’s a way to get a few more business users to pay for backpack… Am I disappointed, sure… but then again I understand that a company needs to make money, and this is a great hook to get people so sign up for Backpack.
I guess the gamble they’re taking is that more people will join Backpack for this feature, then will leave Basecamp… To be fair, you’re still getting the same thing for Basecamp that you were already getting and paying for. So if it was a good idea and tool for your business before Journal, it should still be.
Thomas Mango
on 21 May 08We would love this in Basecamp as well!
Ian
on 21 May 08This is a great feature for shared pages, even on my single-user account. I used to keep a divider at the bottom of the page with separate notes for each update, but now this will be much easier to maintain. Thanks for a great feature.
Adrian Hon
on 21 May 08Count this as another vote for putting this in Basecamp!
Moseley
on 21 May 08Dig the journaling feature, congrats and nice work. We absolultely love Highrise and Basecamp, but would love to see – and we would get more use out of – a migration of the Backpack calendar feature to Basecamp. Ditto the journaling feature.
IanS
on 21 May 08TwitterPack!
Brian Bailey
on 21 May 08I’m curious how you guys balance the use of this with the use of Campfire? A lot of our status updates are in Campfire right now and the Journal feature seems like a better fit, but now we’re checking two places for the latest.
Thanks for another terrific addition to Backpack!
JF
on 21 May 08Brian: We used to drop stuff like this into Campfire, but it quickly got lost among the thousands of other chat lines we post every day.
So the Journal keeps it all in one place on one page. You don’t have to wade through a bunch of other things to see what someone is up to. Just look at the Journal page.
Keith
on 21 May 08I wish this feature had been here like 6 months ago when my team was deciding on team “task” management software. I cannot wait to demo this so we can include Backpack in the next round of task management tools! Great addition!
Paul Lloyd
on 21 May 08I note that the Journal uses Helvetica, whilst the rest of the product uses Lucida Grande. I actually prefer Helvetica, but was interested in finding out why the change in typeface here.
JF
on 21 May 08Paul: No good reason. We used Helvetica in in/out. When we copied the styles over we just kept it as is.
Josh Williams
on 21 May 08JF: Tailing on Brian’s point, we actually created a second Campfire room purely for in/out type updates so they wouldn’t get lost amongst general chatter.
But yeah, it’ll be an interesting experiment for us to determine where it makes the most sense for us to log these sorts of things as both CF an BP are significant parts of our workflow.
Israel Vasquez
on 21 May 08my take on the backpack vs basecamp thing is this:
basecamp is for managing client projects and see it as a crm
backpack is for internal intranet, i.e for me and my team
At least thats how i use both, now with the journal feature.. it jsut made backpack 3 times more usable. let me expain, I run and manage a small web development co. its only 3 of us.. but we all work from different locations, and one of us does consulting for another company also so he’s not full time with us. I use backpack to plan overall projects for the co., projects i’m working on & projects for the other guys.
with the status feature, i’ll now be able to know what everyone else is working on and won’t bother to interrupt with email or im to assing more stuff to them or to find out what they’re on. as for the guy thats not full time.. he just puts a status “not @red4” when not working on our projects and i know he’s working on his consulting work and i don’t interrupt with our projects or minor stuff that can wait. SWEET!!
Rahul
on 21 May 08This sounds very useful and flexible; I still wonder that the need for a centralised “at a glance” dashboard that can encompass multiple instances of multiple 37s products don’t exist.
iow one may belong to a few basecamp and backpack instances, as well as a high-rise instance, at work, have a BC and BP for home use (w/ one’s family) and given OpenID integration, they all function as one app – just one that interoperates poorly.
I’m not so worried about data moving between them; if topics need to have data shared, they should be in the same account silo. My concern is that without a central dashboard, the summary windows of each account have to be checked seperately, and information is likely to get missed at this is unlikely to be done very frequently.
The entire concept behind 37S apps is that passive data presence is better than active data retrieval – thus the new journal section rather than calling around asking people what is going on.
The unifying dashboard is only another step down that road.
-RS
Anonymous Coward
on 21 May 08Hmm. Interesting. We use basecamp for internal and client facing stuff here – never thought about separating the two.
Bobby
on 21 May 08Us too – basecamp for both and no backpack.
Israel Vasquez
on 21 May 08@anonymous coward -
i’m certain basecamp can be used for internal, but if you ask me its easier using backpack, it feels more lightweight and makes for easier planning
Anonymous Coward
on 21 May 08Hmm. We’ll have to give backpack a try.
Israel Vasquez
on 21 May 08oh did i mention we’re located in Belize – tropical paradise! we can practically work from any location we choose, the islands one day, or inland at our mountain getaway or from the city office .. backpack keeps us all organized and going!
Sean Martin
on 21 May 08Everyone on our small team has already fallen in love the the ‘Twitter-like’ status on the journal page. Personally, I’ve been wanting a nice way to keep track of what’s been done and when. This will do it!
We had tried using Basecamp internally, but Backpack just works much better for our team.
John
on 21 May 08This is fantastic. Not only great for the team status updates, but it also gives me a quick way to log all the things I’ve worked on for my own records. Also nice for those of us corporate slaves that have to fill out weekly status reports!
Great stuff guys, keep it up.
Deano
on 21 May 08Lovely feature. Nicely done. And the Highrise bulk-tagging is neat as well.
If I may sneak in a feature request here, might I suggest a Tags link next to Journal would look rather good? Better than clicking All Pages which isn’t an obvious route to some people.
Deano
on 21 May 08Oh and yes this is our very own twitter isn’t it? I started using twitter to take quick notes when doing detailed work that generates lots of queries. If this functions like that in any way, I’m even more pleased.
Chad
on 21 May 08Why does everyone think this belongs in Basecamp?
Your status can be project agnostic. Backpack is more of a commons area where you discuss your work in general. That is where Journal belongs.
Jim
on 21 May 08it still says “Add your first entry” after I’ve added 2
James
on 21 May 08@Jason Would it be beneficial to add a “finished” button instead of having to retype “finished” and the task?
Lazlo
on 21 May 08Features belong where they’ll be used. If your folks spend all day in Basecamp and don’t have any real use for any of the other features in Backpack, then you want Journal in Basecamp. The feature is just as useful in a project management context as an “intranet” context.
The “but that’s not what Product X is FOR!” attitude is going to cause more and more friction as features are added. If 37signals doesn’t want to go down the road towards a “features a la carte” architecture/business model (understandable, really), then functions that are useful in multiple contexts should be made available in multiple applications: Basecamp should support Backpack-style calendars, Backpack should have the same Campfire integration as Basecamp, etc. Different orgs will use the features in different ways—don’t restrict them to one “right” way without good reason.
Chriztian Steinmeier
on 21 May 08Thanks guys – brilliant surprise!
Oh, and BTW: I can not for the life of me figure out why people (i.e., readers here) start whining about what your products do and don’t do, before they’d had a couple of days worth of use…
Rich
on 21 May 08Great, but it looks like it is out of place with all of the styles in Helvetica. Bring back Lucida Grande…
Peter Cooper
on 21 May 08When I read this, first thing I thought was.. Backpack? That makes no sense. It’s more a Basecamp thing (with the multi-user angle). Thankfully this stream of comments proves I’m not as crazy as I thought I was :)
That out of the way, the Helvetica is great! Down with Lucida.
Wannes
on 21 May 08My header says ‘your journal’, no status, is that because I’m on the solo-plan?
JF
on 21 May 08Wannes: Yes, you don’t have a status if you are the only user. The status is to let other people know what you are doing. If there are no other people then you don’t need a status. If you upgrade your account to multiuser, and other people are using the Journal with you, you’ll see Status.
ML
on 21 May 08I love watching backpack go from “simple keep-it-together place to stash things” to “anything-and-everything-including-the-kitchen-sink frankenapp”
RO
on 21 May 08Jason DiMambro: apparently the secret to stability and scalability is a private service with way fewer users :)
This is a really cool feature though. My firm uses something very similar, though it also tracks hours for billing purposes.
SO
on 21 May 08A few things I was hoping to see with this tool:
- Another text field for each entry for an explanation of what was accomplished, why something didn’t get done, or other concise details.
- A radio button or check box to quickly show something was completed.
- Segregations by day, with the option to move incomplete entries forward so every day had its own in/out.
Apparently I misread your initial description of in/out and didn’t realize you were describing a private Twitter.
I’m not complaining. This could be useful as well, and I was already paying for backpack without this feature and appreciate the addition.
wilco
on 22 May 08Hm, we love this thing, but we want it in Basecamp!
Our team is getting more and confused, asking ourselfes if we got on the good train or the bad one. All the things we asked for Basecamp, none of them we have seen coming. Seems that —Our flagship product!- (Basecamp) is not anymore 37 signals flagship product. Lots of new stuff gets in to highrise and backpack, those are the flagships now. What to do, al our data is in Basecamp, hell of a job to get that into Backpack.
JF
on 22 May 08Wilco, Basecamp remains our flagship product. It does the most, it has the most users, generates the most revenue, demands the majority of our time and resources, and it continues to be our main focus.
We’ve put more work into Basecamp than any other product we’ve ever developed. And we continue to work on it and improve it in a variety of ways. Some major, some more subtle. Lots of stuff behind the scenes to increase performance and reliability and general workflow. Those types of improvements aren’t as sexy as a new feature like the Journal, but they are no less important. A lot of software development is invisible on the front end, but critical on the back end.
But we also have other popular products (all younger than Basecamp) to continue to improve. We have lots of customers who use our other products that don’t use Basecamp. So we continue to develop and improve Backpack and Highrise so they can grow up and be as great as Basecamp.
wilco
on 22 May 08Ok, thanks JF,
There are a lot requests for new features for basecamp. I know you can’t say much about new features, but my team hopes we w’ll get some of them in the next months. Then it feels for us as a flagship again. Most important quesion now is if 37 signals is considering to give Basecamp a journal to. Because this feature is essential for us. Iff it doesn’t get to basecamp, we have to move al the data to Backpack and probable quit Basecamp or find another solution.
Wilco
Rich
on 22 May 08Just out of interest how does the journal treat items that are say a week, month or year old? Are old entries removed, or kept on the system to view? Thanks.
JF
on 22 May 08Rich: The Journal hangs on to all of them, but in this initial version it only shows the last 100 journal entries.
Rich
on 22 May 08Great!
Don Schenck
on 22 May 08Before everyone jumps on the “I want this in Basecamp” wagon, please: EMBRACE constraints and let them work for you.
Be creative; You’ll be amazed at what you can come up with.
Jed Sundwall
on 22 May 08Please, someone hook Quicksilver into this. Please!
Matt Radel
on 22 May 08Great, great feature…really swell idea. My only critique is that the aggregate list is VERY loud. I’d like to see a bit more visual hierarchy in the list, like the older posts get gradually smaller, or dimmed out or something. The web interface for Twitter suffers from the same problem, IMHO.
Great stuff though. Keep it up!
geebeewa
on 23 May 08Now if only you guys would work on something we educators could use to put training courses online and enrol/manage students without the grief associated with the available apps… can I dare to dream? After what you’ve achieved with your project management and wiki stuff, mayyyyyyybe I can!?
J
on 23 May 08like the older posts get gradually smaller, or dimmed out or something.
Older posts are further down on the page. The latest stuff is at the top. That’s all that’s necessary. Visual tricks beyond that actually add more noise to the page and make it difficult to read older entries.
RF
on 23 May 08Would have amused me if the last line of the video were “Now, where to get lunch?” or something like that. (Not that the current ending was not itself amusing.)
Corinne
on 23 May 08I use backpack for keeping track of my day-to-day activities, so I know what I’ve done and I have to do. The journal would be a great addition to that, but what would be absolutely superb, would be if I could link it to my calendar, along with everything else I’ve got in there. If I could open up my calendar and see what activity I did on that day, what lists and notes and pages were associated with it, that would be great.
Backpack just seems to be rapidly becoming a series of useful, but static pages, whereas with more interlinking they could be much more useful.
JF
on 23 May 08Neat idea, Corinne, but most journals are packed with 10+ things a day. The calendar would be a huge cluttered mess real fast.
Joost Schuur
on 24 May 08Coming from Twitter, it took me a second to understand the difference between status and entries. Unlike Twitter’s chronological list of entries, here the status doesn’t automatically become an entry when you post a new status.
I can understand why you did this. Otherwise, entries would often come in pairs: ‘Started this/finished this’. I don’t think the video made this entirely obvious though.
Great feature though! Makes me wish my department at work used a system like this.
Maxime Brusse
on 24 May 08What would be nice is to have an iPhone app which let’s you add entries to the journal easily without having to go on the backpack page.
Brian
on 26 May 08I wrote a little OS X dashboard widget for writing to the status and journal (no read). You can find it at http://roobasoft.com/blog/2008/05/26/backpack-journal-dashboard-widget/
Steve Erickson
on 27 May 08I’m liking the new journal feature. Although, I was curious, how do you guys track the “in” portion of your lists? In other words, when you explained the feature there was a list of things that you wanted to accomplish for the day and then the list of things which you actually accomplished. I see how the journal handles the actual list, what about the initial list?
Pablo
on 27 May 08Shame on you! This is what you call innovation?? It is Twitter!!!
This discussion is closed.