We’re pretty close now so it’s time to reveal the meat and potatoes of Highrise: People and Companies. Highrise is all about people. Who you (or your co-workers) talked to, what was said, and what needs to be done next for/with these people/companies.
People
Every contact in Highrise gets a page. You and your co-workers can add notes from calls, conversations, meetings, or any other historic information about this person to this page. You can also attach files, attach notes to cases (more on cases in another post), and set permissions on specific notes. It’s sort of like a weblog about each person you do business with.
In the sidebar of a contact page you’ll find any tasks related to that contact, the ability to add a new task about that contact, contact info, and an “about” section where you can post their bio, background, or anything else that might be relevant.
To add a new note for a contact just type it in the box at the top of the screen and click the “Add this note” button. Data entry is rocket fast with no barriers.
Companies
Like contacts, company pages allow you to enter notes about conversations you’ve had with a particular company.
For example, if you deal with different people at a company sometimes it may just be easier to enter the notes on the company page instead of making separate pages for each person. We’ve been doing this internally with ADP (our payroll company). Since we talk to a different person each time we call we’ve found it better to just enter the notes on ADP’s page. Of course how you do it is entirely up to you.
Company pages also serve another function: They’re aggregators. Company pages aggregate all the communication you (or your co-workers) have had with any contacts at that company. It’s a great way to see all communications with everyone at a specific company. Imagine being able to see all the communication your company has had with anyone at The New York Times or at Acme Widgets, etc.
The sidebar also shows any tasks related to that company, company contact information, and the people that are part of that company. A click takes you right to the contact page of anyone listed in the sidebar.
The Dashboard
The Dashboard is the screen that brings it all together. It’s the mother of all aggregators in Highrise. It shows the latest notes/files/emails/activity entered on any contact or company page. Of course you only see items you have permission to see, but it’s a fantastic way to feel the pulse of the communications in your company.
The Dashboard also shows you your tasks in the sidebar. You can create new people or new tasks from this screen as well. And a quick person search helps you jump to any contact’s page quickly.
Sign up to have a chance at a Golden Ticket
We’ve begun issuing “golden tickets.” Golden ticket holders will have access to sign-up for Highrise prior to the public launch. To sign up for a chance at a golden ticket, be sure to sign up for the Highrise announcement list.
Dan Boland
on 12 Mar 07Looks great.
A question—how is company contact information handled in the database? The reason I ask is that in our homegrown contact management system, companies don’t have contact information, only people do. We did it this way because companies can have multiple locations but people generally don’t. Just curious to hear your take on this.
Ismo Ruotsalainen
on 12 Mar 07Looks great!
Jeff
on 12 Mar 07Slick as usual! Question about the “even attach emails” feature listed: Is it possible to CC a Highrise person/page when emailing, similar to emailing to a page in Backpack? Or is the attach email function in Highrise a manual process? Just curious if I missed that explanation . Can’t wait to experiment with the new app.
Cool Highrise logo, by the way.
Eric
on 12 Mar 07Looks great. How do you get emails into the application and saved as notes? (“Attach emails too!” on tour-person.png) I’m assuming you forward/cc/bcc an email to the application by sending it to a defined email address e.g. [email protected] How exactly will that work?
I’m guessing that emailing the application is the mystery way to add contacts?
Yan Pritzker
on 12 Mar 07Looking very well thought out as expected. Keep up the good work guys!
Anthony Baker
on 12 Mar 07I second Jeff’s question about cc’ing Highrise or something similar. While the tool looks brilliant so far, part of the issue for me in using it on a regular basis will be its ability to integrate (or pass data) from other apps.
If I have to copy/paste email messages into the app, that’s not ideal. Similar with contacts—would be great to allow for bulk imports (at least) from Address Book, Outlook, or some standard file.
I’m already straddled between multiple apps as it stands for data - Outlook, Gmail, Address Book, Google Reader, etc. - given home and office use.
Frank
on 12 Mar 07Awesome! Well thought out and clean looking. Do you have the ability to automatically set tasks? For example, for keeping contacts fresh it is important for me to make sure I contact people once every 3 weeks. Is this possible?
Ian Silber
on 12 Mar 07Anybody else notice the 12 errors when opening the page on the dashboard screenshot? Thought that was kinda funny.
Looks awesome.
dan
on 12 Mar 07Will we be able to add custom fields (i.e. username or account#) to the User object?
JF
on 12 Mar 07Ian: The error, ha, yeah… I don’t have some of the javascript loaded on my local machine so it’s tossing out those errors.
BradM
on 12 Mar 07Dan: I don’t mean to speak for 37S but why not just use the TAG feature for custom fields. Example Tags: user2556, user2557
Kendall
on 12 Mar 07I’m also very interested in how Highrise might integrate with email. Apparently it’s very tightly integrated… but how?
Russ
on 12 Mar 07Release date? Projection of release date?
Hugo Romano
on 12 Mar 07When will you add highrise to the sidebar (37signals products section) of this blog?
Ryan Bergeman
on 12 Mar 07Maybe after it’s released? :?
Will
on 12 Mar 07This looks really beautiful and well thought out…one question though…How likely is it that you will actually have pictures of your contacts at other companies? It definitely makes the application a lot more interesting to look at; however, I suspect in practice it’s pretty rare to have something like that available.
Ed
on 12 Mar 07Can a contact belong to multiple companies?
Can you default standard company address information to all the of the associated contacts at that company? What if a company has multiple locations; can you choose from a list the address to default?
Adam
on 12 Mar 07Will you be able to see the activity list by date, with archives? I’d like to be able to see notes by date, and not just by person, so I can look up what I did on a specific date.
Will you be able to add tags to notes? To divide them up into meetings, emails, phone calls etc.?
Ryan
on 12 Mar 07Looks really nice. Nice job.
dan
on 12 Mar 07RE: BradM Tags dont work well in some cases, and I think this is one of them. Here’s the use case, from both sides:
Side #1—the contacts might also have logins on our website and in that case we want to have a few other bits of info display in HiRi, such as homepage URL or username. Looking through a list of tags isnt the most effective.
The other side - when importing data from HiRi into our system, we’d like to query against the username/id to sync with our internal system. (yes, we’ll probably maintain a mapping on our side of HiRi ID <> Internal ID, but for a new user it would be a good key to pass in.) Looking for a tag named “usernameIsXxxxx” or just the username is not the best solution.
Open to any and all thoughts…
Mau
on 12 Mar 07I’m with Kendall. Very interested to know more about integration with whatever email client I decide to use, or with…other stuff. Mobile phone maybe.
I use Plaxo right now. Why? Because it has a toolbar that I can add to my Thunderbird, or even Outlook and keep everything synced up.
Dave Rosen
on 12 Mar 07This almost looks like Highrise is an actual webmail system! That would be an even bigger revolution than I was expecting.
amix
on 12 Mar 07Impressive use of screen space. One can truly see that you guys have spent a lot of time thinking things through.
I also like the small details – like that a PDF document has a PDF icon.
JF
on 12 Mar 07This almost looks like Highrise is an actual webmail system! That would be an even bigger revolution than I was expecting.
Highrise is definitely not an email client. It plays well with email (more on this shortly), but it’s not an email client by any means.
Anonymous Coward
on 12 Mar 07Will: Regarding pictures for your contacts.
I’ve heard that the system will default to icons for SpongeBob or Patrick on contacts that don’t have their own picture. Your choice!
;)
Ian Waring
on 12 Mar 07It’s the email integration that’s killed me every time before (my Lotus Notes at works keeps all outgoing traffic in “sent”, so half my conversations are in one sizable, untagged bucket). I’d still love to try it out – and i’d be happy to pay from day 1…
Ian W.
Scott Blitstein
on 12 Mar 07and the anticipation grows…
Is it ready yet?
SB
jackson
on 12 Mar 07I agree with Ian. Email integration is absolutely key. I am hoping that somehow this will integrate with Google Apps for your Domain (we use GMail for business email).
Looking very, very good though. I can’t wait to give it a go.
Thanks!
Jakester
on 12 Mar 0737s – may be early for this, but I was wondering if you were thinking of making the app keyboard accessible. I could really see myself using Highrise a lot and would love to have quick access to things like the “search” text box and the “add a task” button.
Looks great…
Bob Monsour
on 13 Mar 07I second Ed’s question on whether a contact can belong to more than one “organization”. I’d rather see the word “organziation” than company; especially as non-profits, like schools, consider Highrise.
Here’s a few use case highlights (this is all real for me):
I work on the staff at a university. I also serve on a board of trustees at an independent K-8 school. I would like to have other board members be listed with their professional “company” contact info, yet I’d also like to have them belong to the “school board” as an “organization” and be able to get an aggregate view of them in that role. And while I would like to manage “company” contact information for companies that I have relationships with as part of my job (external affairs), I would also like to be able to have those contacts that are alumni of the university be aggregated as such when I need to.
In short, there are a lot of organizations interested in more than company-to-company kinds of relationships and I have high hopes for Highrise to handle some of these kinds of relationships.
I hope that makes sense and I’m very much looking forward to seeing Highrise in action; it definitely seems to scratch several itches that I have.
Regards, -Bob
alrasbi
on 13 Mar 07Just curious, is Highrise ready and and you are building the anticipation by these posts or you are actually putting the final touches on it ;)
JF
on 13 Mar 07Just curious, is Highrise ready and and you are building the anticipation by these posts or you are actually putting the final touches on it
Finishing touches. Nearly there now.
Colin Plamondon
on 13 Mar 07This is an absolutely PERFECT service for loan officers like myself, our entire business is maintaining a customer database and keeping track of the next action for each client. Add in the ability to add in notes and you truly have the absolute ideal solution for mortgage brokers. Can’t wait to get my hands on this.
Gareth
on 13 Mar 07This is looking great! Will there be an API so that third party applications can interact?
Matt
on 13 Mar 07It’s a real shame that Highrise is not going to be a fully fledged email client.
I am currently trying to find a good web based CRM with integrated web based Email… and struggling.
It’s surely not much to ask after all these years.
From my research I’ve come to the conclusion it’s going to be a combination of Salesroom + Talisma Email or Zimbra.
On a side note we currently trialing http://www.sproutit.com/mailroom
It’s an excellent application if your requirements are more Email based rather than CRM based (it works best in the latest version of Firefox IMO)
Carl
on 13 Mar 07While I like what I see of Highrise so far as it seems to take contact management to a new level, what everyone wants but no one seems to have done well yet is to create an all in one a) contact manager, b) email/webmail client system and c) communication center that does autoresponders, email newsletters, ecards, surveys etc. The company that gets those three right in a simple to use, well integrated system will need need a fleet of trucks to carry all their cash to the bank.
Richard Newton
on 13 Mar 07Good morning, I have been using outlook for my emails; how does highrise integrate with outlook? will I be able to synchronize the two? The reason for the latter is that I use a blackberry phone, and want to be able to access contact info from there as well. Or will I need to use the phone web browser to get contact info into my phone? (edge, unfortunately painfully slow). Thanks!
Matheus Paschoal
on 13 Mar 07Awesome!
Looking forward to use!..
Frank 'viperteq' Young
on 13 Mar 07@ Matt (above): For a great email and contact management app, you should try out the Joyent Connector.
Kevin
on 13 Mar 07What happens to the tab layout when there are more people than screen width?
robin
on 13 Mar 07A thought on email. In my company everyone works remotely from their own home. We don’t have a single email system and this causes problems. All my co-workers are using their own email programs to send marketing mails etc. It would be great if there’s some way of keeping track of the mails that each person has sent to one client. I can see how attaching an email from my own machine would allow Highrise to referance it – but what about viewing email that my co-workers have sent? For this reason, an email client integrated into HR might be the way forward…
P.S. Hurry up please!
Matt Carey
on 13 Mar 07Is there a way to see what other people in my team are doing? As ‘the boss’ I use the to-do list overview in basecamp to see what the other team members have on and are doing. Wondering if there is a way to see what tasks person x has done and has not done?
+1 for hurrying up and releasing it!
Ran Aroussi
on 13 Mar 07Release it already ! :)
JF
on 13 Mar 07This is an absolutely PERFECT service for loan officers like myself, our entire business is maintaining a customer database and keeping track of the next action for each client. Add in the ability to add in notes and you truly have the absolute ideal solution for mortgage brokers. Can’t wait to get my hands on this.
Definitely. There are a lot of companies, groups, organizations, salespeople, business just like you. Highrise is built for you.
Rick
on 13 Mar 07um… lori brinker is a babe.
Nuno Barreto
on 13 Mar 07Are you guys considering any sort of mobile access or synchronization, for that matter, with smartphones/pdas ?
A simple web page with some of the most used data would be very helpful for someone who’s on the street most of the time.
Also, do you plan to have some sort of migration/import tool to get data into Highrise from other systems ?
I’m using Salesforce.com Personal Edition (free) and would consider changing if the migration process is smooth.
Thanks.
Jean-Pierre
on 13 Mar 07I having waiting for this to come. And yes it is what we need or needed already for years. Perfect companion for Basecamp. The email functionality is of course the cherry on the cake. My hunch is when you mail your contact in gmail you add in bcc : [email protected], when you get a mail you send to the same address. Just like Backpack. And if it is done that way, I believe it is a simple and good way. Curious if my guess is right …...
Scott Robertson
on 13 Mar 07What about leads? Will there be a way for leads from our website to be input directly into highrise?
Greg Harris
on 13 Mar 07We’re very excited about this product. We have been spending weeks reviewing CRMs and they are all so complicated. As usual you guys have create a simple streamlined useful product.
Let’s get it released!
Nate
on 13 Mar 07I’d just like to chime in and say I’m incredibly excited about this. Bye bye stickies and legal pads :-)
Matt
on 14 Mar 07I’m curious about the use of the lock icon for items that are only visible to yourself. Given it’s prevalent use in desktop/web apps for things that cannot be edited, it strikes me as curiously un-intuitive – of course, I haven’t used the system and have no idea how it feels in context.
I was just curious if it was an intentional choice (since it seems like yours usually are) and if so, why?
Thanks so much for your ongoing willingness to discuss your process and explain your interfaces. Extremely helpful!
James
on 19 Mar 07Hi, what abilities will Highrise have for exporting contacts?
For example exporting a group of peoples email addresses or Vcards at once ( understanding that Highrise isn’t a webmail application itself )
Cheers
This discussion is closed.