November 10th, 2016
It’s been a while since we let you know about all of the work that we’ve been doing at Status Hero to give you the best possible tool for helping you manage your team by killing meetings, tracking daily goals, and resolving blocking issues.
Sorry about that. We’re going to do a better job at keeping you up-to-date with changes so that you get the most out of Status Hero.
So, without further ado, here are some of the best improvements that we’ve added over the last few months.
- #Tags
- @mentions
- Emoji
- Reactions
- Vacations/OOO
- Saving Draft Check-ins
- Slack Improvements
- Resending Check-in Reminders
- Email Report Enhancements
- Highlighting Check-ins
- Cisco Spark Integration
- Referral Program
#Tags
Want to stay organized or make it easy to drill in on specific work items? Tags are great for that. With tags, you can easily categorize and view your team’s check-ins on a specific project or area. Status Hero now comes with a set of default tags that can be customized in the team settings. When entering a check-in, the “#” symbol will auto-complete to the available tags, and check-in text with a #hashtag will be automatically linked. To view all updates for a specific tag, just click on one in a check-in or from the reports page. Definitely easier than trying to remember what a team member said at stand up last week.
@Mentions
Use @mentions to tag and call out team members in your check-ins. For example, to congratulate a team member, ask for clarification, or request help. Just like you would at stand up meeting, but virtually.
Configurable notifications are sent to the team member that is mentioned, so you don’t have to worry about reaching out through other means. When you type the @ symbol in a check-in input field (or comment field), an auto-complete option will pop up with the names of your teammates. (See the GIF above.)
Emoji
Love them or hate them, emoji are now built into most messaging tools, so we built them into Status Hero too. At Status Hero we now have hundreds available to use in your virtual standup check-ins and comments, thanks to the amazing emojione project. Just type “:” to start entering an emoji - we even have autofill to make things easy.
Reactions
With one tap or click, you can give a thumbs up, express confusion or offer congratulations. It’s quick way to asynchronously give praise, recognize progress or signal the need for more information without having to construct a comment or distract someone with a chat/tap-on-the-shoulder. Configurable notifications are sent to the check-in author every time someone reacts. Like comments, the notifications are delayed for a few moments just in case you reacted accidentally. A second tap will remove the reaction.
Vacation, Holidays, OOO
We’re making it even easier to unplug and avoid unnecessary emails while taking time off. We’ve added the capability to disable check-in prompts and other Status Hero notifications while you’re hanging on the beach, hitting the slopes, or doing whatever you like to do when you’re on vacation. Just go to your settings and click on the days where you’ll be unavailable.
Team admins can also setup dates–think holidays and offsites–for the whole team to skip check-ins.
Saving Draft Check-ins
We heard a lot of requests for the ability to check-in “in advance” and now we’ve made it easy. You can save your next check-in by hitting the “Your Status” menu item in the top navigation bar and then clicking on the “Next Check-in” button on the top right. You can fill in information there and save it as a “Draft” check-in. Draft check-ins will automatically publish 30 minutes after your check-in reminder time.
Slack Improvements
The ability to check in directly within Slack has consistently been the top request from our Slack users. Thanks to some updates in the Slack API, we now have a completely integrated check in experience that is fast, easy, and barely requires the use of a mouse. Check ins are as quick as responding to a direct message. (The early feedback has been super positive - thanks beta testers!)
We also released a change that should make your day a little less noisy. Now, when you check in, you will no longer be @mentioned in the #status room. We switched to use your name, so that you’ll get one less notification a day.
Finally, we made with some cosmetic changes to the broadcasted check-ins to make it easier for you and the team to scan through them in Slack.
Resending Check-in Reminders
Another frequent ask from our customers was to have the ability to resend check-in reminders, and we’re excited to say that we’ve made it super easy to do now. To resend a check-in reminder, just hit the “Resend Reminder” button that will appear for team members that have been reminded but still haven’t checked in. The new reminder will be sent over the same configured channel(s) as the original.
Email Report Enhancements
In addition to direct, “magic” links to team status reports, the report email now includes the full, formatted check-in list:
Highlighting Check-ins
We’ve made it quick and easy to highlight specific check-in types to quickly find out who’s blocked and who met their goals. Just just click on the gauges at the top of the Team Status page and the check-ins will be highlighted in green (goal completion) or red (blocked).
Cisco Spark Integration
Status Hero just released an integration with Cisco Spark, a new collaboration tool that allows teams to message, meet, or call from a single app. The integration works the same way as our Slack integration - the friendly @statushero bot will take care of checking in your team and collecting daily goals. Whenever someone on your team checks in, their update is neatly formatted and broadcast to the Team Status room in Spark. A check-in summary is also delivered to your Team Status room, along with the necessary links to drill down into individual goals and productivity metrics.
Referral Program
Referrals have always been a big part of our growth and success. We want to share that success with you for referring our product, and that is precisely what our affiliate program is designed to do.
We’ve kept it simple. Status Hero is a subscription service. If you refer an account, we’ll give you 10% of the revenue for the lifetime of that account, month-over-month (or year-over-year for annual subscriptions.) Yes, that means each month you’ll get 10%, as long as the referred customer pays for Status Hero.
Our program is administered by Refersion, and payments are distributed via PayPal. To get started, fill out the registration form and get your unique referral codes.
Whew!
That’s quite a bit. We have more features in the works, all focused on simplifying your job as a team manager and member. Thanks again for all of your valuable input.
Feedback welcome!
