Every milestone, todo, task and reminder on a single page

I’ve long wanted to see, on a single page, all the tasks required of me across the multiple Basecamp accounts and projects that I’m a part of. I’m thrilled to announce that now, any user of the 37signals products can do just this. And for good measure, you can see all your Highrise tasks and Backpack reminders on this page as well.

We’re calling the tool 37,000ft and you can check it out at signalkit.com.

Screencast

Take a look at how it works on this two minute screencast:

Why we made it

I use Basecamp on all my projects, and more and more I started getting invited to projects inside the Basecamp accounts of other folks as well. I noticed that jumping into the exact place I needed to be within the various projects/accounts was getting to be a bit more challenging. I also started noticing that I wasn’t going into my Highrise account as often as I should.

My todo list started looking something like this:

• Do work for ABC client
• Check SignalKit items
• Do Highrise tasks
• Etc.
  
  

Not terrible, but the solution I wanted was something that would simply list out all the tasks assigned to me across all my projects – regardless as to whether they were part of my account or the account of someone else. And, I also wanted anything I was supposed to do for my own business in the same context of everything else I was working on (Highrise tasks). I also have a few Backpack reminders so figured why not toss those in there as well.

The other thing is that I hear from people over and over again on projects that they really want one place they can go to and see everything they need to do. Will and TK were noticing the exact same things with their projects. So, we built this for ourselves, and the people we work with.

And I hope many of you find it useful too.

Defining version 1.0

It was a challenge to decide where to stop with version 1.0. Ultimately we decided to list out every task assigned to someone, and not to clutter their view with any projects that didn’t have todo items assigned to them in. There is no re-ordering, sorting, commenting, or anything else. We list out your action items, and link to the appropriate place in the 37signals product.

Where to next?

We’re going to see what kind of feedback we get, but in general, here’s the philosophy we’re going to follow: We have no interest in trying to duplicate anything that can be done inside the 37signals products. What this means is that adding the ability to comment on items for example is almost certain not to be included. Not because some people might not find that valuable, but because to do that right now, a user clicks on a link and they are taken right to a comment thread. It would be very difficult for us to make that more efficient.

Giving users the ability to sort their lists on the other hand, or see only things with a date attached to them, are very much under consideration. So if you have some feedback, please toss it in the comments, we’d love to hear what you think.

Sawdust

Will put a ton of work into this app. As a result of this integration, we’re now integrating with the APIs for all four products, and of course we’re hooked in with the 37signals ID. There will definitely be some open source goodies coming out of this for people looking to do things with the 37signals products. Stay tuned.

Enjoy it while it’s free – payment integration is next.

The immediate next step for us is going to be to address any key bugs that come up, and working on payment integration. We were actually going to do the payment integration right after Notifire 2.0 was launched, but we built 37,00ft first primarily because we wanted it very badly. This will be a paid product, but it’s free for now.

Big thanks for the positive comments so far

I sent an email out yesterday to everyone that already used Notifire, and the feedback from people has been fantastic. From emails with nothing more than “yaayyy!!!” to another person telling me they’re making this their homepage, the feedback has been really great.

This app was a long time coming, and I’m thrilled we can share it with you starting now. We hope you like it, and let us know what you think.