Want to know when someone left a comment on your board? Now you can!
With each comment you now see a name, data, and time directly embedded with the comment!
Of course, you can still see a summary of activities by date in the timeline if you just want an overview.
Did you know that your project folders are color coded based on your access? If you have access to the whole project, the folder will be blue. When you open the project, you will see all the participants of that project.
If you have access to some boards in a project, but not the entire project, you will see a gray folder. If you only have access to a few boards in the project, you will see the project owner instead of the list of participants when you log in. Then you can request access to the project from that person.
It is important to add collaborators to projects, not just to boards, as it gives your collaborators additional capabilities. For instance, I must be a project member to move any boards I have created into a project.
Your website has become the central and most important place for your company’s voice to be shared with the world! So if you only have one place and one chance to say everything to everyone, how do you decide what to say?
In my experience, trying to limit your marketing message requires a few things:
1) A strong team of collaborators to pinpoint exactly what is at the core of your intended message. Many times we want to make sure that we cover all aspects or angles of our message that we lose the core meaning.
2) To be flexible – your website is like a living breathing organism which should evolve. Even if you have just finished a polished new version, be open to new ideas and opportunities.
3) A patient designer/developer to implement all of these changes ;)
So how can Conceptboard help?
Conceptboard provides a central place to manage all the moving pieces of the design process.
Need more reasons to adopt collaborative website design? Check out some other articles discussing the benefits of collaborative design:
http://webdesignledger.com/tips/the-benefits-of-collaborative-web-design
http://www.dezignmatterz.com/why-collaborative-website-design-team-deliver-better-results/
Importing a Microsoft Office Document has gotten better within Conceptboard!
The functionality to import documents was there before, but users may have had difficulty maintaining the desired format during import. Therefore, we have implemented a new mechanism for the conversion of office documents. This means:
Import a office document to a board today and see the changes for yourself!
Melissa
It’s now possible to add multiple people as an “Administrator” of an account! Access the team page to view all of your team members and then select the desired access type from the drop down menu.
Reminder: What can an Administrator do?
Melissa
We are very excited to share a new feature that will have a big impact on your board management!
Ideas and content you share on a board can grow over time. Then, instead of one big idea – you have now developed multiple ideas that each deserve their own board so they can grow and expand on their own. Now you can copy and paste the content from one board to another board! Woo hoo!
Now you can easily separate a large board into smaller and more manageable boards. Happy Boarding!
Melissa
Hello Conceptboarders! (Is it okay if I call you Conceptboarders?),
We have many new things (including ME!) to tell you about!
If you ever want to check up on our server performance, you can see real-time information on our response time and uptime by going to our Service Details page. The link to the Service Status is accessible via a link in the footer of the Conceptboard website.
Another way to be notified about performance is via Twitter. If anything unusual happens, we will be posting there. To stay in the loop, follow us on Twitter @ ConceptboardApp.
Melissa
Dear Conceptboard community;
We have great news! Conceptboard is happy to announce that Melissa Kilbourne has joined our team. Melissa was formerly a Senior Marketing Analyst for American Express in New York. Here at Conceptboard, Melissa will lead marketing and public relations.
Melissa brings her extensive experience in business to business marketing and knowledge of the US market to the team here at Conceptboard. She will help us to work even more closely with all our customers to improve their processes when working in teams.
Before working for us, Melissa held various positions in marketing and customer acquisition at American Express OPEN. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.
Melissa! The entire team welcomes you!
Holger
Dear Conceptboard user,
so we made it happen! We hope all our regular users got familiar with the brand new Conceptboard and love the new features. For all who didn’t had the time to discover the full range of new possibilities, catch a glimpse to the detailled information of the new features.
The first, and most obvious, change is that we reworked the look of Conceptboard entirely. This reflects the feedback that we received from you, our users. We learned that Conceptboard is a part of your workflow and should support your processes better than it did in the past so many of you told us that you want us to shift our focus to a more business oriented approach. This was our guideline when we worked on the release of this first major upgrade of Conceptboard in 2013.
So what is new?
Timeline inside the board: The idea of the timeline feature is to give you a better overview on your project. The most important updates are bundled together to give you a simple view of the current status and latest changes. If a status on an object is set to open or critical, an orange or red bullet will appear in the timeline. This is a major step for controlling your projects, as you now have a consolidated look on all open or critical tasks that can be identified quickly and easily. As soon as something new is added to the board or a status is changed, the timeline will reflect this.
Drag and Drop for pictures: The process of adding pictures to a board became much easier. Now you can simply drag a picture from an HTML website and drop it on the board. You are no longer required to use a screenshot tool or store the picture on your computer before adding it to the board. Watch our video.
Sticky Notes: Put a note on a board and add as much text into it as you like. We also reworked our handling of text, e.g. if you want to add a linefeed, just press “Return” as you know it from your word processor.
Eraser for deleting objects. Simply select the eraser tool and delete objects from your board with one click.
New User Interface for the Conference Mode: While the functions for Live-Locations, Videoconferencing and Moderator were hidden in a submenu untill now, in the new version they are easily accessible at the bottom of the user interface. Also the Chat mode got much simpler.
New welcome-dialog for your clients: Makes working together with your customers easier. No more barriers to overcome when working with them on your boards.
Redesigned annotation tool with unique user identifier: Participants can now be easily identified, even if they have the same initials. The full name is displayed next to their initials.
New annotation mode: When creating new comments, the reply button is always displayed below the annotation. In addition, the task status is visible, being located on the right top corner of the annotation. If you want to change the status of the object, just click on the 
mark and the fly out menu opens.
Redesigned tool selection: From now on you will not have to select a tool over and over again, if you want to do the same thing. A tool and its settings like e.g. colour and line style stays selected after you finished working with it on one object. This will make working with Conceptboard much smoother.
More design options for creating text objects: What is new? Now text-color, -style, -size and -alignment can be set before creating the object, eliminating redundant setup for similar objects. This offers you a lot more flexibilty in desgining text objects. In addition it gets easier since you can create similar objects with one setting.
Editing existing objects is much easier with more new options: You can change the width of lines, add arrows to the end or change the line style. All of these features are now accessible through the new toolbar, which is included on the top margin of the conceptboard user interface. This function also works simultaniously on multiple objects, if you selected them together.
Often used functions like group and ungroup, duplicate, bring-to-front and bring-to-back can now be accessed much easier than before. We removed them from the context menu and put them to the toolbar on the top margin of your browser window. There is still a limitation that drawn objects cannot be placed in front of texts and annotations. As a workaround for this you can set the colour of the object to “transparent” , than you can also work with the highlighter on it.
Improved help function with visible tips: An explanation of tools can now be accessed through the help dialog. Several functions were even not documented in the past. E.g. how to switch of the automatic align function or how to create straight lines. Now these explanations can be found dirctly at the tools. Other things, like “panning” by pressed space bar, are explained in the short-cut help dialog
How to mark text in a text box and copy it? Use the “select” mode by clicking on 
and select your text object or click on “edit” in the right corner of your annotation, text bubble or headline. Than the cursor changes over the text and you can mark text and copy it. If the object is not selected, the select curser can be used for moving around objects on your board and arrange them.
We would love to hear from you and are looking forward to your feedback.
Thank you for sharing our vision of a collaborative work environment, and we hope that you will also support us in the future.
Holger
Conceptboard was already great, but there is nothing that could not be done better ;) We reworked the service, we redesigned the look and we implemented a bunch of new features. Everything to make collaboration easier for you, for your team and for your customers.
So what are the details? Have a look at the screenshot below – if your are familiar with Conceptboard you should be able to recognize all elements you’ve used until now, plus some nice new ones that I would like to talk about next.
Let’s start with the board’s new header: It still contains Conceptboard’s tools as well as some meta and navigation elements. But as it’s your content’s frame, we tried to make it as unintrusive as possible. Nevertheless it stays responsible for the board’s most important tasks: Providing the tools for YOUR WORK and giving others the possibility to WORK WITH YOU.
We’ve seen a lot of people work with Conceptboard, and we identified two major user types – or better: Two phases in which users work. One is the “creation phase”, when you work intensely with the tool, you import new work, you scribble, discuss and create diagrams. And the other one is the “annotation phase”, when it’s sometimes just enough time to join for a quick feedback round and for assigning new tasks. We’ve reflected that within a toolbar that also has two states. When you join a board it starts in a simple mode, showing the tools for a quick annotation and task assignment (see picture above). But with one click you switch to the full range of tools – an even broader set than ever before (see further below).
Second: Live collaboration rearranged. You’re probably aware of our chat feature, the live locations functionality, our video chat and the moderation mode? Yes? Then simply jump over to the next paragraph. If not, then unfortunately I have to admit that we hid some of those features quite well in the past. There was one button, and then a dialog, and then there was some magic and… however… now it’s super simple: You’ll find the chat, the participants’ list, the video streams and all other conferencing features within the footer (that you can always collapse, when you need the space).
Third detail, and that’s one of my favorites: Import from other websites via drag and drop. Sometimes it’s very nice to collect impressions from different sources in a single spot, think of a mood board for example. You’re probably already using our “screenshot applet” to import any type of content. But now it’s even easier – just drag an image from your website of choice into a Conceptboard. It’s visual collaboration and it’s instant (and yes, the video is muted ;)
Fourth: Iteration support with a new timeline! You’re working in an agile process? Then get curious about where we’re heading with Conceptboard! Great things are about to come…. and as a first step we’re releasing a board-internal timeline. For the first time you’ll have a temporary view on iterations within your board and an immediate overview on open or even critical tasks. It helps you keep track of all changes that occurred during your team working on the shared document. So now it is even easier to control tasks in your project.
And there’s even more: Sticky Notes as you know them from real life. For adding more text than just a short comment to your board. The frequently demanded Eraser Tool for deleting objects with one click. Easy line breaks for all text boxes. A surface that is more solid and prevents accidental changes while browsing the board (small hint: Use double-click to answer on comments in browse mode anyway – and by the way those hints are now displayed within the app, too). And a better interface for creating objects: Text types, sizes and alignments can be set before creating the object, so repeated setup for equally styled objects is prevented. Here’s an example of our toolbar when displayed during “creation phase”.
And finally, we rebuilt the welcome screen for your collaborators: Now it’s straight forward and easy. I hope you think the same of all I just presented to you. Our goal is to make your collaboration a breeze – so please try our new version and give us feedback! And stay tuned for the next things to come from us ;)
New version at your fingertips: http://conceptboard.com/home
Thanks for reading!
Daniel
