As a SaaS business we are releasing new versions of our software every 3-4 months. Having completed our weekly QA meeting today, I’m pleased to announce we have set a release date of Friday the 23rd of July for Workbooks CRM and Workbooks Business.

This release (in common with nearly all our releases) has several significant new areas of functionality, plus lots of minor improvements based on feedback from our customers and prospects.

The new areas of functionality include:

Email Dropbox

This allows our customers to automatically store emails sent from any email client in Workbooks. It's pretty simple to use, you just need to add a special address on the ‘cc’ or ‘bcc’ line of the email you are sending, and it will be automatically sent to Workbooks and stored against the relevant records. Alternatively, if you have received an email from a client and you want to store it in Workbooks, you just need to forward it to the drop box address. We are also developing a specific 'plug-in' for Microsoft Outlook which will also synchronise addresses and diary entries; this will be released later in the year. I really like the drop box functionality because it’s simple to use, and importantly it works from any email client. It’s especially useful for me as I’m increasingly using my iPad as my email client of choice.

Bulletins (also known as MOTD - Message of the day, not Match of the Day!)

This functionality allows us to communicate with users more effectively. It allows us to ‘pop-up’ useful information for first-time users and also to publish ‘hints & tips’ on a regular basis inside Workbooks, rather than people having to visit our knowledge base.

Summary Tab We've also added a ‘Summary Tab’ to the majority of records. In the case of People and Organisations this gives a consolidated view of all the Notes, Activities, Emails, Opportunities, Cases and Documents they have been involved in.

It’s a really simple way of quickly getting a picture of what a Person or Organisation has been up to.

As I mentioned, the new release goes live in a couple of weeks but we are always looking for customers to join our beta program, so if you're interested email us at beta@workbooks.com