We just put up a couple of tour videos for Staction. The beta is going quite well, and we’re starting to expand the number of invites to test load on the servers. Please let us know if you want to participate by signing up for the Staction email newsletter.

We’re starting to take beta signups for Staction today. Visit http://staction.com and signup for the newsletter for a chance to participate in the private beta. Thanks to everyone in advance.

In the previous post a commenter, Kel, asked if Staction was a replacement for Backpack; it’s not. In fact, Staction isn’t even a replacement for Basecamp in a lot of respects. In our opinion Backpack, and Basecamp are perfect in their own ways. They’re simple, and easy. They’re sturdy, and do their job well. But if you work like us, Basecamp feels a bit tedious.

If you work with one window open to Campfire/IM, and one window open to your PM app, while emails from team members trickle into your inbox, -you have the problem we had. There was a bit of a crisis of communication. In a group, there are 3 basic types of communication:

• Interruptive, fast paced communication that stops other work from happening. Like Campfire, or IM.
• Discretionary communication that happens when you have time. email, or messages within an app.
• Historical documentation. Information that is recorded, but not looked at unless needed by an individual.

So as you’re working, you have to constantly ask: “Where should I put this information?” Should I email it? Is it urgent? Is it something I can just stick in the project messages? Would it be better somewhere else?

What would be nice is to naturally evolve conversations like they happen in real life. You yell over the cubicle for the file you need. Your coworker responds. It’s fast. It’s succinct. Better yet, it would be great if that information was contextually useful, and searchable.

Staction is a little bit project management, it’s a bit of IM, it’s a little bit of Twitter. It’s all of these things, and we’re thinking of it as a new class of app. People management, – not project management.

We’ve used a lot of project management (PM) apps over the years, and one thing has consistently been true. They’re slow.

All of those things that they do to make them user friendly in the beginning eventually get in the way of you doing your work. It’s as if they don’t trust us to have information density on a screen. From the homepage of the most popular web based PM app on the market you’re:

• 5 screens away from creating a todo.
• 3 screens away from uploading a file.
• 3 screens away from posting a message.
• 5 form fields away from saying “Yeah, -great idea!”

If any of this strikes you as weird, we think we’ll have something interesting to show you soon.

We’ll be inviting a few select people to our private beta of Staction in the next few weeks. If things go well, we’ll broaden the net. We’ll be setting up a site soon to start collecting emails for the first round of beta testers. We’ll let you know when it’s on…

We’re currently building our second app with a contextual sidebar. In modern web apps, the sidebar is an important tool. While in commercial websites the sidebar is mostly about auxiliary navigation, in web apps, it’s about relevant tools. As our industry gets smarted about involving ajax in our applications to avoid page loads, it makes sense that the sidebar would change form dynamically as well.

We typically divide sidebar tasks between input/review. The sidebar has one function when first loading the page, and surveying what it has to say, and another when the content is being edited.

Even better, the contextual sidebar can have the ability to learn about what you’re doing as you do it. As you drop in and out of different roles, the sidebar can get better at making it’s usefulness accessible. So “contextual” starts to mean not just “what” you’re doing, but “when” you’re doing it.

We can’t tell you that every app we ever build will have a contextual sidebar, but it’s tough to imagine a scenario where it’s not a useful technique.

One of the first times it occurred to us to build this new app is when we were discussing the types of information people swap in groups. It might seem strange, but there are actually very few types. Because of this, project management apps on the market today differ more in how they look than how they work.

All of the PM apps try to give some context to bits of information that somehow relate to some relevant category, -usually a project. In most cases, each bit of information is categorized, and located with bits of information similar to it. Like a to-do on a page with a bunch of other to-do’s. But what is a to-do?

That’s maybe the question that started us on the line of thinking we’re currently chasing after. Every bit of information that other PM apps make you hop from page to page to see are identical, except the context.

• A to-do is a bit of text with a toggle for completeness.
• A time entry is a bit of text with a quantity associated.
• A message is just a bit of text.
• A file is a bit of text with a file associated.

The rest is just context, or meta information. We realize that small discovery isn’t really rocket science, but it led us down an interesting path. What if we make the bit of text the focus, and the rest secondary.

While other apps force you to keep switching context by moving from page to page, our app pretty much disposes of context in a physical page concept… In fact, our new app pretty much does away with multiple pages all-together. Chronology is the context, and the rest is just meta info that describes a bit of text and it’s relation to workflow as a whole.

It sounds weird maybe at first. Things that are new always sound a bit weird at first. Despite it sounding weird, we think you’ll get it when you see it. So far, we’ve found that:

• We’re more in touch
• We use less email
• We enter our time more diligently
• We’re not missing waiting on new pages to reload in our old PM app.

We’re really excited to show you all the hard work we’ve been doing. We think you will like it.

We’re really enjoying using our new app. Still a lot of loose ends, but it’s feeling good… It’s nice that it’s finally to a point where we can use our app to finish our app… Funny…

What’s great about apps like Twitter is how they allow conversations to spring up naturally. Chat applications require a certain amount of dedicated concentration. Twitter lets you answer when you have time. It’s a small thing, bit it’s powerful. We’ve been thinking a lot about productive workplace communication. Thinking about ways to let people get information out while still getting work done.

There’s a real gap we’re trying to fill. There are great chat apps that do a crap job of integrating to workflow. There are great management apps that do a crap job of focusing on communication.

We think there’s a sweet spot right in the middle… Not project management, – people management.

Not literally of course, – but our app is starting to feel like home. We’ve been “living” in the new version for a few days now, and thankfully we’re settling in nicely. If you read our previous article, you know that wasn’t the initial reaction to the last version.

So as we continue working on a functional version for beta testing, what have we learned? Nothing new really, it’s just always unfortunate when it happens. Measure twice; cut once, move fast, be lightweight, check yourself, be specific… admit failures. The last one is the hardest. it’s better to have a bruised ego than a bad product. The quicker you can put yourself in the position to make the decisions, the better, -after that just trust your instincts.

We’re looking forward to getting this one out in the wild. Hopefully other people will find this new app as comfortable as we’re starting to.