Outlook add-in now available for beta-testing

Matchpeg now has Outlook integration available for customers to beta-test. This takes the form of an Outlook add-in which provides the following features:

• Your meetings in Matchpeg are automatically added to your Outlook calendar.
• You can also choose to have the minutes of meetings automatically filed against the Outlook appointment in PDF form.
• Actions from meetings are added to your Outlook task list.
• Workflow items assigned to you are also added to your task list.
• You can create meetings in Matchpeg from appointments in your Outlook calendar: in other words, schedule meetings in the usual way using Outlook/Exchange functionality, and then add the meeting to Matchpeg once the attendees are confirmed.

If you would like to try out the beta version of the add-in, please contact our support team.

(The add-in requires Outlook 2000 or later, and Windows 2000 or later.)

NEW feature - meeting organisers marking actions as complete

Meeting organisers are now allowed to mark action points as complete on a participant's behalf. The organiser opens the details of the action (e.g. by clicking on its link in the minutes), and can now mark the action as complete, or update the percentage-completeness, and add notes.

This change is mainly intended to help out PAs who were complaining to us that they just couldn't get their IT-phobic bosses to log into Matchpeg and update their actions themselves. They were getting stuck with actions which were left open on the system forever.

(However, we're about release the details of our Outlook add-in. No more need for the boss to log into Matchpeg. They just update a task in Outlook. Watch this space...)

NEW feature - pre-population of workflow items from meeting actions

We've improved the creation of workflow items from meeting actions (i.e. what happens when you open a meeting action and click on the "Create workflow item" link):

• The due date for the workflow item is copied over from the due date for the meeting action (provided that the action has a due date, and provided that the workflow definition asks for a due date).
• The start date of the action becomes the start date of the workflow item (again, where applicable).
• Provided that the text of the action is short enough, the text is used as the subject of the workflow item. Previously, the text was always put into the item's description.

NEW feature - improved minutes editing

We've made some changes to the agenda- and minutes-editing to make things more flexible, particularly when re-arranging agenda items which have been put forwards by other participants and automatically added to the agenda:

• Sub-items can now be moved from one top-level topic to another.
• A sub-item can be "promoted" to top-level.
• A top-level topic can be "demoted".

All these actions can be carried out using the new "move" button which is displayed alongside each topic.

There are also keyboard shortcuts for each of these actions: Ctrl+Alt+P promotes the current sub-topic to the top level; Ctrl+Alt+M followed by a number key moves or demotes the current topic into another top-level topic.

NEW feature - participant status when creating meetings

We've implemented a feature which a number of people had been asking for:

• You can set the status of each participant - present, absent, access to minutes only - when first creating a meeting.

When you tick someone on your user list to add them to the list of participants, a new drop-down box gets displayed next to their name. This lets you set the participant's status.

If you have "participants" who are only intended to receive the minutes, and aren't actually going to be present in the meeting, you no longer have to create the meeting and then edit the list of participants to change these people's status.

The Matchpeg Introducer scheme is now the Matchpeg Affiliate scheme

We've changed the name of our introducer affiliate scheme from Matchpeg Introducers to Matchpeg Affiliates. It turned out that users from outside the UK weren't familiar with the term "introducer", and too many people were missing the scheme's benefits because they never clicked on the link on the website.

The scheme itself remains entirely unchanged, and very simple:

• Earn on-going commission by referring colleagues and friends to Matchpeg, either by word-of-mouth or from links on your website or blog.

There are no charges for joining the scheme, and the people you refer don't suffer any financial penalty - quite the opposite, in fact, because we give an even more generous free trial to people who are referred than we do to people who come to the website cold.

You receive commission whenever your referrals spend money with us by buying pay-as-you-packs or paying subscriptions. Therefore, you don't just get a one-off payment; it's recurring revenue based on how valuable your contacts are to us.

NEW feature - bulk user creation from Outlook

We've added a new feature to the user administration area:

• Users of Microsoft Outlook can now download a small tool which automatically creates Matchpeg user accounts from contacts in Outlook.

The software can be downloaded from the existing bulk user-creation page. It's a simple wizard-based tool which works as follows:

1. You log into Matchpeg using your normal user name and password.
2. You let the software connect to Microsoft Outlook - this requires you to accept a standard Outlook security warning about automated access to your contacts.
3. You choose the contacts you want to create as users in Matchpeg.
4. You tell the tool to do its stuff.

The new user accounts are given individual random passwords which are sent out by e-mail.

(As is no doubt obvious, the tool is only for people who are users of (a) Microsoft Outlook, and therefore (b) Microsoft Windows.)