2008 was a very busy year at Riverock Technologies. Our sole mission during this entire year was to prepare for successfully launching OnePlace into the market. Every day was spent focusing on this goal, which we achieved back in September when we released OnePlace for general use, and officially opened the proverbial doors for business.

So, before we close the books on 2008 and turn our attention towards the year to come, we thought it would be fun to take one last look in the rear view mirror to see what happened to OnePlace during this past year.

January 2008

When the calendar rolled over to 2008, we had already been hard at work on OnePlace for seven months. In fact, not that long before this point, we had settled on the product name "OnePlace" after a fairly exhaustive search for the perfect name. One of the suggested names during that search that thankfully didn't make the cut was "RiverDo". We even own the domain for that one :-P.

During this time we were making plans for our public beta, which was targeted for sometime late first quarter or early second quarter of 2008.

February - April

This period was the march towards public beta. Most of this time was spent rounding out existing features, and tightening the screws on the product. During this time, we built in the ability for people to sign up to use OnePlace, and created the online brochure for OnePlace.

May - August

On May 15th, 2008, we reached a very significant milestone - the release of OnePlace into public beta. This meant anyone, anywhere could sign up and begin using a full-featured OnePlace for free.

During the beta period, we introduced a complete overhaul of the user interface of OnePlace. This major shift was predicated on lots of feedback we had been receiving from beta users, from folks we were demoing OnePlace to, and also from our own personal usage. We believe the usability and usefulness of OnePlace took a quantum leap forward with this change.

Here is what the old user interface design looked like:

And here's the current user interface design:

We also moved OnePlace off our office servers and into a cozy new home at our present hosting provider, Engine Yard. The move has been a positive one, as we've experienced no unscheduled downtime since the move.

Other major feature additions during this time included:

• Discussions
• Online Help
• Printing/Reports
• SSL Security
• Time Tracking
• Email Integration
• Task Exporting

September - December

On September 19th, another huge milestone was reached, when we officially launched OnePlace for general use. A lot of time was spent leading up to this point to make this happen, specially around things that are required to offer software as a service over the Internet, such as credit card processing, handling customer support, and user education.

During this time, we continued to push the ball forward in terms of functionality within OnePlace. We also spent a lot of time adding or changing things requested by users. Here's a sampling of some of what was added or changed in OnePlace since we launched:

• Added Team Central, which includes Team Status, Team Pulse, Team Schedule and Team Activities
• Added support to our mobile versions for accessing discussions and Team Pulse/Team Status.
• Added the ability to have public/private data within a workplace. This really increased the usefulness for using OnePlace to collaborate with people outside your team.
• Added emoticons, user avatars and custom workplace icons
• Ability to email in a task, note or team pulse
• Added data linking capabilities (both internal as well as perma-links)
• Added several new types of lists (bookmarks, contacts, ideas, and plans)
• Added List and Project "Save-as"
• Rolled out a Customer Forum web site

Looking Ahead to 2009...

Whew, thinking back on all the work that went into 2008 has made me tired all over again! But, it was a labor of love, so it was worth it. However, the past is the past - what's important now is what's to come. So, what can you expect from OnePlace during 2009? Well for starters, we're going to continue the march forward in terms of depth and breadth of the product. Believe me when I say that there is no shortage of ideas for making OnePlace more useful for you as an individual and for your team. We're going to continue to add value in all three major areas of OnePlace - team collaboration, project management, and personal productivity. We've also got a number of things big and small that we've promised to existing customers, which will appear in OnePlace during 2009. Another major initiative for 2009 will be around user education, and helping our users get the most value as possible from OnePlace.

So, stay tuned, stay organized, and stay productive. Happy 2009 to you all!