Improvements to Insightly Mobile

We have just made three improvements to the Insightly mobile web application, which you can use by navigating to  http://m.insight.ly in the browser of any Android phone, iPhone, iPad, or Blackberry Torch.

Search As You Type for Contacts and Organizations

We have added the ability to search your contact and organization lists in real time. A new search box is presented at the top of both the contact and organization list, and as you start typing into the list, we will present the matches to your search in the list below. This makes it much easier to find contacts and access their details quickly.

Pagination of Contact and Organization Lists

Insightly mobile will now break up long contact and organization lists into pages of fifty records, so pages load faster and the client is more responsive. Get to the next page by clicking the arrow or page number at the bottom of the list as shown below in red.

Adding Insightly Mobile to the home screen of your Android Phone

Insightly can be added to the home screen of your Android phone for easy access. Just navigatoe to Insightly Mobile at http://m.insight.ly and bookmark the page in Browser or Chrome. Then open your bookmarks and long tap the Insightly bookmark you just saved, and choose the 'Add To Home' option to add Insightly to your home screen. Screenshots are shown below for Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) but other versions are very similar.

Add Insightly Mobile to the home screen of your iPhone or iPad

Insightly can now be added to the home screen of your iPhone or iPad, and when it loads the browser  toolbars will be shown, so you have more screen area to use Insightly. Just tap the shortcut icon in the center of the bottom toolbar in Safari, and then choose the "Add to Home Screen" option from the popup menu. Insightly will be added to your iPhone or iPad home screen for easy access.

 

Note: If you're a Google Apps Paid Business customer and receive an Secure Sign On (SSO) error message when logging into the Mobile app, you will need to enable Federated Login in order to use  our mobile app. 

Get your Google Apps domain admin to enable Federated Login by doing the following:

1. From Google Apps, click "Manage this domain".
2. In the blue bar, click on "Advanced tools".
3. Under "Authentication", click "Federated Login using OpenID"
4. Make sure the checkbox labelled "Allow users to sign in to third party websites using OpenID" is checked.
5. Click "Save changes".

For further support, please email support at insight.ly

New Task Team Assignment option

Along with the three major features we just added to Insightly (in blog posts below), we have added a small additional feature to the Tasks section of Insightly that has been requested a few times.

In Insightly you always had the ability to assign a task to a team, and a copy of that task would be assigned to each member of the team individually - essentially creating multiple copies of the same task and assigning them to each team member.

We still have that option, but we're also adding the ability to assign a single task to the entire team, which will show up in the task list for all team members, and allows any member of the team to complete that task and it will show as completed for all team members.

A small enhancement which I'm sure will please those who requested it.

MailChimp Integration

We are excited to announce that for users on our paid plans only, Insightly now integrates seamlessly with your MailChimp account. For those of you not familiar with MailChimp, it’s an online newsletter/marketing platform that’s well worth checking out. With the new feature roll-out you are able to Import Contacts to Insightly from your MailChimp account and Export Contacts from Insightly to any of your MailChimp Lists.

Setup

Your MailChimp account can be set up to communicate with Insightly on a per instance basis. This means that you only need to set up the Integration once, and then all your users will have access to the features. To setup your MailChimp Integration, please follow these steps:

1) Log into Insightly using an Administrator account, navigate to System Settings > MailChimp Integration. The MailChimp Settings window will be shown.

2) In a separate browser window, log into your MailChimp account and navigate to Account > API Keys & Authorized Apps.

3) If you have an enabled API Key in the “Your API Keys” list, copy the key you wish to use and paste it into the “MailChimp API Key” text box in Insightly.  If you do not have an API Key, just press the “Add A Key” button and one will be generated for you.

4) Once you have the API Key in Insightly, choose a “Contact Email Option” next. This determines which email address of your Insightly Contacts will be used when you send a Contact to a MailChimp List. The Default option is “First Email Address Listed”.

First Email Address Listed means that if the Contact has one or more email addresses, the first address will be chosen regardless whether it is tagged as a “Work”, “Home” or “Other” email address.

5) Press “Save Settings” to complete the setup.

Sending Contacts to MailChimp 

From the Contacts list in Insightly you now have the option to send contacts to a specific mailing list in MailChimp. The procedure is similar to any other bulk action you would be performing on the Contact records.

NOTE: You will need to have at least one list defined in MailChimp to send Contacts. If you have not already done so, please set one up before you attempt to send (In Mailchimp, go to Dashboard> Create a List).

To send Contacts to MailChimp, follow these steps:
1) In Insightly, navigate to the Contacts tab and select the Contacts you wish to send.
2) Once you have completed your selection, click the “Send to MailChimp” option.

3) A drop down list will appear.  From this list, select the MailChimp list you wish to send the selected Contacts to and press “Send to Mailchimp”. The duration of the send procedure will vary based on the number of Contacts you have selected.

4) When the procedure is complete you will see a confirmation message at the top on the page displaying how many Contacts were sent.

NOTE: It’s quite common for the number of successfully sent contacts to not add up to the number of contacts you selected to send. This is due to a couple of factors:

• MailChimp does not accept duplicate entries, so if the contact is already in MailChimp, the contact will be rejected; and/or
• Contacts sent depends on the email option you have selected in your MailChimp Integration settings.  For example, if you selected “Work”, only contacts who have a work email address will be sent.  The default option is “First Email Address” which means that if the contact has one or more email addresses, the first one will be chosen when sending to MailChimp.

Importing Contacts from MailChimp

Once you have setup your MailChimp Integration, you have the option to import subscribers from your MailChimp lists to Insightly Contacts. To import your subscribers, please follow these steps:
1) Navigate to Contacts in Insightly and click “Import Contacts and Notes” on the right hand side of the screen.
2) Click “Import your Contacts from MailChimp”.

3) From the drop down list that appears, select your MailChimp list you wish to import from and click “Import”.

4) You will be presented with a list of Contacts. Select the ones you wish to import by checking the box next to the Contact. Once you are done with the selection, click “Import Selected Contacts”. The duration of the import procedure will vary based on the number of Contacts you selected, but typically should not take more than a minute or two.

5) Once the import is done you will be redirected back to the Contacts Page and a message at the top of your screen will indicate how many Contacts were imported.

Disabling the MailChimp Integration

To disable your MailChimp Integration you can do so simply by following these steps:
1) Log into Insightly as an Administrator and Navigate to System Settings  > MailChimp Integration.
2) Click on “Delete” on the MailChimp API Key line and you’re all done.

LinkedIn and Twitter Integration

We are pleased to announce the new Social Integration features in Insightly, designed to help you gather intelligence about your Customers when preparing for the next big sell. You can now import your connected contacts from LinkedIn, as well as link Twitter and LinkedIn profiles to your individual contacts.  The Social Integration features are accessible under a new tab called “Social” in the Contact Details page.

The LinkedIn and Twitter features have to be enabled on a per user basis. This means that if you wish to utilize these features, you will need both a LinkedIn or Twitter account.

There are two ways to set up your Social Integration:

• through the new “Social” tab on the Contact Details page; or
• through the “User Settings” tab in your personal settings.

Setup from the Social Tab

To setup the features from the Social tab, please follow these steps:

1) Open up any Contact and select the Social tab.

 

Setting up LinkedIn

2) You will be presented with two setup links.  To enable LinkedIn, click “Click here to setup your LinkedIn integration”.

3) You will be redirected to LinkedIn so you can authorize access to your account when you are logged on to Insightly.  If you are not currently signed in to LinkedIn, you will be presented with a login window first.

4) Click “OK, I’ll Allow It” to accept the authorization, after which you will be redirected back to Insightly.

5) If the authorization was successful you should see the Search option in the LinkedIn area, or the LinkedIn Profile of the Contact if they have already been associated with a Profile.

6) If no LinkedIn profile appears, click “Search”.  A default search will be performed and the results will be displayed below the LinkedIn box.  Click “Link to Contact” to associate a profile with a Contact.

7) To perform a manual search, you can type in the information about the contact into the “First Name”, “Last Name” and/or “Company” boxes and click on “Search”.

Setting up Twitter

1) Click on the “Click here to setup your Twitter integration”.  A box will appear asking you to authorize access to your account.

2) Click the “Add Twitter Account” link above the Twitter Feed Section.

3) Type in the Twitter ID (Twitter/Screen Name) in the Text Box and Click Save.

4) You should now be able to see the Feed on the Social tab.

Adding and Removing Social Integration from your User Settings

To setup LinkedIn and Twitter integration from your 'My Info' page, please follow these steps:

1) Navigate to 'My Info' > User Settings. The 'My Info' page is the small card icon in the top right corner of Insightly.

2) Go to the Social Network Settings section of the form.  To setup LinkedIn or Twitter, click on the appropriate links as shown below

If your LinkedIn or Twitter integration is already setup, the links on the User Setting tab will allow you to remove the integration from Insightly, as shown below.

Removing a Profile or Twitter Feed

You have the option to remove a LinkedIn or Twitter association from a Contact should you want to do so. To remove an association, all you have to do is to click the trash can icon within the Profile or the Feed.

Adding External Users to Insightly

One of the most requested features we just implemented is the ability to add external users who are not part of your Google Apps domain to your Insightly. If you already have Insightly set up with your Google Apps domain, you now have the ability to invite Non-Google Apps users with just their email address and name.

External users are treated the same as Google Apps users, with the exception that they will not be able to perform Google Apps specific actions like adding Google Docs, or syncing contacts and calendar items with Gmail and Google Calendar.

First choosing an Insightly URL

In order to use this new functionality, an Insightly administrator first needs to set a unique Insightly URL for external users to navigate to and log in.  To do this, go Settings > 'Insightly URL'.  Settings is the small gear icon in the top right corner of Insightly.

The last part of this URL address is always ".insight.ly" but you can change the first part of the web address to something your users will remember - if it has not already been reserved. Your external users will then type in that URL to access Insightly.

Examples might include: http://mycompany.insight.ly, http://myteam.insight.ly, or http://myproject.insight.ly

Your Insightly URL must contain only the characters A-Z or a-z, the numbers 0-9, or the hyphen character. No spaces are allowed and it must be at least 5 characters.If you change your Insightly URL, it's up to you to tell all your users the new URL so they can continue to access Insightly.

Inviting External Users

After setting up your URL, you will be able to invite new users by specifying their first name, last name, and e-mail address through Settings > Users.

When you invite a new user to join your Insightly, an email will be sent to the email address you specified for new user with an invitation link to sign up to Insightly. The invitation offer will expire after 7 days for security reasons.  If after that time the user has not yet signed up, a new invitation will need to be generated from within the User administrator page.

The invitation email sent to the new user will include a special link that they can click to enter in a password and they will be logged straight into your Insightly. For them to login again in the future, the user will need to type in the Insightly URL you have chosen, and they will be presented with a login screen to enter their email address and the password they set.

Note: External users will not have access to some functionality unique to Google Apps like adding Google Docs, and syncing contacts and calendars with Gmail and Google Calendar.

New Notification & Follow System

One of the new features that just debuted is a new notification system for Insightly. Users now have the ability to follow items in Insightly like tasks, contacts, organizations, opportunities, projects, emails or notes, and receive email updates when any changes are made to those items. This is useful when you want to be notified when a task you assigned to another user has been completed, or when the details of a contact you are interested in are changed, or when another user adds new files to a project you're following.

How to follow items

To turn on the email notifications, navigate to the page for the individual item you wish to follow and receive notifications for, and click on the blue  “Follow” button on the top right corner of the blue header bar. When you click the button it will turn green to indicate you are following that item.

For items that you are following, a blue star will appear next to that item in the list view.

Setting when to receive notifications

To select what actions you would like to receive email notifications for, go to My Info > Notifications. The 'My Info' page is the small card icon in the top right corner of Insightly.  In this screen, click the 'Notifications' tab, and check or uncheck the boxes corresponding to the actions you would like to be notified of.

Automatically following items

You can also choose to follow some items in Insightly automatically without having to explicitly click the 'Follow' button each time. This is useful for receiving comments on notes you have created, or updates on a task you assigned to another user to complete, or when other users update items you created. Checkboxes for those are below the email action options.

Viewing notifications and listing followed items

To view a list of your current notifications within Insightly, rest your pointer over the orange speech bubble icon in the top right corner of Insightly, as shown below.

To view a list of items that you are following, click on the Notifications icon on the top right hand side of the screen. Then click the link for “Items I’m Following”.

A page will appear with the following tabs – Contacts, Organizations, Opportunities, Projects, Tasks, Emails, Notes.  You can click on each of these tabs to see the items you are following.  You can also choose  to “Unfollow” any item by clicking on the “Following” button next to that item.