Newfangled's Client-Facing Project Management Application

At the beginning of this article, I wrote that a centralized Website Management System unified three previously distinct areas: Content Management, Measurement and Project Management. We're working on bringing the third area, Project Management, into the fold now, so I wanted to give our readers a preview of what is to come.

Today, our clients who have initial projects in process can log in to our system and see links to their prototype, design layouts, and the development version of their site. It's helpful, but beyond what I've listed, a client who can remember or bookmark those links has no compelling reason to return to their my.newfangled.com page. We believe that there is much, much more we could provide to our clients using that interface, and so we've designed a brand new one.



The new My.Newfangled.Com (shown above) includes the ability to access the prototype, design files, the development version of the site, and direct access to the client's Google Analytics account through the tabbed interface at the top. On the right side of the page, we're showing an overview of every Newfangled employee making up the project team and contact information for the Project Managers. Below, we've added a list of resources we believe will be helpful to our clients. These might be newsletters, blog posts, webinars, or other information.

In the main content column, we've added a display of messages added by our Project Managers, which might include reminders of specific deadlines, notes of key decisions made in the process, or other information pertinent to the project. Beneath is probably the most important addition, a project schedule display showing exactly where the project is today in terms of the overall process. Being able to see the project status in such a clear way will greatly reduce the possibility of confusion about deadlines and perhaps even the likelihood of missing one. For greater detail, we've included a list view of each project stage and its progress that can be expanded beneath the chart.

You may have also noticed the bright, orange alert across the top of the page. This would only appear if our System Administrator needed to plan for routine work on our development server which could require a brief, temporary lapse in access to the my.newfangled environment (the interface above, the prototype, design files or the development version of the site). In the event of this kind of maintenance, the alert would appear well in advance to make sure all of our client are aware of it.

We're greatly looking forward to an October release of the new My.Newfangled.Com, which will be the final piece to complete the new Website Management System we've been working on for the past year. Aside from the project management tools I've just reviewed above, the latest release, comprising the update to the CMS and the measurement dashboard and on-page reports, is available now. Our goal has been to create a system that is simple, yet comprehensive, centralized, yet incorporating various streams of data, and above all, one that truly enables its users to effectively cope with the complexity of managing their website. This is the future of Website Management.