If there’s one thing I hate, it’s a stale blog. Embarrassingly, this poor blog hasn’t seen much love lately, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t been busy. Here are a few highlights about how we spent our summer.
4-input Data Bridge
Jeez…we’ve been talking about this for so long even I’m getting a bit sick of it. However, I’m extremely happy that this little guy is now available! We rushed to get the hardware ready in time for SCAA in Houston, but still had a ton of integration work to do with our software. There were a few database changes, UI tweaks and odds and ends to clean up so that we could easily support one or four charts. For the last few weeks our testers have been logging roasts daily with these devices…yee-haw! Of course, we identified a few things to fix and have been doing so diligently.
When you sign-up with RoastLog you’ll have the option of logging with our four-input device or our original one-input. Once you log into the RoastLogger client software, it will automatically detect which device you have and the UI will adjust itself out appropriately.
There is still some work do to in order to use a subset of those four charts, but it’s coming. I’d like to give users the option of using one, two, three or all four plots and have the layout be more flexible. Some folks like side-by-side to get more vertical resolution while others prefer the layout below. Drag-and-drop to reorganize? With this update I completely switched out the charting library in RoastLogger, so we have a lot more options which is very very nice.
Software updates
One of the things I’ve been working on most recently is making our software better overall….fixing bugs, designing better in-application messaging systems, working on new-user experience, etc. It’s been a lot of fun actually. As a software guy, it’s always fun to tackle new problems and build new systems. However, there are always these little annoyances (i.e., bugs) which eat away at me, and are sources of frustration for users.
The latest version of RoastLogger has a few of those fixes as well as some enhancements which make it easier for users to know when there is a problem. At the same time, the website has undergone a few enhancements and fixes. If you’re a customer, you may have noticed a little message recently announcing RoastLogger 2.1.1. This system will allow us to better notify folks about system updates.
Support portal
One thing we all obsess over is providing excellent customer support. The best part of running your own business is talking to your customers and deciding that you’re going to treat them like you want to be treated. Two weeks ago we launched our new customer support portal which will help us do a better job of helping you:
http://support.roastlog.com/
Our goal is to get back to everyone within 24 hours with an answer. Most often, we’ll get back within a couple of hours. Better yet is that this system (powered by the good folks as Assistly) provides a great search system through common questions and issues. Our hope is that this system will take the hard work out of finding answers to common questions.
Planning for 2012
Since joining us shortly after the SCAA show this year, Linsey has been busting his butt getting our sales and marketing efforts organized. We’re also all signed up for the SCAA show in 2012, so plan on saying hi to us in Portland (Portland…thank you SCAA). We still have a big vision for RoastLog and are doing our best to build software which every coffee roaster will want to have. Hopefully 2012 will see us get even closer to that vision!