Since 2016, Simple In/Out has sported automatic status updates via Networks. When your phone connects/disconnects from the company WiFi network, Simple In/Out can update your status accordingly. Like our other automatic updating methods, Networks can keep your board current with zero user intervention.

Networks have many advantages over Geofences and Beacons. WiFi networks are smaller than Geofences, larger than Bluetooth areas provided by beacons, and use hardware you’ve likely already installed in your offices. The enormous caveat with Networks has been that we’ve only supported Android devices. Apple has never provided the tools necessary to build this feature for iPhones.

That is, until today. Today, we announce Networks for iPhone with Simple In/Out version 11.0 in the App Store. Networks use the latest technology to deliver automatic status updates based on your phone’s connection to your known WiFi hotspots. If you have Networks already for Android users, iPhone users can activate them within the new Simple In/Out app. If you’re a Simple In/Out administrator who has never created a Network, you can manage them on simpleinout.com. Here’s a video showing the process.

We’re thrilled to achieve feature parity with Networks across all our phone apps. We anticipate Networks will be immensely popular. Thanks to Stephen and Josh for all their hard work and testing to bring this monumental feature to our iPhone customers worldwide.

If you have Simple In/Out Desktop version 1.6.0 or earlier installed on your Windows computer, you’ll need to download a new version from our website to upgrade further. Download the latest version from our website.

Why?

Microsoft Windows requires apps like Simple In/Out Desktop to be “signed” to verify authenticity. Protecting users against imposter software is something we happily comply with for the good of our users and the peace of mind of IT professionals everywhere.

Signing an app requires we update the “signing certificate” every few years. We recently shipped version 1.6.1 which is the first signed with this new certificate. Everything works great, but we discovered afterward that older versions of Simple In/Out Desktop will no longer update themselves to this latest version due to differences in the signing.

To upgrade past 1.6.0, download the latest version from our website. Once 1.6.1 or later has been installed, Simple In/Out Desktop will accept future updates as it has in the past.

We apologize for this one-time painful update experience due to this change. We hope this is an aberration and future signing updates will be compatible with our updating system. If you have any questions about updating, we’re here to help.

Since our beginning in 2011, Simple In/Out has had two core statuses: IN and OUT. Beyond this, every status update has an optional comment that provides valuable additional context to your board. Statuses and comments have served Simple In/Out well over the years. If a user was working from home, updating their status to IN with a “Working from home” comment relayed their state well.

Over the years, we received many requests for more core statuses beyond IN and OUT. We resisted for the sake of simplicity. After all, what could be easier than only two options? When the global pandemic struck, more and more customers were working from home. Soon after, we began to change our thinking.

We’re proud to announce the addition of 5 core statuses to Simple In/Out: REMOTE, BUSY, BREAK, SICK, and VACATION.

Delivering these new statuses required us to ship updates to every application and integration we offer because this fundamental change permeates every Simple In/Out feature. Only a few examples:

• All our reports needed further options to correctly calculate total time, as some customers include break time and some do not.
• Our Desktop Presence feature in Simple In/Out Desktop can trigger a dedicated REMOTE status when working from home.
• Microsoft Teams Presence integration) can now properly indicate a user is BUSY in Simple In/Out to match Teams.

The list goes on and on.

We also considered our existing customers, some of which have been using Simple In/Out for over a decade and may not be interested in changing their workflows. We’ve made these new core statuses optional so every customer can choose to enable them (or try them and disable them later). Administrators can manage their available statuses via Company Settings.

We are confident our worldwide customers will welcome these improvements to all Simple In/Out’s capabilities. New statuses were among the most popular and oldest feature requests we have ever received. Thank you amazing customers for their continued passion about Simple In/Out!

We’re happy to announce that Steve Gibbs has joined Simply Made Apps as a web developer.

Steve graduated with an Associates of Applied Science in Computer Programming from my alma mater here in Fargo/Moorhead. He comes to us with a decade and a half of experience in the field of web development.

As a member of our web team, Steve will be working with everyone here to execute new projects we’re kicking off soon across the entire Simple In/Out product line.

We’re thrilled to welcome Steve to the Simply Made Apps team.

Simple In/Out has many reports to analyze your status updates. We have reports that count time, offer chronological lists of status updates, charts, and more. We also have reports that export into formats like PDF and CSV to take with you.

If you are required to submit or monitor reports regularly, repeatedly running the same reports can be a hassle. Users must remember to do it every period, remember their settings, and wait for the report to generate. How can we make this easier?

We are thrilled to announce the release of our latest feature: Scheduled Email Reports. Users can receive reports directly in their inbox, complete with their preferred settings and format. You design the perfect report and choose your schedule. We offer daily, weekly, biweekly, and monthly options. Once set, Simple In/Out will generate the report with your preferred timespan and email you a link to download. Your report will be ready for you first thing in the morning.

This feature supports both the Print/PDF and Export reports. All presentation options are supported.

We believe emailing reports will help our users save time and increase productivity. If you have any questions or feedback, please do not hesitate to contact us. We look forward to hearing from you!

A couple years back, we shipped a new status update interface for Simple In/Out Android.

Previously, we shipped a new status update interface for Simple In/Out Android. This new interface cleared up the meaning of our tabs, provided more places to update your status, improved Quick Picks, and brought simplicity to our navigation. We’ve followed suit on Simple In/Out Desktop and our website.

Today, we announce these same improvements on Simple In/Out for iPhone. You can read more about our thought process and how the new interface works here.

We’re also announcing a new Simple In/Out interface for our iPad users. Historically, Simple In/Out’s phone app ran the same on iPads as phones. Doing so led to lots of wasted space. Now, the new Status “Flyup” will rest on the left-hand side. You can view the board and access the entire status-updating interface simultaneously.

We’re thrilled to bring these changes to iPhone and iPad users worldwide.

Simple In/Out will be offline for database maintenance on Sunday, December 31st, for approximately 1 hour. We anticipate beginning at 2:00 am Central (US) time. During this period, the website will be inaccessible. All apps and integrations in the Simple In/Out ecosystem will report connection errors.

Most of our Microsoft Teams presence integrations will disconnect during this maintenance. Microsoft requires us to renew all Microsoft Teams presence integrations every 45 minutes (which is crazy). If your Microsoft Teams presence integration disconnects, you’ll receive an email from Simple In/Out to reconnect after maintenance concludes. We have been begging Microsoft to loosen this absurd requirement to no avail. We have no options until Microsoft sets their presence subscription times to match their other Graph services.

We don’t take the idea of downtime lightly. We are conducting this operation in the middle of the night during a three-day holiday weekend to minimize disruptions.

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to let us know.

Today is a day we have been working towards for over two years. We’re beyond excited to announce the release of Single Sign On through Microsoft Entra (formerly known as Azure ActiveDirectory).

For the uninitiated, Single Sign On (SSO) is a feature that allows your users to sign into their Simple In/Out accounts using the same credentials they use on our Microsoft systems like Outlook and Teams. Your users benefit by having one less username/password to remember. Administrators benefit by having total control over their user data and password policies (complexity, rotation, and multi-factor authentication).

We’ve extended our SSO support further by adopting user and group provisioning from Microsoft. Once configured, Simple In/Out will add users and groups directly from your Microsoft systems, eliminating the need to manage users or groups within Simple In/Out. When you use Microsoft Entra to add, deactivate, or delete a user, Simple In/Out will follow suit automatically. Simple In/Out is one less system you’ll worry about when managing your users.

Why was the SSO development cycle so long? After all, the benefits are tremendous. Simple In/Out boosts apps for phones, tablets, computers, and televisions. We also offer integrations with Slack and Microsoft Teams. Every authentication system needed a rewrite to support SSO. Simple In/Out TV was challenging as televisions do not have modern web browsers. Our SSO integration also supports photos because the Simple In/Out board looks much better with great images. Photos required an entire engine outside of SSO due to poor standards/vendor support across the industry.

Today, Simple In/Out supports Single Sign On via Microsoft Entra. We build our SSO support on mostly industry standards. Adding support for other vendors will be possible based on demand. Let us know if you have a different identity provider you’d like to use with Simple In/Out.

We’re also announcing new plans to accommodate this advanced feature and the ongoing support/maintenance required. Utilizing SSO requires a new Enterprise-tier plan. We’ve launched our new pricing page to display this information and break down the benefits of our plans. We’ve also moved our Calendar integration into our Pro-tier plans due to the demands on our systems to sync large calendars hourly.

Single Sign On support was the most popular feature request in Simple In/Out history. We know this feature will unlock workflows for our current and future customers around the globe.

We’re happy to announce that Mike DeVine has joined Simply Made Apps as a web developer.

Mike graduated with a Bachelors of Science from the Rochester Institute of Technology. He’s spent over a decade honing his craft in web work as well as the artful aspects of digital development. Mike is also a gamer, something we seem to collect at Simply Made Apps.

As a member of our web team, Mike will be working closely with me on the exciting new projects we’re kicking off soon for both Simple In/Out’s website as well as our Windows/Mac app.

We’re thrilled to welcome Mike to the Simply Made Apps team.

On September 1, 2023, just after 9:00 am Central Daylight Time, Simple In/Out experienced an intermittent outage lasting approximately 3 hours. During this time Microsoft Teams presence integrations were also disconnected.

Like the previous outage we suffered this Spring, this one was a confluence of events that ultimately land on us. For this, I’m sorry. While we cannot go back in time, we strive to learn from our mistakes at Simple In/Out and improve as an organization. Our customers deserve zero downtime.

Below is a technical explanation of what happened and our remedies in the interest of complete transparency.

What happened?

We’ve been rapidly shipping updates recently, setting the stage for our next new feature: Single Sign On. While we’re not ready to announce this new capability today, it’s nearing completion. In this rush, a database update caused a problem for a few customers. The database misalignment was not a big deal, but it forced us to look closely at our servers.

Unrelated, we shipped a new safety check to ensure smoothly-operating servers. This safety check noticed the database change and sent us a false negative: it reported servers broken that were running just fine. The false alarms began a chain reaction of bad reactive decisions until we discovered we were chasing non-existent problems.

What can I do?

No action is required unless using Microsoft Teams presence integration. Those users must reconnect their integrations here. Microsoft requires we contact them every 45 minutes concerning every Teams presence integration, so a persistent outage translates to Microsoft canceling all access.

What are we doing to stop this from happening again?

First, we have fixed the false positive check that caused us to react poorly.

Second, we will speed code deployments dramatically, ensuring any rollbacks take far less time. Faster code deployment will help stem further disconnects of the Microsoft Teams presence feature.

Speaking of Teams, we’re also attempting to convince Microsoft to amend their policies regarding Teams presence for more time before disconnecting. Microsoft allows anywhere from 3-30 days for all other resources, so while we’re not optimistic they will extend time regarding Teams presence we believe they can do so safely.

Thank you for reading, trusting us at Simple In/Out, and allowing us to serve you. We may have fell well short yesterday, but we’ll be better tomorrow because of our relentless pursuit in building the best in/out board on the planet.