One of the strengths of Simple In/Out is the ability to have a list of everyone in your organization, with their current statuses, right in the palm of your hand.  While that’s great, there are those times where you need that same list in a place for the world to see.  Whether that’s in your reception area, your war room or your television at home, Simple In/Out has you covered.  Here are a couple of different ways to get Simple In/Out displaying in eye-catching ways.

If you have an iPad, you have lots of choices for displaying Simple In/Out.  We recently released FrontDesk, an iPad app specifically designed for Simple In/Out to allow for users to quickly check in or out.  This is perfect for reception areas or mirrored to a TV via an AppleTV.  

Recently, we did an integration with Panic’s StatusBoard.  This app is built exclusively for the iPad and allows users to build sexy widgets for display on TVs and the like.  Simple In/Out is a first-class citizen, making it as easy as a tap or two to get started.  Check out the blog post for how.

If you don’t have an iPad, you can use our website.  We offer a great full screen mode built right into simpleinout.com.  Using this, you can place Simple In/Out on a spare computer or a computer/iPad hooked right up to a TV.  You can even bypass the computer altogether by following this advice from the great folks over at Atlassian.  They recommend using just a hacked AppleTV, which will run you just a bit over $100.

We hope to see your Simple In/Out boards while we’re out and about.  Send us pictures of your board in the wild, we’d love to see them (brandon [at] simplymadeapps [dot] com)

Today, Simple In/Out crossed a significant milestone:  we’ve now handled over one million status updates.  That’s one million folks showing up, going home for the day, heading out to a meeting or taking vacation.

Thanks to all our loyal users, you mean the world to us.

We have gotten lots of requests over the last couple of years, and we have always done our best to oblige every request. Today, we are happy to announce we have filled a very big, oft requested feature, FrontDesk.

FrontDesk is a dedicated iPad app for your reception area or common access areas. FrontDesk allows you to quickly check yourself in or out from the main app without needed to use your phone. Or for those smartphone-challenged users, a way to toggle yourself in or out as you go by.

We have made FrontDesk very easy to use with ease and speed in mind. While we have kept things simple, there are plenty of features packed into this first release.

• Swipe to check in/out
• Tap to select customizable messages
• Multiple columns to quickly see who is in or out at a glance
• Customizable Status Message, create your own list of status for users to choose from
• Automatically refreshes so the board is always up to date.
• User customizable settings (Quick Picks, Refresh Interval, Auto-Off, etc)

We know that it is impossible to make everyone happy (but we sure do try). If you see something amiss or missing, be sure to reach out and let us know. We tried to build FrontDesk with the most users in mind, but we can’t think of everything. That is where your suggestions come in. So be sure to keep them coming.

So go get it! FrontDesk by Simple In/Out

We couldn’t be happier to bring a new app to the Simple In/Out family. We hope you like it. Enjoy!

Tech News 24h: Top 10 Mobile Apps For Organizing Your Business

Every once and a while, we get to do something small and wonderful that really has an impact for some of our customers.  Today was one of those days.  I’m proud to introduce Simple In/Out’s support for Panic’s Status Board.

Status Board is a wonderful product from the folks at Panic.  It’s an iPad app meant to display vital business information on your iPad, TV, you name it.  The app is seductively simple yet powerful, exactly what we at Simply Made Apps like to strive for. In fact, Panic has been an inspiration to me personally for some time.  Not a day goes by when I’m not using their wonderful Transmit app for the Mac for all my SFTP needs.  

To use Simple In/Out on your Status Board, we’ve created a new link right inline with our other Public Links.  If you’re on your iPad and have Status Board installed, you can simply tap this link (located under Settings -> Company Settings), and it will instantly launch Status Board and add it automatically.

Between Full Screen Mode, our new Windows 8 app and now Status Board integration, we have a lot of great options for seeing your Simple In/Out data on a display near you.  We have one more surprise up our sleeves very soon that will add even more to our Simple In/Out family.

We have had several requests over the last few months to restrict some of the information available to users, namely the 7-day history. While there isn’t a ton of private information within Simple In/Out, we can understand why some users would want this information private. So we are happy to announce today that we have added a setting to restrict the visibility of the 7-day history. Of course this can only be changed by admin users, but the history can be changed to be visible to Everyone, Admins only, or no one. By default, the history setting is set to Everyone, but you are free to set it to a level appropriate for your users. You can find the new change today under Settings—>Company Settings—>History Visible To. 

Thanks to everyone that requested this new feature. While it might not be needed for everyone, it is always nice to have the option if the need arises. We love hearing from our valued customers and users. You are what makes Simple In/Out great. So keep the suggestions coming.

Today, we’re excited to announce that Simple In/Out has arrived for Windows 8!

We’ve received lots of requests for this over the last year or so.  Some folks wanted a widget to avoid having to load the website.  Some were interested in making life easier for admin users and receptionists.  Some still were just looking for more cool stuff from us.  We think this release is a great opening salvo.

We’ve been working directly with Microsoft to get this into the Windows Store for the past few months (many don’t know that Microsoft has a large campus right here in Fargo).  They’ve been great.  A special mention to Sheila Wamre and Jed Bontjes for helping me with the final push.

For our 1.0 release, we kept things simple.  We support viewing the board, updating your status via manual and one click Quick Picks, and viewing other users.  Admins can update the statuses of their other users.  We support landscape, portrait and the convenient Snap View for those that would like the board open all day.  

Go check it out on the Windows Store.

How Did You Come Up With Your Business Name?

We are very happy to announce a brand new update for our iOS users today. With this update, users can now upgrade their subscription plan directly from the app. This should be a great new way for users to try out our service with more users. We put a lot of time and energy (and loads of testing) into this build to make sure that this new feature not only works great for new users, but also doesn’t interfere with existing users that may have subscribed from our website.

If you have already subscribed via the website, nothing has changed for you. Since we can’t update the website subscriptions from the app, you will be directed back to the website to make any changes to your account. New users may decide whether to upgrade from the website or via Apple In-App Purchase. There are benefits to both. We have itemized receipts online and the ability to see your billing history going back as long as you are a customer. Purchasing In-App is very quick and easy and doesn’t require you to enter a payment method.

Hopefully having multiple options of payment will benefit our users and give new users a way to try out our larger plans without having to visit the website and mess with credit cards and entry forms.

This update also has some new bug fixes that started to pile up behind this large release. We absolutely love working on Simple In/Out and hope this update is just what our users were looking for.

Here at Simply Made Apps, the new features are coming fast and furious.  We have some really wonderful things in the hopper.  Tonight, hot on the heels of our new Daily Timeline report comes another big feature request from our users:  Public Links.

Many of our customers have a need to show the Simple In/Out board to folks who aren’t logged in.  Maybe this is for display purposes outside their control.  For some, they want to integrate the board right into their company intranet, wiki or SharePoint.  Other customers want to provide their in/out statuses to people who will never be members and require logins.

To solve this, we’ve created a new way to generate Public Links.  These links can be shared with anyone or embedded anywhere without the need to log in and authenticate with our system.  They provide the same look at the board that you receive inside Simple In/Out, complete with groups, filtering, sorting and auto-refreshing all supported.

To create your own Public Links, simply have an admin user navigate to Settings -> Company Settings on simpleinout.com.  On this page is a brand new section called Public Links that will look like this:

By clicking Generate Links, you’ll be presented with two new links you can distribute as you see fit.  They will look like this:

The first link will show you the standard board.  The second link will immediately place you in our new Full Screen Mode.  You can still switch between the two views anytime, but this beginning place makes integration even easier.

Once these links are generated, they will work for anyone and anywhere you share them.  For an extra bit of security, you can click the button to “Refresh Links” if you wish.  By doing this, you’re old links will stop working and you’ll be presented with new links.  This will allow you to kill your Public Links if they have fallen into the wrong hands.

We believe Public Links really strikes a good balance between ease of use and security.  This is the first of hopefully several enhancements to make integrating Simple In/Out even easier.  We can’t wait to show you what we have in store next.